| Years. | Declinations. |
| 1550. | 8° east. |
| 1580. | 11.30 |
| 1622. | 6.30 |
| 1634. | 4.16 |
On causing the curve (Fig. 3, No. 3) to pass through the four points thus determined, we find, for 1612, the declination 8½°. This is, with an approximation closer than that of the measurements that can be made upon the small compass, the value that we found. From these data as a whole we draw the two following conclusions: (1) The instrument was constructed at Paris; and (2) the inventor was accurately posted in the science of his time.
Certain easily perceived retouchings, moreover, show that this sun dial is not a copy, but rather an original. We are therefore in an attitude to claim, as we did at the outset, that the constructor of this pleasing object was not only an artist, but a man of science as well.
Let us compare a few dates: In 1612, Galileo and Kepler were still living. Thirty years were yet to lapse before the birth of Newton. Modern astronomy was in its tenderest infancy, and remained the privilege of a few initiated persons.—C.E. Guillaume, in La Nature.
[MIND.]
THE UNDYING GERM PLASM AND THE IMMORTAL SOUL.
By Dr. R. VON LENDENFELD.
[The following article appeared originally, last year, in the German scientific monthly, Humboldt. It, is reproduced here (by permission)—the English from the hand of Mr. A.E. Shipley—as a specimen of the kind of general speculation to which modern biology is giving rise.—EDITOR.]
To Weismann is due the credit of transforming those vague ideas on the immortality of the germ plasma which have been for some time in the minds of many scientific men, myself among the number, into a clear and sharply-defined theory, against the accuracy of which no doubt can be raised either from the theoretical or from the empirical standpoint. This theory, defined as it is by Weismann, has but recently come before us, and some time must elapse before all the consequences which it entails will be evident. But there is one direction which I have for some time followed, and indeed began to think out long before Weismann's remarkable work showed the importance of this matter. I mean the origin of the conception of the immortal soul.