When such light is passed through a triangular column of glass or optical prism it is broken up into the seven prismatic colors, viz., red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

When the light falls on water of sufficient depth it is also decomposed or broken up, the red rays of light are absorbed near the surface of the water and disappear, while the other colored rays pass to a greater depth, one after the other being lost in their proper or ler, viz., red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, until at last there is complete extinction of light if the water is free from solid particles.

The presence of minute particles, however, causes a part of the light to be reflected, and according as this reflected light has come from various depths so will its color vary. If, for example, the particles are large and freely reflect from a moderate depth, while they prevent reflection from a greater depth, the color will be green, while if they are minute and the reflection is from a great depth, the color will be blue.

In the experimental examination of this subject Professor Tyndall reports that while making a trip in the steamer Urgent he caused his assistant to cast a white plate attached to a cord into the water from the forward part of the vessel, while he marked its color when it reached his post of observation at the stern. In every instance the plate appeared of a green color although the water was of a deep blue. The plate had thus far reflected the light from a moderate depth and showed the tint of light reflected from this depth, while the indigo tint of the remainder of the water represented the color reflected from minute particles at great depths.

Sensation in the Mouse's Ear.

DR. SCHOBL of Prague has made the distribution of nerves to the ear of the mouse a subject of special examination, and calls attention to the fabulous richness of this organ in nerves, the bat's wing being in comparison but poorly supplied. According to the doctor's estimate, a mouse's ear of ordinary size presents on an average 6,000 nerve terminations, or, for both ears, 12,000. The function of this elaborate development is probably, as in the case of the bat's wing, to enable the animal to guide its way through dark narrow passages.

Sewage as a Cement.

THE Builder states that a process for the manufacture of an excellent hydraulic cement from sewage is to be seen in operation at Ealing, about five miles from London. A mixture of eight parts of lime and one of clay is thrown into the sewer and allowed to run down the sewerage about half a mile. The sewer then delivers its contents into a long tank in which the solid matter deposits, and the water passes out free from odor and almost colorless. The deposited mud is taken from the tank and dried; it is then passed through a pugging mill and brick machine. The bricks thus formed are finally calcined in a kiln,

and the result is an hydraulic cement equal to any Portland cement in the market.

Foreign Growths in the Body.

DR. BASTIAN, in speaking of the origin of lowest organisms, says :-It has been long known that Bacteria and Torulæ are frequently to be found within vegetable cells taken even from the central parts of plants, whenever these are in a sickly condition or are actually dying. They are apt to exist also within the epithelial cells taken from the inside of the mouth, and the frequency and abundance with which such organisms are met with in these cells are almost in direct proportion to the mal-nutrition and lack of vital power in the individual who is the subject of observation. Then again, in persons who have died of adynamic diseases, in the course of twenty-four or thirty-six hours (during warm weather), Bacteria may be found in abundance within the blood-vessels of the brain and other parts, although no such Bacteria were recognizable in the blood of the individual during life.

Memoranda.

THE use of petroleum to destroy the borer that infests the orchards in California has been found to injure and even kill the trees.

The circulating system of the water in the Crystal Palace Aquarium is similar to and avowedly made on the general model of the circulating system of the blood of many of the animals which the Aquarium itself maintains in life and health. Thus, the steampump represents a heart, the coals consumed by the boilers are the food, the pipes are the veins and arteries, and the wide-spreading, air-charged streams of water discharged at the jets are the lungs. (Nature.)

The sea anemones in the Crystal Palace Aquarium are fed every hour by an attendant, who places the food within their reach by means of wooden forceps.

The first duty of science is to break down superstition and substitute truth for the falsehoods that exist. Before it witchcraft and all kindred delusions must fall.

Magnetic storms have frequently interfered so seriously with the working of the railway telegraphs in England, that before their action was understood the superintendents on the lines repeatedly reported that some one had been playing tricks with the instruments and prevented their working.

The prevalence of tape-worm and other entozoic diseases in those parts of India where sewage irrigation is carried out is enormous, and thousands of cattle are destroyed as being unfit for human food.

The cholera that at times attacks herds of swine has been made the subject of investigation by Professor Verrill, Dr. Fletcher, and others. The conclusion arrived at is that it is caused by a parasite that makes its home in the fat surrounding the kidney of the pig. At one period of its existence it is free,

but finally becomes fixed or encysted, and its solid parts dissolve, leaving a grayish-brown fluid containing thousands of eggs.

Iron telegraph-poles have been successfully employed in Switzerland and are being introduced into Germany.

Many new and singular creatures have been found in the collections brought by Father David from China to Paris. Among these is a deer with peculiar horns and a long tail, a magnificent new species of pheasant, a singular bear-like mammal, a long-haired monkey with a wonderfully developed nose, besides many new rodents and insectivora.

The rain annually carries to the earth a quantity of nitrate of ammonia equivalent to three pounds per acre. (M. Chabris.)

Potatoes given with hay alone are scarcely capable of supporting the strength of a horse, but with bread or oats they form a strong and wholesome diet.

Wines of hot countries possess no odor; wines of France have it in a marked degree, but in those from the Rhine it is most intense.

To avoid the annoyance caused by the filling up of the harbor at Calais, and obtain a safe landing-place for steamers of 3,000 tons, it is proposed to construct an embarking pier about a mile from the shore, and connect it with the railway station on the coast by means of a tunnel under the sea.

A bar of ice, supported at the ends and weighted at the center, slowly bends.

A disease among silk-worms, known as pebrine, is now being rapidly and successfully exterminated by destroying the eggs from all the moths that are affected.

The vine-pest in France and the best means for its cure is the subject of a recent report by a committee of the Academy of Sciences. M. Faucon proposes to put the whole vineyard under water for two days, and so suffocate the insects without injuring the plants. When this is not practicable, M. Blanthon proposes to water the plants with water containing one part of impure phenic acid to one thousand of

water.

The whole course of subcutaneous surgery, and the whole range of Professor Lister's experience, the daily experience of the difference in progress between simple and compound fractures, a thousand facts and observations, and the accepted and proved theories of surgical practice, have long convinced every surgeon that in proportion as air, and that which air bears (germs), are excluded from the fluids of open wounds and from the organic fluids of the body, suppurative and putrefactive processes will be lessened and warded off. (British Medical Journal.)

The phosphorescent substance in fishes is always fat, and the emission of light is produced by its slow

oxidation by air. Phosphorescence is prevented by alcohol or carbonic acid, and increased by oxygen. (M. Pauceri.)

Oysters that have been transplanted from the East. ern coast to San Francisco Bay have been modified, so that the new growth of shell corresponds to that of the native oysters in being corrugated and showing purplish stripes between the ridges. (Mr. Dall.)

The Moose, at the time of the first European settlement, was found as far south as New York city. It has now almost entirely disappeared. The Bison occupied the whole United States, and large herds roamed through the Valley of the Connecticut. (Mr. W. J. Hayes.)

Hydraulic power on the great scale (10,000 horse power) is to be established at Bellegarde, on the Rhone, by drawing off one-third of the water of the river through a tunnel 550 yards long. The height of the fall will be fifty feet, and it is hoped to induce the Alsatian manufacturers to settle there and establish a second Lowell.

Milbank Prison, London, was first opened for the reception of convicts in 1816. From that date to 1854 it had a bad reputation for unhealthiness, the death-rate from typhoid fever, diarrhoea, and dysentery being very large. In 1854 the use of the filtered Thames water was stopped and the necessary supply obtained from an artesian well. At once the typhoid and intestinal troubles disappeared, and from that date up to April of the present year, nearly twenty years, there have been but three deaths from typhoid, one of which was an imported case, and only one death from diarrhoea or dysentery.

In a recent article in the Dublin University Magazine, insanity is defined as dyspepsia of the brain. Every germ and every bud of a perennial plant is the ingrafted embryo of a new individual.

The barks are in so far true excrement that they arise from living. plants, and play no further part in their vital functions; they may even be removed from them without thereby endangering their existence.

As the decay of wood advances its property of burning with flame diminishes. Carburetted hydrogen is not produced. For the purposes of fuel decayed or diseased wood is of little value.

The excrements of roots during autumn and winter undergo change. Often it requires years to complete the destruction of the excrement of a crop before the same crop can be again made to grow. Excrements of some crops do not injure others, hence rotation of crops.

It is decaying wood which causes fresh wood to assume the same condition.

Geiger has shown that the smell of musk is owing to its gradual putrefaction and decay, which will no doubt interest those who employ this substance as a perfume.

Summer Travel.

“MADAM,” said the elegant and sententious steward of the hotel-car, "the comfort of passengers is a thing to be considered-some time in the future."

We looked about incredulously. The long saloon, finished off like a choice cabinet with root of walnut and heart of maple, with ebony and gilding and graceful arabesqued lines of Etruscan pattern, was just made ready for dinner. There were the rows of small tables, each with its dainty napery, its tiny glittering castor and butter-dish, its pretty china bearing the mystic monogram P. P. C., and clear cut goblets heaped with clearer ice. The buffet at end of car displayed neatly-ranged dessert, salads, sauce-bottles, pickles, bottles of wine in coolers. Farther away, from the unseen kitchen, came savory smells, easily analyzed by the hungry sense into such agreeable components as broiled chicken, beefsteak, trout, chops. The trim waiters were assuming their spotless aprons and the professional napkins-over-the-arm. Beside each plate lay a French roll; there were flowers in a tall glass, there was ice on the butter. And all this at forty miles an hour. What did the steward mean?

And then memory,-disengaging itself from the comforting present, from impending dinner, from the pretty little drawing-room, just left and soon to be returned to, from, last and best of all, the pail of hot water approaching its first simmer, which, thanks to cook and porter, was at a later hour to become our own and furnish the luxury of a bed-time bath (think of a hot bath at forty miles an hour)-flew to the times and trains of those days which were before Mr. Pullman had been invented—nay, to times and Lines (hard-lines truly) of to-day, which know not nor recognize this beneficent presence. And remembering cars which bump and cars which jounce, cars whose inexorable windows refuse to open, whose uncompromising stoves know no medium between the red-hot and stone-cold, cars which possess an irresistible molecular attraction for all floating dirt

A kind of powdery round the steps
And cindery round the sashes-

remembering the jar, the expectoration, the cramp, the foul air which connect themselves inevitably with certain railroads, we began to think the steward was wiser than he sounded. For after all, despite modern improvements, what a very small proportion of comfort and Pullman one contrives to get to all this monstrous quantity of travel.

It is as means to an end that, generally speaking, one undergoes a railroad journey. We want to get somewhere to escape from city heats and smells or the gentle grind of home cares. We pine for mountain airs or the freshness of ocean spray, and for these advantages consent to pay the price of a day's discomfort. And seldom indeed is the price not exacted.

The conductor does not ask for it when he demands your ticket, but it is given all the same-you are conscious that you pay. Jolts and jars take toll of your spine. Bad air robs your brains. The insensible forces which emanate from all human organizations brought into close contact-forces at which materialists laugh and pooh-pooh, but which exist and operate all the same-are all day at their subtle work, draining nerves and lowering the spiritual vitality. By night you are a great deal more tired than you have any right to be. But, being of the nineteenth century, you do not question why, and, being an American, you have not been accustomed to connect the idea of pleasure with railroad travel per se, and so do not feel defrauded or wronged. It is sufficient that you are at the journey's end without an accident and reasonably on time.

But exactly why should all this discomfort be necessary? Given a pretty country, pure air, appreciative eyes, some pleasant book to turn to for a change or a companion whose speech-nay, whose very silence, perhaps - suits your mood, and a day spent on a train might, it would seem simply and of itself become a delightful thing. Dust there may be, but surely the engine might eat its own smoke and cinders. Movement there must be, but, with properly-built cars and a smooth road-bed there need not be jar and jump. Seats of comfortable adjustment, height, and cushioning, cost no more than the ugly, tasteless, gaudy adornments which prevail nowadays.

The Boy.

WHERE do those perennial boys, who of late years infest all traveling routes, come from? Do the railroad Companies put on special cars for them and their wares, or, if not, how do they manage? To ride from New York to Boston or from Littleton or Buffalo to New York, nowadays, is like passing in review an asylum for juvenile delinquents. Only these are not delinquents, and seem to have vested right to be where they are and to throw into your lap what they will. There are the blind boys and the harmonica boys and the little cripples. There are the peripatetic venders of small commodities of all sorts. You wave them away with averted gaze. You might as well wave away a mosquito. Foiled in one thing, they return with another. Prize packages are succeeded by ice-cream-candy; that failing, by pop-corn and lozenges, or little boxes of much be-squeezed figs. They never or seldom sell anything, but it makes no difference. However unprofitable their routine may be, it is thoroughly carried out. We recall now one boy on an unfrequented road, who during a journey of two hours appeared in turn as the harbinger of Ballon's Monthly, The Clipper, a Hartford newspaper, the Doctor's Daughter (prefaced with a hand-bill), Fun better than Physic, (another hand-bill), a case of

novels, a basket of specked and withered apples, a basket of oranges, a box of photographic views, and a package of gum-drops. Not an individual in the car having purchased one of these articles, he retired, and presently returned quite undismayed, and began to distribute printed papers with this announcement:

Make Your Deposits

In the

Exchange Bank.

Dividends Promptly Paid.

Each Box contains

New Coin,

Value from 10 cents to 5 dollars,

and

Fine Confectionery,

Price 50 cents.

Have your greenbacks ready, as the news-agent will soon call

upon you.

Sure enough, he soon called, but only to meet fresh disappointment. Nobody seemed inclined to avail himself of this method of earning a fortune. But the irrepressible boy, nothing daunted, gathered up his hand-bills, and in another moment was showering us with "Helix Needles," in thin red morocco cases, "only sixty cents-cloth stuck," we were assured, "and warranted not to rust." This temptation proving ineffectual to melt our hearts, he resumed the needle-packages, and, when we left the car, was just going his rounds, undaunted as ever, with Japanese fans of gay paper, 15 cents each, in his hands. Not a cloud lingered on the sharp little face after these repeated discouragements. It was lively and hopeful as ever, and so was the metallic voice which chanted "Fans." Why should not such a pushing youth exert his talents in some other sphere-where people would really want his wares? The traveling public would thus be happier, and he would be richer.

A Fernery.

IF there be an ugly jog on the north side of the cottage where, perhaps, the eaves drip and no sunlight falls, but on whose unsightliness a window opens, transform it into a fernery. On any rainy day send a man and a cart to the nearest woods, and let him bring down a load of ferns and brakes taken up with at least eight inches of earth clinging to them. It is better to take such as grow in the more open places and then they pine less for the old shade. Have six or seven inches of the hard-packed soil taken out, and the ferns carefully set in their new home, block to block, the spaces between being filled with black earth, and all the roots covered with moss from the woods. Then for two or three days syringe them all at dusk, and whenever the weather is very dry remember the same kindness. And the pretty green things will hardly droop till frosts come. We have some great swaying creatures four feet high when they were transplanted weeks ago, which have not dropped a leaf.

There is a tangle of wild vines among them, and a group of calla lilies is in bloom on the balcony which the ferns border. A dining-room window opens on them, and to see this waving fernery through the halfclosed blinds is to see in imagination the glory of the tropics, yet to feel the coolness of deep northern woods.

For the Frugal.

YET even while we sit with closed blinds, in what Hosea Biglow calls "simmerin' darkness," the fair summer is going, and the thought of autumn fashions and autumn sewing gives us pause. The summer campaign leaves us in rags, commonly, and the first thing to be obtained is a short black silk gown of passable appearance. Cinderella's coach began in a pumpkin, and our gown shall graduate from the piece-box. Rip up and brush all the old black silk which is of similar surface. Put a pair of old kid gloves in a quart of cold water, and by slow boiling reduce the quart to a pint. With this liquid sponge the silk on the future right side, and press it on the wrong. It will be found not only to have the substance of new silk, but the beautiful soft surface. And what is more, it will retain it for months, the gluten seeming to supply the place of the original dressing. Let it be made as may be, only as a general principle it would seem to be well not to take one of the fair Empress's gowns as a model for a pieced-up and turned garment. The more's the pity that the hint is needed by so many pretty girls.

Laces.

Now that the charming fashion of lace and muslin ruffles is in vogue, the pleasure of their possessors is a little dashed by the reflection that the pretty vanities will never again look so pretty after they have been washed. But if they are washed after the following manner, they may hold up their heads with the best of the unwashed. Cover half a dozen champagne bottles with old stockings sewed on to fit as tightly as possible. Whenever there is half an hour's leisure, take the soiled lace and taste it carefully on the stocking-covered frame, taking care that every minute loop in the border is caught. The work is tedious, but necessary. When the lace is fastened, cover the bottle in hot suds made of fine soap, and change the cooling suds to hot several times a day. Or, if it be convenient, put the bottle in a boiler and let it boil two or three hours, when the lace will be quite clean. Set the bottle in the air and leave it till the lace is almost dry, which will take but little while. Then carefully rip off the lace and press it in a book for a few hours. It will come out spotless, not too white, and with the almost imperceptible stiffness which new lace has. With half a dozen bottles much cleaning can be done at once. Even the unmanageable pointlace emerges out unscathed from this process.

About Acting.

IT has long been matter of remark among judicious critics that the English and American stage is sadly conventional. Setting aside a very few prominent artists, whose faults are perhaps as original as their merits, and carefully excepting a few others, like Jefferson, Matthews, Sothern, and Owens, whose close study of nature and careful yet temperate realism make the distinctive character of their acting, ninetenths of the profession show the most curious coincidence in their methods of doing any given thing in the course of their ordinary stage-work. Dramatic expression is reduced to a matter of systematic routine and mechanism. The grizzled, wary old theater-goer, his memory stocked and his faculties trained by steady sitting under the footlights for thirty years, knows what to expect. At the first glance of the new soubrette's apron or stage villain's corkscrew curls, he rates their place in the dramatic scale and knows exactly what they will do. He can predict to a nicety the coquettish angle of the maiden's elbow, and strike within a half note the bass-key of the bravo's guttural menace. All the stock methods of the average actor are thoroughly familiar to him, all alike traditional and monotonous, and all, or almost all, equally artificial and bad.

There are sundry valid reasons why this might probably, or must necessarily be true. One very evident consideration occurs to us, which has not often been noticed: our want not only of a good school, but of the models on which it should be founded. The only school we have, clearly, is the old-fashioned English sort of thing, with its traditions of Garrick and Betterton, of Kemble, and Siddons, and Kean. And this, however true to nature it may have been in old times, is, as illustrated nowadays, pretty sure to be overstrained, artificial, and false.

The remark has been shrewdly made, that if the actors who delighted our great-grandfathers and grandmothers could now appear before us, we should find them in most cases well-nigh unendurable. Of course impressions do not admit of perfect historical transmission, and it might be hard to say, to-day, just how Garrick eyed his father's ghost, or Mrs. Siddons snatched the daggers. But, judging as well as we may, we are led to the conclusion that the great actors of old were, according to more modern standards, unpleasantly pompous and tumid, in manner, reading, and action. They played for a ruder age, when society, even the best, was less intellectually trained, less broad of view than now, without the metaphysic self-consciousness or the aesthetic refinement which tend to make the auditor exacting and fastidious. It is probable, too, that at some time or other the "old school" was really a great deal better-that is, truer to nature-than now. Life and manners a century or two ago, we may imagine, were more picturesque ; personal and social traits got more prominent and

frank expression; contrasts were stronger, lines sharper, and shadows deeper than in our pateat utilitarian democracy of the nineteenth century. Unless IIogarth, and Smollett, and Richardson, and Sheridan deceive us, social life was more individual and naif, not classified and toned down, drilled and sophisticated to its present monotonous standard. To the robuster palate of our ancestors, therefore, the large exaggeration of the stage was not only more acceptable, but had probably more of a smack of reality than could be the case now. The guttural villains and gushing maidens, pompous aristocrats and beneficent uncle from India, all probably bore much closer resemblance to the real articles, then, than to their pale counterparts in modern society. And thus in reading, or listening to, the old legitin ate drama, the conviction has been forced upon us that the old way may, after all, be the only right way to play the old characters, and that modern refinements of treatment would be out of place in the delineation of personages who in actual life would have dreamed of nothing so little.

But even admitting that old-time acting is the right thing for old-time plays, where it is historically appropriate, the question still remains, What are we going to do for a school of acting fitted to the modern drama, where the old conventional style is an anachronism? And here we come squarely upon the dif ficulty which first suggested this article. We have no models. All representative art must have something to represent; it needs objects and set studies to copy. However great freedom it may allow itself in the selection or imaginative combination of the elements and phases it copies, it is bound to essential fidelity in the drawing. Dramatic art copies simply the expression of feeling, in words, looks, and actions, and should take its models as directly as possible from living and breathing men and women. But if the models refuse to pose, the artist is at a loss. That is exactly what happens in our own society to-day. The American is a pre-eminently undemonstrative animal. Borrowing a hint from his coppercolored brother, the noble savage, he counts a certain external stoicism the first duty of man, and the more earnest and absorbing be his passion or emotion, the more pains does he take to repress its expression. Of the truth of this any one may convince himself on slight observation. Let any one of us observe his near friend or neighbor on the next occasion when he is visited by sorrow, or terror, or rage, or remorse, and see how little the tempered or repressed emotion he allows himself to display accords with the effusive methods of depicting the same emotion on the stage. Let him, on the other hand, observe the effect of the same passion in tone of voice and play of feature or gesture among our foreign population-or, better still, among the same people at home, in Central or Southern Europe, for example; and he will recognize what