WHAT THE HESSIANS OF 1776 WERE says, after several unsuccessful attempts, at THOUGHT OF BY THE FATHER OF THEIR last "I succeeded in securing an uninjured COUNTRY. The prince of Hesse-Cassel sent captive, which to my inexpressible delight the following letter, dated Feb. 8, 1777, to the proved to be one of the ruby-throated species, commander of the Hessian troops in America: north of Florida. It immediately suggested the most splendid and diminutive that comes Baron Hohendorff - At Rome, on my re- itself to me that a mixture of two parts of loaf turn from Naples, I received your letter of the sugar with one of fine honey, in ten of water, 27th December of the past year. With inex- would make about the nearest approach to the pressible delight I learned of the courage dis- nectar of flowers. While my sister ran to played by my troops at Trenton, and you can prepare it, I gradually opened my hand to look imagine my joy when I read that of 1950 Hes-at my prisoner, and saw, to my no little amusesians engaged in the fight, only 300 escaped.ment as well as suspicion, that it was actually According to this, exactly 1650 have been playing possum,' feigning to be dead most slain, and I cannot recommend to your atten- skilfully. It lay on my open palm motionless tion too much the necessity of sending an for some minutes, during which I watched it exact list to my attorneys in London. This in breathless curiosity. I saw it gradually care is necessary, because the list sent to the open its bright little eyes to peep whether the English minister shows a loss of only 1455. way was clear, and then close them slowly as In this way I should suffer a loss of 160,050 it caught my eye upon it. But when the manflorins! According to the account rendered ufactured nectar came, and a drop was touched by the lord of the treasury I should receive upon the point of its bill, it came to life very but 483.450 florins instead of 643,500 florins. suddenly, and in a moment was on its legs, You will see at once that it is their intention drinking with eager gusto of the refreshing to make me suffer a loss by an error in calcu-draught from a silver teaspoon. When sated lation, and therefore you must take the utmost pains to prove that your list is correct and

killed.

Remember that of the three hundred Lacedæmonians who defended the pass of Thermopylæ, not one returned. I should be happy if I could say the same of my brave Hessians. Tell Major Miedorff that I am extremely displeased with his behavior, to conduct into camp the three hundred which fled the battlefield at Trenton. During the whole campaign he has not lost ten of his whole command.

As a commentary to this outrageous letter, which indirectly asks the major to see that his men are butchered, it is necessary to state that the count [landgraf] of Hesse-Cassel received for every man furnished by him thirty thalers (about $21.00) and for every man killed in battle twenty pounds sterling, a sum which one hundred years ago equalled at least $140.00. This money was not devoted to the care of the unfortunate ones left destitute by the death of their protectors, but it went into the private purse of their illustrious

lord.

it refused to take any more, and sat perched with the coolest self-composure on my finger, and plumed itself quite as artistically as if on its favorite spray. I was enchanted with the bold, innocent confidence with which it turned up its keen black eyes to survey us, as much as to say, 'Well, good folks, who are you?' By the next day it would come from any part of either room, alight upon the side of a white china cup containing the mixture and drink eagerly, with its long bill thrust into the very base. It would alight on my fingers, and seem to talk with us endearingly in its soft chirps." Mr. Webber afterward succeeded in taming several of the same species. He gave them their liberty occasionally, and they returned regularly. At the time for migration they left for the winter; but the next spring they sought their old quarters, and accepted the delicious nectar kindly provided for them, and by degrees brought their mates.

Popular Science Monthly.

THE Municipal Council of Geneva has at last decided on the question of paying legacy duty to the canton on the Brunswick bequest. The cantonal authorities demanded twelve per cent. on the succession, which would amount to no less than 2,471,401f. This was combated by a section of the council, who argued that the law exempting public institutions from paying a tax on legacies barred the claim of the canton. The matter then resolved itself into a question if a municipality could be termed "a public institution." In its sitting of Saturday the council resolved, by 16 votes to 14, to pay the sum demanded. One member abstained from voting, and nine were absent. TAMING THE HUMMING BIRD.-The ruby A third debate on the subject was, however, throat has sometimes been tamed. Mr. Web- demanded by M. Turritini on behalf of the ber, in his "Wild Scenes and Song Birds," | Administrative Council of the town.

A similar state of affairs existed in Braunschweig, Hanau, Anspach, Waldeck and Zerbst. According to Schlotzer's statistics there were 29,166 men sold, of whom 11,843 were killed.

Transcript.

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The moon of early night, that cheered our The autumn primrose and late-flowering

And all the angel heads and purple wings are Beauty hath called her sweetest image to its flown.

From Nature.

had been dimly advocated previously, PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADDRESS AT THE took the solid form which can only be

BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

ON THE HYPOTHESIS THAT ANIMALS ARE AU-
TOMATA, AND ITS HISTORY.*

Ar this period of the meeting of the
British Association I am quite sure it is
hardly necessary for me to call to your
minds the nature of the business which
takes place at our sectional meetings.
We there register the progress which
science has made during the past year,
and we do our best to advance that
progress by original communications and
free discussion. But when the honour-
able task of delivering this evening's lec-
ture was imposed upon me, or rather as
i
my friend the President has just said,

when I undertook to deliver it, it occurred to me that the occasion of an evening lecture might be turned to a different purpose, that we might with much propriety and advantage turn our minds back to the past to consider what had been done by the great men of old, who "had gone down into the grave with their weapons of war," but who had fought bravely for the cause of truth while they yet lived to recognize their merits, and to show ourselves duly grateful for their services. I propose, therefore, to take a retrospect of the condition

those pro

observation of fact-I mean the idea
given to scientific ideas by the definite
nomena of the physical world, are capable
that vital phenomena, like all other phe-
of mechanical explanation, that they are
reducible to law and order, and that the
study of biology, in the long run, is an
application of the great sciences of phys-
ics and chemistry. The man to whom
we are indebted for first bringing that
idea into a plain and tangible shape, I
am proud to say, was an Englishman,
William Harvey. Harvey was the first
clearly to explain the mechanism of the
circulation of the blood, and by that re-
markable discovery of his, and by the
reduced that process to its mechanical
clearness and precision with which he
elements, he laid the foundation of a
scientific theory of the larger part of the
processes of living beings
cesses, in fact, which we now call pro-
cesses of sustentation—and by his studies
of development he, further, first laid the
foundation of a scientific knowledge of
reproduction. But besides these great
another class of functions — those of the
powers of living beings, there remains
did not grapple. It was, indeed, left for
nervous system-with which Harvey
a contemporary of his, a man who, as he
himself tells us, was mainly stimulated in
these inquiries by the brilliant researches
of Harvey - Réné Descartes - to play
a part in relation to the phenomena of
the nervous system, which, in my judg-
ment, is equal in value to that which
tion. And when we consider who Des-
Harvey played in regard to the circula-
cartes was, how brief the span of his life, I
think it is a truly wonderful circumstance
should be one of the recognized leaders
that this man, who died at fifty-four,
of philosophy that, as I am informed
by competent authority, he was one of
who has ever lived, and that, at the same
the first and most original mathematicians
time, the fertility of his intellect and the
grasp of his genius should have been so
great that he could take rank, as I be-
lieve he must, beside the immortal Har-
Ivey as a physiologist. And you must

of that branch of science with which it is my business to be more or less familiar - not to a very remote period, for I shall go no further back than the seventeenth century, and the observations which I shall have to offer you will be confined almost entirely to the biological science of the time between the middle of the seventeenth and the middle of the eighteenth centuries. I propose to show what great ideas in biological science took their origin at that time, in what manner the speculations then originated have been developed, and in what relation they stand to what is now understood to be the body of scientific biological truth. The middle of the sixteenth century, or rather the early part of it, is one of the great epochs of biological science. It was at that time that an idea, which

Address by Prof. Huxley, F.R.S., at the British Association, Belfast. Aug. 24.

recollect that Descartes was not merely, from these soft white masses — for such as some had been, a happy speculator. they are - there proceed cords which He was a working anatomist and physiol- are termed nerves, some of which nerves ogist, conversant with all the anatomical end in the muscles, while others end in and physiological lore of his time, and the organs of sensation. That bare and practised in all methods by which ana- bald statement of the fundamental comtomical and physiological discoveries position of the nervous system will be were then made; and it is related of him enough for our present purpose. -and a most characteristic anecdote it The first proposition culled from the is, and one which should ever put to works of Descartes which I have to lay silence those shallow talkers who speak before you, is one which will sound very of Descartes as a merely hypothetical familiar. It is the view, which he was the and speculative philosopher that a first, so far as I know, to state, not only friend once calling upon him in Holland definitely, but upon sufficient grounds, begged to be shown his library. Des- that the brain is the organ of sensation, cartes led him into a sort of shed, and, of thought, and of emotion using the drawing aside a curtain, displayed a dis- word "organ " in this sense, that certain secting-room full of bodies of animals in changes which take place in the matter course of dissection, and said, "There of the brain are the essential anteceis my library." It would take us a very dents of those states of consciousness long time if I were to attempt to pursue which we term sensation, thought, and the method which would be requisite for emotion. Nowadays that is part of poputhe full establishment of all that I am lar and familiar knowledge. If your about to say; that is to say, if I were to friend disagrees with your opinion, runs quote the several passages of Descartes' amuck against any of your pet prejudices, works which bear out my ascription to you say, "Ah! poor fellow, he is a little him of the several propositions which I touched here; " by which you mean that am going to bring before you. And I his brain is not doing its business propmust beg you, therefore, to be so good as erly, and, therefore, that he is not thinkto take it on my authority for the pres- ing properly. But in Descartes' time, ent, although for the present only, that and I may say for 150 years afterwards, there are to be found clearly expressed the best physiologists had not reached in Descartes' works the propositions that point. It remained down to the which I shall proceed to lay before you, time of Bichat a question whether the and each of which I shall compare as we passions were or were not located in the go on, as briefly as may be, with the exist- abdominal viscera. This, therefore, was ing state of physiological science, in a very great step. It is a statement order that you may see in what position which Descartes makes from the beginwith respect to physiology—ay, even toning, and from which he never swerves. the advanced physiology of the present time this man stood. And, happily, the matters with which we shall treat are such as to require no extensive knowledge of anatomy—no more, in fact, than such as, I presume, must be familiar to almost every person.

I think I need only premise that what we call the nervous system in one of the higher animals consists of a central apparatus, composed of the brain, which is lodged in the skull, and of a cord proceeding from it, which is termed the spinal marrow, and which is lodged in the vertical column or spine, and that

In the second place, Descartes lays down the proposition that all the movements of animal bodies are effected by the change of form of a certain part of the matter of their bodies, to which he applies the general term of muscle. You must be aware of this in reading Descartes; you must use the terms in the sense in which he used them, or you will not understand him. This is a proposition which is now placed beyond all doubt whatever. If I move my arm, that movement is due to the change of this mass of flesh in front called the biceps muscle : it is shortened and it becomes thicker.