254 from it are seen in domestic and social him of having in his nature an infinite life. Much of the comfort of social life share of ambition, as the more evident depends on the idea of security; on being quality in him was an equal share of diffiable to take for granted that things will dence. "To this combination of opposite happen as they are promised and fixed. qualities it has been owing that till lately For the order of life it is necessary that I stole through life without undertaking we should have certain data to go upon anything, yet always wishing to distinthat we should feel sure that what is guish myself." It needs strength of replanned will be carried out. No house- solve to overcome natural obstacles of hold is so independent of externals, so this powerful nature, but it is irresolution free from engagements, as to be entirely to postpone an effort to which reason outside the stream of events to which the promises success. Irresolution may seize inner life has to be adapted. Everywhere on the most resolute where two passions there are comings and goings, one thing or principles contend for mastery; and to succeed another- to replace another. while this state of things lasts the mind is That must be a dreary existence indeed racked in proportion to the vehemence of which cannot be deranged by an irreso- its own nature and the importance of the lute will; a will which, either as being issue. Such conflicts afford opportunity supreme or as having a claim on civility for much fine writing. "You shall see a to forbearance, holds things in suspense, combat," says Bayes, in "The Rehearsal," has the power to make a block, to sus-"betwixt love and honor. An ancient pend the action of others, to stop the author has writ a whole play on't." The plans and arrangements which all life that same conflict is exhibited working in is not mere vegetation must be forming Prince Volscius, as he unfolds, boots in and aiming to carry out. The man who hand, the imperious sway of either pasproposes to himself to leave the room and sion: yet hangs about minute after minute, as it seems hour after hour, undecided whether to take that important step or not, shows an irresolution more worrying to some impatient natures, that cannot pursue their vocations till he is gone, than much graver forms of the malady. It is difficult not to suspect, in the case of some persons whose whims can influence the lives of numbers, that they wilfully nourish their natural indecision into an engine of oppression. We have heard of a great man keeping his whole family on the tenterhooks, the daughters ready for a start at a moment's notice, for a week at a time, while he hung in suspense about taking a journey for which he had given orders, and which nothing interfered with but the tyranny of his vacillating will. Shall I to honor or to love give way? Go on, cries honor; tender love says nay: Honor aloud commands pluck both boots on, But softer love does whisper, put on none. What shall I do? what conduct shall I find To lead me through this twilight of my mind? For as bright day with black approach of night Contending, makes a doubtful puzzling light; So does my honor and my love together Puzzle me so I can resolve on neither. If the prince, as he hops off the stage, one boot on, one off, cuts an indifferent figure whether as hero or lover, he represents all the more aptly the quality as we sometimes see it displayed in familiar life, where it does not come from perverse circumstances, but from the indulgence of a natural tendency. If people will only force themselves to treat small, indifferIn relation to this diseased ent matters as settled once for all, and habit, we can appreciate Horace Wal- not hold them open to change after the pole's self-complacency on his power of determination is once made, they will be keeping to his intention in trivial engage- learning to resolve and to come to a ready ments. "I arrived at Lee," he writes to decision where prompt judgment is essenMiss Berry, "on the day and hour I had tial. promised Mr. Barrett; returned to town on the day and hour I had promised myself, and was back here as punctually in my promise to Strawberry. Nothing in this was extraordinary, as I have always had the felicity of knowing my own mind.” Irresolution is a weakness; but it often arises from the conflict of strong opposite qualities, the one prompting to action, the other retarding it. Cowper tells a correspondent that nobody would suspect From Nature. A FEAT IN TRIANGULATION. A NOTEWORTHY advance in geodesy has recently been accomplished by the junction of the network of measurements covering a large portion of the surface of Europe, with the African continent. The entire triangulation of Algeria was completed by French engineers some time since, and extended to the edge of the Sahara, in lat. 37°. M. Perrier, who had directed in a great measure the triangulation of Algeria, has for the past eleven years been seeking the means of joining the network in that country with the perfect trigonometric system covering the surface of Spain, France, and England. The importance of such a junction is easily appreciated when we consider what notable changes in the accurate conception of the shape of the earth and of the length of meridians has been effected by measurements on a much smaller scale. tunately, the success of the observations did not rest entirely upon this one system of signals. Preparations had likewise been made for the employment of the electric light, and on the summit of each mountain one of Gramme's electro-magnetic machines worked by engines of sixhorse power had been placed in position. On August 20 last, all the stations were occupied, and the electric lights were displayed throughout each night. Then the patience of the observers was submitted to a lengthy proof. The mists rising from the Mediterranean totally prevented the exchange of signals, until, after a delay of twenty days, one after another the electric For such an undertaking the most care- lights became visible even to the naked ful and painstaking preparations were eye. Perrier compared the intensity of requisite. As the result of his recon- the light on Tetica, nearly two hundred naissances between 1868 and 1872, M. and seventy kilometres distant, to that of Perrier found that from all the trigonomet-a in Ursa Major, which rose near by. ric points of the first order between Oran The observations were continued from and the frontiers of Morocco, the loftier September 9 to October 18, when this crests of the Sierra Nevada on the Span- task, for which such extensive preparaish coast opposite, were visible in exceptions had been made, was completed in tionally clear weather. Arrangements the most satisfactory manner. With its were subsequently made with the Spanish completion we come into possession of Geographical Institute for the mutual and trigonometric measurements of the most contemporaneous execution of the pro- exact nature, extending from lat. 61° in posed plan. A corps of Spanish officers, the Shetland Islands, to lat. 34° on the under the direction of the well-known southern frontier of Algeria. General Ibanez, was detailed for this purpose, while the French minister of war placed a division of officers from the EtatMajor under the command of M. Perrier. The leaders chose for stations in Algeria the summits of Mount Filhaoursen and Mount M'Sabiha, west of Orun, and in Spain the summits of Mount Tetica and Mount Mulhacen, the latter of which is the most elevated point in the kingdom. The directions and distances between these four points were computed as carefully as possible, and preparations were then made for the final and determinative observations. At the Algerian stations the nature of the country and its inhabitants necessitated the use of a numerous force of soldiery as well as of means of transport. In order to insure the accuracy of the observations, which required the passage of signals over a distance of two hundred and seventy kilometres, it was decided to make use of solar reflectors and powerful lenses. The efficacy of such apparatus for even greater distances had already been tested by M. Perrier; still for the measurements in question they appear to have utterly failed to answer the expectations based upon them, not a single solar signal being visible from any station. For The extension of this network southward and eastward in Africa, desirable as it is for the elucidation of many nice points in geodesy, is unfortunately scarcely possible in the immediate future, and science must rest content with gaining a foothold in the great continent. T. H. N. From Nature. THE ANIMAL HEAT OF FISHES. THE belief that fishes are cold-blooded, that is, that they take on the temperature of the water which surrounds them, with no power to resist it, and that they deIvelop little or no animal heat themselves, is still held by many even scientific observers. This belief is based partly upon the well-authenticated fact that fishes have been frozen and thawed again into life; partly upon the statements of many travellers who have found them living in water of a very high temperature (Humboldt and Bonpland recording the highest, 210° F.); and further, that a thermometer inserted into the rectum of some living fish freshly drawn from the water has been repeatedly found to indicate tem perature corresponding very closely to that of the water itself. During the past summer, and in connection with the operations of the U.S. Fish Commission at Provincetown, Mass., Surgeon J. H. Kidder, of the U.S. Navy, was detailed to make some systematic observations upon the subject of fishtemperatures with a view to setting the question upon a secure basis of actual experiment. Thermometers were made expressly for the purpose by Mr. John Taglialne, of New York, of unusual delicacy, registering about 10° F. each, and recording fifths of a degree. These were used in connection with Negretti and Zambra's deep-sea thermometers, and all the instruments were deduced to a single standard by frequent comparisons, so as to insure relative accuracy. The fish were taken with a line, and their temperatures observed at once, care being taken that no considerable change in temperature occurred during the time consumed in bringing the fish to the surface. The observed temperatures were then compared with that of the water as recorded by a Negretti-Zambra thermometer sunk to about the depth from which the fishes were taken. The first observations, made by inserting the thermometer into the rectum of the fish, agreed with the generally received opinion, showing but little higher temperature than that of the surrounding water. The mode of experiment was then somewhat modified. Considering the fact that the intestinal canal of a fish is in close contact with the thin and scarcely vascular walls of the abdomen, which is surrounded by the water in which the animal swims; and, further, that the arterial blood comes from the gills, where it has been spread out as thinly as possible and brought into the closest contact with the surrounding water- -a process well calculated to cool it quickly to the same temperature - it follows that neither the interior of the rectum nor the arterial blood would appear to have the same value as representing the body-temperature in fishes that those parts possess in mammals and birds. It is rather in the venous circulation and the branchial artery that we should seek for the heat which must certainly be developed in the chemical processes of nutrition and waste, and in connection with active muscular movements. In the remaining experi ments of the series-about ninety in number- the fish was therefore opened at once, and the bulb of the thermometer inserted into the cavity of the heart, or branchial artery. It appears from these experiments that fishes do develop a measureable quantity of animal heat, which is more apparent during the spawning season, and much greater in elasmobranchs (as is to be expected from their more perfect digestive and assimilative apparatus) than in other fishes. It also appears that the measure of this animal heat is to be sought in the venous blood, and not in the intestinal canal or arterial blood. The limits of this preliminary note will not permit us to go into an enumeration of the difficulties of observation, or the measures taken to guard against the errors likely to attend them. Nor is the number of observations (ninety-five in all) sufficient to warrant the offering of these figures as a final statement of the degree of animal heat presented by the several fishes observed. All that can be said to be proved so far is the fact that fishes do manifest animal heat, and in considerable quantities, sufficient to warm again, to the extent of from 3° to 12°, blood that has been cooled in each circuit to the temperature of the surrounding water. Details will be given in the forthcoming report of the United States Fish Commission. In the single instance of a lower temperature than that of the water, observed in five bluefish, all taken on the same day, it may be that the individuals experimented on, being taken at the surface, had just come up from a much greater depth and colder stratum of water. There seems to be no conceivable provision by which a fish can maintain a temperature below that of the surrounding water, cooling by evaporation being out of the question. The young dogfish from its mother's oviduct showed a temperature 8° higher than that of the mother herself, for the obvious reason that its blood, not coming into contact with the water by its gills (the umbilical sac was still attached), was not cooled otherwise than mediately, through the blood of the mother. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. TO PORTIA AT BELMONT. QUICK from fog and frost away, She is good and she is wise- Wise she is, and sweet withal, Wiser than all men, more gay Than a child is Portia. Bright on Adriatic sea Plays the sunlight laughingly; Flows and spreads the fair moonlight; Fly, then, song, across the sea, Fly to mirth and minstrelsy; And when thou dost see the trees On fair Belmont's terraces, Bow thee to thy lady's knife, Kiss the hand that takes thy life; Take one kiss and breathe one sigh When she cuts thy chord, then lie In her hand, beneath her smile; She will laugh a little whileFor she laughs at little thingsThen perchance she'll fold thy wings, Lay thee on her heart to rest; Then, my song, art thou most blest On the home of trust and play, On the heart of Portia. Blackwood's Magazine. J. S. And yet a little hope can brighten life. They say we fling ourselves in wild despair Amidst the broken treasures scattered there, Where all is wrecked, where all once promised fair; And stab ourselves with sorrow's two-edged knife And yet a little patience strengthens life. Love, Hope, and Patience cheer us on our way, SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. ONLY a bank of weeds, of simple weeds, F. S. Of sweet wild thyme and yellow, scented broom, Of tangled grass, and slender wind-blown reeds, Of brown notched ferns and tall spiked foxglove bloom. And yet a world of beauty garners there, Low-twitt'ring birds, soft scents and colors fair. Only a narrow mound, a long, low mound. Snow-covered, 'neath a wintry, leaden sky, Uniit by moon or stars; and all around Through bare, brown trees the night-winds moan and sigh. And yet a world of love lies buried there, Passion and pain, bright hopes and dull despair. Oh, golden bank, where sunbeams glint and play, Bloom out in fragrance with a hundred flowers! Oh, narrow mound, keep till the judgment day The mournful secrets of these hearts of ours! Then in God's light let joy and sorrow fade, For near his brightness both alike are shade. Temple Bar. C. L. PIRKIS. |