presence of the pope, shamefully deserted | that St. Amour was banished, not as the their champion and recanted. In the representative of their cause, but as presence of St. Cher and another car-author of "The Perils." A similar policy dinal, they took an oath to observe every of conciliation was adopted by the Doarticle of the Quasi Lignum, especially minicans; they prayed the pope to raise that concerning the readmission of the the excommunication which still weighed Dominicans; they condemned "The upon the university, and Alexander promPerils," retracted its doctrine concern-ised consent to this request, on condition ing mendicancy, and declared themselves that the offenders should promise to obey innocent of having ever agreed with its the Quasi Lignum and burn their copies author in stigmatizing the friars as false of "The Perils." preachers and Antichrists. The university might well have repeated the well-known saying, "Preserve us from the prayers of the preachers!" Her hour was come. The retirement of St. Amour seemed to have completely unnerved her. Two crushing blows followed in quick succession, and the opposition of the students was beaten down. First, they had to listen in passive humiliation and disgust to the public retracta Abandoned by his friends, assailed on all sides by malicious accusers, and alone as it were in the enemies' camp, St. Amour nevertheless stood firm. Not only did he refuse to retract, he even dared openly to defend the statements which had entailed so much danger on his person and to his cause. He never lost his head for a moment. Threatened, bullied, and cross-questioned by domi- tion of Otho, Nicholas, and Christian, neering adversaries, he retorted upon which these apostates were compelled to them their own accusations, and while renew in Paris with every circumstance explaining the sentiments of his book as of indignity. Then followed the unwelreferring only to heretics, he suggested come admission of Aquinas and Bonathat if the mendicants charged him with ventura, the one Dominican, the other reviling them, it was because they knew Franciscan, to the degree of doctors of themselves to be guilty and felt the jus-theology, a distinction which had been tice of the accusation. His enemies often claimed by them, and which the could not entrap him into a single com- university, yielding to strong moral prespromising admission. They were fairly sure, was compelled to accord. Their baffled, and the pope could only warn admission to degrees was the more galling, the university anew against any attempt as it actually conferred an honour upon to slander or vilify the mendicants. St. the university. It was the last drop of Amour escaped, unhurt and uncon-bitterness in the cup; the enemies of the demned. Possessed with the dauntless spirit of their champion, the university refused to listen to any terms from the pope. Bull followed bull, but all in vain. The last of these (dated 1257), is addressed to St. Louis, and after totally annulling the award of the arbiters, urges the king to employ his temporal power in behalf of the mendicants, of whom it speaks in terms of unmeasured eulogy. Meanwhile the three delegates of the university had returned to Paris, but St. Amour, who was ill, and perhaps unfit to renew the battle, was resting in his native Franche-Comté. A papal bull had forbidden his entrance into France, and he was, perhaps, awaiting the decision of the French king as to its validity. Their champion thus removed, the pope now thought to try milder measures with the refractory students. He assured them Franche-Comté was at that time a part of the German Empire. university had not only obtained success, they even seemed to have deserved it. Aquinas and Bonaventura hardly needed university degrees, however, to improve their title to general respect. "N'auroient-ils mieux faits," says Crevier, quoting from the Abbé Fleuri, "de se contenter d'être doctes sans être si jaloux du title de docteur." The Quasi Lignum was now pressed upon Paris with a heavy hand. The mendicants were triumphant; the schools were open to them, and their savants almost alone sustained the honour of Parisian learning. Albert the Great, Alexander Hales, Thomas of Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Bonaventura, — all these names, the most celebrated of the age in literary circles, were claimed by the orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic. Ambition had reached its goal, and might turn round complacently to survey the course it had accomplished. But no Sooner had fortune's wheel raised the friars to the summit of prosperity, than its ceaseless motion began to carry themed in the utter prostration of the papacy. down again as surely, if not as rapidly, as it had lifted them up. The next pope was Clement V., a Frenchman, and the slave of Philip. The Church was completely humbled, lay supremacy had begun, the crusades and all such outbursts of religious enthusiasm were a thing of the past, and, for a time, France was given over to the rule of sophists, legists, and economists. It is not astonishing, therefore, to find this opportunity chosen by the students for a final triumph over their ecclesiastical opponents. In 1318, a measure was passed by which the old decree was enforced, forbidding en had not previously sworn observance to the statutes and customs, and taken an oath not to reveal the subject of deliberations. After a futile resistance, the mendicants, no longer supported by papal aid, yielded the point, and were thus reduced to the position which they had previously occupied. At first the secular students could only snarl and growl at the hated intruders; they dared not openly attack them, but harassed them with petty annoyances. If the mendicants appeared at an assembly, the seculars would begin to question received dogmas of the Church, and the friars, fearful of compromising themselves in the eyes of the pope, would retire precipitately; or the recall of St. Amour would be suggested, and such ominous clamour arose when this subject was in-trance to the governing body to all who troduced, that the mendicants dared not stay to face the menaces of their furious fellow-students. Moreover, although the friars had been admitted to the university, they were only admitted to the faculty of theology, and even in this faculty they seem to have been outvoted by the ordinary clergy, who detested them, and were quite ready to act with the students against them. As early as 1260 we find a decree, declaring that for the future in all assemblies and other ceremonies the Dominicans should take the last place; that is, rank below all the other components of the university body-a bitter tribute to their profession of humility, Perhaps in this case the Franciscans did not act with the Dominicans. We know that at the close of the thirteenth century the two orders were at open war as Thomists and Scotists, and they probably carried the statements of their philosophical debates into the assembly. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Moreover, the two potentates most favourable to the friars were removed at this critical time. Louis IX. died in 1270, and with him died away that extravagant admiration of the mendicant fraternities which his example had propaated. Alexander IV. had died in 1261, and his successors failed to show the same warmth in the cause. So things went on, the balance inclining more and more in favour of the students, until it was precipitated by the breach with Rome in the beginning of the fourteenth century. Then Philip the Fair appealed to the university against Boniface. Popular feeling was in favour of the monarch, the secular students were all for his cause, and the friars failed to make their voices heard. A short, sharp struggle, between France and Rome, end Thus ended the memorable struggle. Never again did the mendicants rise from their prostrate condition. It is unnecessary to pursue their history further, ending, as it deserved, in even greater humiliation. We hear of their being driven through the streets by infuriated mobs, and pelted with stones and mud by the poor, the poor, to whom their special mission had been directed, and who now reviled them for neglect of the task. Had not ambition corrupted them, they might have revolutionized society, and been the precursors of a far gentler and more spiritual Reformation than that of the sixteenth century; but when the salt had lost its savour, how could it preserve the world? Meanwhile, what had become of St. Amour? Many attempts were made to restore him to the university, but in vain. Alexander IV. was always his bitter enemy; Clement IV., more merciful, treated him to kind words, but held out no hope of ultimate pardon and reconciliation to the author of "The Perils." St. Amour died in 1272, in his native FrancheComté. He was the idol of the university and of all Paris, and his epitaph is to be found in the well-known words of the Romaunt: Estre banny de ce royaume A tort, com' fut maistre Guillaume GEORGE L. B. WILDIG. From The Popular Science Review. BY JOHN C. GALTON, M.A., F.L.S. nous." - DUFOSSE, 1874. and a Cerithium), known by the Tamil name of oorie cooleero cradoo, or the "crying shell."* Sir E. Tennent took a boat and visited the lake by moonlight, and thus describes the sounds which he heard: "They came up from the water like the gentle thrills of a musical chord, or the faint vibrations of a wine-glass M. DUFOSSE, though in the above sen- when its rim is rubbed by a moistened tence unmistakably declaring himself no finger. It was not one sustained note, disciple of the composer of Tannhäuser but a multitude of tiny sounds, each clear and Lohengrin, and showing himself a far and distinct in itself: the sweetest treble from promising proselyte as far as "the mingling with the lowest bass. On apmusic of the future" is concerned, and plying the ear to the wood-work of the though thus sadly assimilating his music-boat the vibration was greatly increased al taste to our British standard - such in volume." The sounds varied considas it is is, nevertheless, entitled to be erably at different points, and could be heard with respect, at all events so long localized, as it was possible to row away as fishes are under consideration, seeing out of their influence. This fact, thought that he has for a long period had several Sir E. Tennent, lends support to the view hundreds of these cold-blooded musicians of the fishermen, that the sounds were under constant observation. produced by molluscs and not by fish. Similar sounds have been heard in the harbour of Bombay; described as "like the protracted booming of a distant bell, the dying cadence of an Æolian harp, the note of a pitch-pipe or pitch-fork, or any other long drawn out musical note." These sounds came from all directions, almost in equal strength, and arose from the surface of the water all round the vessel. The fish which was alleged to produce these sounds closely resembled in size and shape the fresh-water perch of the north of Europe. These phenomena were carefully observed and noted by a party of five intelligent persons. That certain fishes produce at certain seasons sounds - nay, more, that many such sounds can be brought under the category of musical notes-is known but to few even in these our days, though the fact did not escape the notice of that most observant of all natural historians, Aristotle; and that which he thought and wrote in Greek on this subject has, of course, as in other things, been echoed some centuries later by Pliny in Latin.† * More recently recorded obvervations upon the sounds produced by fishes are but few and far between. One of the best perhaps of all accounts is that given by Sir J. Emerson Tennent, late Governor of Ceylon.‡ When at Batticaloa a place half way down the east coast of this island he made some inquiries about certain sounds "resembling the faint sweet notes of an Eolian harp," which were alleged to proceed from the bottom of a neighbouring lake. The fishermen said that both they and their fathers knew of these sounds, which were declared to be audible during the dry season, but to cease when the lake had been swollen after the rains. These, they said, proceeded not from a fish, but from two species of mollusc (a Littorina * “ ψόφους δέ τινας ἀφιᾶσι καὶ τριγμοὺς οὓς λέγουσί φωνεῖν, οἷον λύρα καὶ χρόμις· οὗτοι γὰρ ἀφιᾶσιν ὥσπερ γρυλλισμόν· καὶ ὁ κάπρος ὁ ἐν τῷ Αχελώῳ ἔτι δὲ χαλκεὺς καὶ κόκκυξ.” "Hist. Anim." iv. 9, 3. "Nat. Hist." lib. xi. Ælian, too (Пépì Zwwv 'IdtórηTos, lib. x. cap. ii.), quotes Aristotle's statement, but adds nothing new to it. "Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon," pp. 380-85 and 401. London: 1861. The magoora-a fish found in the lake at Colombo - is stated by the fishermen to make a grunt when disturbed under water; and a certain flat-fish in Siam, according to Pallegoix, "fait entendre un bruit très sonore et même harmonieux." At Caldera, in Chili, at the mouth of the Pascagoula, in the Mississippi State, and of the "Bayou Coq del Inde" river on the north shore of the Gulf of Mexico, similar submarine sounds have been remarked, but by what animal produced is at present unknown. Darwin, moreover, mentioned as occurring in the Rio Parana, in South America, a kind of Silurus, *It is known, from the observations of the late Prof. Grant, that one at least of the gastero odous molluscs (Tritonia arborescens) has the ducing sounds apparently by the mouth, which is power of proarmed by two horny plates- so that it is possible that luscs; a point on which Sir E. Tennent was not able to the sounds in question were really produced by molsatisfy himself. It should be noted that the sounds heard by Sir E. Tennent came evidently and sensibly from the depth of the lake." called armado, which is remarkable for a harsh grating noise, which it makes when caught by hook and line, and which can be distinctly heard when the fish is beneath the water.* The most graphic and analytic description, however, of such music is that given by M. Dufossé, who thus describes his sensations when traversing in a fishinglugger off the coast of France a shoal of maigres (Sciana aquila), so closely packed together as to be literally "côteà-côte " ! any attempt had been made to inquire Tout à coup et tandis qu'une multitude de sons mystérieux, baroques, d'un charivari inouï, frapperont l'oreille du naturaliste, il se sentira saisi d'une sorte d'enivrement passager durant les courts instants duquel il aura bien de la peine à se défendre de quelques hallu- It has long been known that many cinations auditives; toutefois, redevenu ob-members of the gurnard family possess servateur impassible, il ne tardera pas à con- and exercise the faculty of emitting stater que les parois du bâtiment qui le porte sounds when still under water, from sont animées de mouvements vibratoires, et which circumstance they have been coldès lors il distinguera nettement, que c'est le tremblement physique qu'il ressent qui pro- in France grondin.* lectively termed organo in Italy, and duisait le trouble nerveux auquel il a été un M. Moreau demoment en proie, et par suite il trouvera le scribes the air-bladder of the "tub-fish secret du léger degré d'enivrement qu'il a or sapphirine gurnard (Trigla hirundo) éprouvé dans la triple nouveauté des sensa- as possessing thick and strong muscles, tions qui sont venues inopinément et simul- the fibres of which are of the striped vatanément envahir tout son être : nouveauté de riety, and are thus presumably voluntary. la surexcitation nerveuse résultant des mouve- These are supplied by two large nerves ments de trépidation du chasse-marée; nou- which take origin from the upper part of veauté encore de la nature même des sons the spinal cord, below the pneumogastric étranges qui fascinaient ses organes auditifs; nouveauté enfin du mode de transmission des nerve, and close to the first pair of dorsal vibrations sonores qu'il percevait à travers un nerves. The mucous membrane lining milieu liquide. the air-bladder is thrown into a fold or Further on the noises are described-cavity into two secondary chambers, which diaphragm, which subdivides the main Ces assemblages de sons extraordinaires, communicate by an aperture in this partibourdonnant comme le feraient un grand nom-tion, having some functional analogy to bre de jeux d'orgues (Shade of Charles Babbage!) qui seraient complètement désaccordés, cacophonie d'une bizarrerie indescriptible, auxquels tous les Sciénoïdes du groupe auront pris part, &c. M. Dufossé has further been informed by some pilots, whose testimony he considered reliable, that a sea captain who was going up the Gironde, on hearing for the first time the sounds produced by numerous maigres in the neighbourhood of the ship, was thrown into a state of great alarm, supposing that he had sprung a leak in the hold! Though phenomena such as those just described have been from time to time observed, wondered at, and noted by more or less competent witnesses, it was not until within the last fifteen years that the pupil of the eye; for under the microscope this structure is seen to be provided with sphincter-like muscular fibres, disposed concentrically to the opening, while other fibres, radially arranged, run at a tangent to these. Both sets of fibres are of the smooth, presumably involuntary, variety. In August 1863 M. Moreau "sacrificed," as he terms it, a grondin by section of its spinal cord above the dorsal region, and, after opening the abdomen of the fish, he applied a feeble galvanic current to the nerves proceeding to the air-bladder. Immediately there were produced sounds, audible to persons at some distance, having the same charac The 2úpa of Aristotle probably embraced fishes of this family. Yarrell thinks that the most probable derivation of the word gurnard is from the Dutch guurheid, roughness, in allusion to the peculiarity of "Naturalist's Voyage Round the World," p. 136. the head of this fish. (" Hist. Brit. Fishes" 3rd edi Lond. 1860. tion, vol. ii. p. 105.) ter as those emitted by the fish during ing, resembling that produced by the life. A current was next applied direct- sudden return of a displaced foot tendon ly to the muscle of the air-bladder, but into its bony groove. The tench, carp, without result. M. Moreau then cut a loach, and other thick-lipped fish, make window in the lower portion of the blad- a peculiar noise if they be compelled der, so as to expose the diaphragm to suddenly to open the mouth. This in view, and upon galvanization being again the tench is so often repeated as to be in repeated, this membrane was seen to be a degree comparable with the croaking thrown into a state of vibration, but no of a frog. To such sounds M. Dufosse sounds were produced. M. Moreau, who gives the name of "phénomènes acousdoes not seem to have been satisfied with tiques irréguliers." these results, then proposes to continue his experiments at some future time.* The absence of sound in the last experiment seems to me to be easily accounted for, seeing that the membranous cavity, more or less distended with a gas to which impulse would have been transmitted by the vibration of the diaphragm, had now been opened. With regard to the sounds of the second category, which "better merit the attention of the physiologist," these are voluntary, constant, and are always produced by the same organ. They are, moreover, always reproduced under analogous circumstances, are evidently intentional, and can even serve to characterize a species. Such are the "phéSo much for M. Moreau. The rest of nomènes acoustiques réguliers." The this article must perforce be devoted to phenomena of this category are further the admirable researches of M. Dufossé, divided by M. Dufossé into groups or whose observations and experiments sections. The first of these comprises have been so numerous, so carefully con- "expressive noises, or incommensurable ducted, and so productive of valuable expressive sounds." As the noises are results, that this savant is at length en- not all engendered by the same mechanabled to reduce to system and classify. ism, it is necessary to subdivide them an all-important step in any branch of yet further into two secondary groups or science the various acoustic phenom-"divisions." The first division includes ena which he has observed among fishes.f all the expressive sounds of a harsh naSuch phenomena may be divided into ture, and comprises, as far as the fishes two primordial groups or "categories." of Europe are concerned, only one subUnder the first of these may be placed division that of stridulation, having the various sounds which fishes produce for its cause the friction of the dental when taken off the hook and line, and organs. Of such sounds - "bruits de pitched into a basket or some other stridulation". there are two modes of receptacle. Such sounds are accidental, causation. temporary, for the most part evidently involuntary; often convulsive, being produced sometimes by one part of the organism, at another time by another part. Such sounds are subservient to the exercise of a function which cannot be expressed, and cannot be brought into relation with any intention on the part of the animal. Among such noises are those produced by unusual movements of the bony elements of the jaw or gill-coverings (opercula), eg, in the barbel, loach, carp, gurnard, and others. In the short-snouted variety of the sea-horse (Hippocampus) a peculiar sharp sound is made by a little chevron-shaped bone, loosely articulated with two of the bony (preopercular) elements of the gill-cover Sur la Voix des Poissons. "Comptes Rendus," tome lix. p. 436. 1864. Kecherches sur les bruits et les sons expressifs que font entendre les poissons d'Europe. "Annales des Sciences Naturelles," gième serie, Zoologie, tome xx. 1874. a. By friction of the pharyngeal bones. These noises are characterized by being composed of sonorous emissions, clear, short, rough and piercing, without flexibility or softness, and by commencing and ending abruptly) "brusquement"). The best example of this has been found in a species of mackerel, namely the saurel (Scomber brachyurus, Linn.), known in the fish-markets of Paris under the name of maquereau bâtard and by that of severan on the coasts of old Provence. Both the males and females are equally sonorous, and especially so in the hottest part of summer; and, moreover, present this advantage to the physiologist, that they will live for more than ten minutes — on rainy days for even sixteen or seventeen - after removal from the water, without seeming to suffer. M. Dufossé made several experiments with the saurel, and found that puncturing the air-bladder or other viscera had no influence on the |