similar manner to the stone axes of the ancient Celtic tribes, so frequently found in some portions of England, Ireland, and Scotland.
On the plateau above named, bowlders of many hundred weight are thickly scattered, which could have been deposited in their present locality by floating ice only, and it is more than likely that this relic of the Primeval or Stone age was brought to this locality and deposited by the same agencies that brought the bowlders and other detritus, perhaps, from a very distant region.
The thong-marks for securing the handle are well preserved, but were deeper when first taken from the ground, as there was a full sixteenth of an inch of semi-decomposed material rubbed off in cleaning it up. The stone from which it has been made appears to have been a portion of one of those hard, cherty strata of coralline limestone, belonging to the Silurian formation, some of which are harder than flint, and almost as tough as iron. The implement, as it is now, is dark blue on one side, but lighter on the other. This lighter side appears to have yielded more readily to the action of the elements, decomposition having apparently removed at least a quarter of an inch more on this side than on the other, thus materially reducing the weight of the specimen. This battle-axe was found on January 4, 1876.William Andrews.
To the Editor of the Popular Science Monthly:
Sir: In your notice of Mr. John Fiske's criticism of Dr. Draper's "Conflict" you have shown, plainly enough, that Dr. Draper's alleged superficiality consisted in using the word religion in the common sense.
That Dr. Draper's conceptions are so "crude" as to blind him to the higher and more spiritual conceptions which Mr. Fiske defines so admirably, or that he would consider religion, so defined, in antagonism with science, is an assertion which finds no warrant in his book. It would be easy, if it were worth while, to point to passages that explicitly negative such imputations. But to have adopted Mr. Fiske's rather transcendental refinement, and to have constantly used the qualified terms which it would require, would have been to sacrifice directness and brevity to a nicety of expression that none but the hypercritical would demand.
Your quotation shows that Mr. Spencer's "First Principles" must fall within the list of books which, "vitiated by this crude conception" (of antagonism), "cannot have much philosophical value;" and I beg to append another from a work which, it would seem, must come into the same class, although it is by an author evidently held in high esteem by Mr. Fiske:
"That harmony which we hope eventually to see established between our knowledge and our aspirations is not to be realized by the timidity which shrinks from logically following out either of the two apparently conflicting lines of thought—as in the question of matter and spirit—but by the fearlessness which pushes each to its inevitable conclusion. Only when this is recognized will the long and mistaken warfare between Science and Religion be exchanged for an enduring alliance."—(Fiske's "Cosmic Philosophy," vol. ii., p. 509.)
| E. R. Leland. |
| Eauclaire, Wisconsin, July 20, 1876. |
GEOMETRICAL CHEMISTRY.
To the Editor of the Popular Science Monthly:
Geometrical Chemistry. By Henry Wurtz. First, or Introductory Memoir. Re-printed from the American Chemist, for March, 1876. New York: John F. Trow & Son. 1876.
The author prefixes a Greek motto to his memoir, namely, the question, "Wherefore did Plato assert that the God worketh ever by geometry?" As the memoir contains no other geometry, this motto apparently is intended to justify the first half of the title.
But the other half has not even that much of a justification. From beginning to end it is impossible to detect a new principle or fact that properly belongs to chemistry in this memoir. The great chemical authorities of the memoir are Kant, Hegel, Stallo, and Sterry Hunt (p. 60). A new force, the Cratetic Force, is discovered, "which is not reciprocal, but absolute in its action upon the more electro-positive molecule, without reac
