same density. But if this be so, we have the curious case of two bodies not differing largely in volume, of which one is intensely hot, and the other nearly a dark body. Vogel does not, however, consider it necessary to assume that the satellite is absolutely dark. It may be still in a very heated condition, but to agree with the observed variation the light of the companion cannot be greater than oneeightieth of that of Algol itself. As the spectrum of Algol is of the first type, we may conclude, I think, that the intensity of its light is greater than that of our sun. The light emitted by the satellite may therefore possibly be equal to several thousand times the light of the full moon without interfering with the hypothesis. Professor Vogel refers to the parallel case of Sirius and its comparatively dark companion.

eclipsing satellite. He found that before components of the Algol system have the the minimum of light the star is receding from the earth at the rate of twenty-four and one-half miles a second, and, after the minimum, approaching with a velocity of twenty-eight and a half miles. The observations also show a motion of translation of the system in space at the rate of about two and a third miles per second, towards the earth. Assuming the orbit to be circular with its plane passing through the earth, Professor Vogel computes the diameter of Algol at one million sixty-one thousand miles, and that of the dark companion eight hundred and thirty miles, with a distance between them of three million two hundred and thirty thousand miles. He makes the mass of Algol fourninths of the sun's mass, and that of the companion two-ninths, or a combined mass equal to two-thirds of the mass of the sun. Taking the sun's density as 144 and its diameter eight hundred and sixtysix thousand miles, I find that the above dimensions give a mean density for the components of Algol of about one-third of that of water, not differing much from Maxwell Hall's result, and showing the correctness of his conclusion that, "in the case of the components of Algol, as Mr. Lockyer argues in the case of the sun, we are undoubtedly dealing with masses of gas." The spectrum of Algol is of the It is to be hoped that the spectroscopic first or Sirian type, all the spectral lines method may be applied to other stars of being faint except those of hydrogen, a the Algol type, but some of these are so type of spectrum which indicates that the faint that a very large telescope would be star is very hot, and therefore probably in required for the purpose. The following the gaseous state. This confirms the con- are, however, sufficiently bright to repay clusion as to its density derived from the examination with telescopes of modern spectroscopic evidence of its orbital mo- power: Lambda Tauri, magnitude three tion, and proves the correctness of the and one-half, and Delta Libræ, of the fifth hypothesis that the variation in its light is magnitude. The others we must leave to due to a dark eclipsing satellite. the great Lick telescope or Mr. Common's Professor Vogel assumes that both the five-feet reflector. J. E. GORE.

The brightness of Algol and its comparatively small mass might be taken to indicate a relative proximity to the earth; but if its parallax were even one second of arc (a highly improbable value), the greatest distance between the components would amount to only one twenty-ninth of a second, a distance quite beyond the dividing power of even the largest telescopes.

AT a recent meeting of the Royal Botanic Society, a gift of seeds of the Para rubber-tree suggested to Mr. Sowerby, the secretary, some interesting remarks on india-rubber and guttapercha. In the society's museum was a specimen of the first sample of gutta-percha imported to Europe - viz., in 1842-and it was shortly after that date that it was used to insulate the first submarine telegraph cables. No substitute had been found to take its place. From some papers lately published in the Electrical Review, he gleaned that from the "wholesale cutting down of adult trees

and the "reckless clearing and burning of the forests" the trees furnishing the most valuable kinds of gutta-percha had become exceedingly scarce, and in most localities utterly extirpated. This was also rapidly becoming the case with the trees which supply the many varieties of india-rubber, and, sooner or later, all natural vegetable products used by man would have to be artificially cultivated, as the natural supply never kept pace with the artificial demand. Some few attempts had been made to cultivate india-rubber, but as yet not very successfully.

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From The Quarterly Review.

SEDGWICK'S LIFE AND LETTERS.*

there is no room here for pleading in excuse that while the bereavement is recent, and the sense of loss bitter, it is difficult to restrict the volume in which affectionate admiration loves to pour itself forth. The lapse of seventeen years was surely ample enough to allow the cooler judgment to control the effusiveness of the heart.

The pictorial illustrations with which the letter-press is enlivened are significant of the scale on which the work is constructed. Besides four portraits or sketches of the subject of the memoir, we find one of his father, another of John Dawson, the remarkable old surgeon

THIS is, in several ways, a very interesting and useful memorial of a remarkable man; but it might, we venture to say, have been doubled in interest, and more than doubled in utility, if it had been halved in length. No one would object to a couple of volumes or even more being dedicated to a biographical portraiture, when the subject has stood high above the mass of mankind, · -a king of thought or action by whom new fields of knowledge have been opened, new conditions of society inaugurated, or the course of the world permanently changed. But until human life shall be lengthened, or a con- mathematician with whom he read for a siderable portion of its crowded interests eliminated, two huge volumes, containing nearly twelve hundred pages, must be pronounced inordinate for the record of even the foremost of the lower rank whether of thinkers or workers, however useful they may have been in their generation, or large the troop of friends in whose affections their departure has left a vacant place. Had the old Hebrew "Ecclesiastes," or the writer of his epilogue, lived in this day of monster biographies, it may be easily conjectured that his complaint of the numerousness of books would have been supplemented by a sarcastic growl at their bulk. All parties suffer from this undue prolixity of literary commemoration. The quality of the volumes is deteriorated, their circulation contracted, the reader of them bored; while the object of the cult himself, instead of being presented in clear and sharp outline which stamps itself on the memory, becomes attenuated into a confused and washy image, indistinctly discerned and readily forgotten.

few months before entering Cambridge, and a third of Dr. Woodward, the founder of the geological professorship of which Sedgwick was the seventh tenant. Then we have two views of the street of his native place, the little town of Dent, and another of the vicarage in which he was born, a drawing of the farmhouse in which he lodged while he was a boy at Sedbergh school, a sketch of the old doorway of the school, a view of the house at Norwich occupied by him when in residence as canon of the cathedral, and another of a fountain erected to his memory at his birthplace. All this may possibly afford gratification to leisurely readers with whom time is no object, but it can scarcely be called business. Still more flagrant is the waste of room caused by prefacing the biography with a chapter of forty-four pages devoted to the geography, history, and social characteristics of the vale of Dent; and by taking occasion of Sedgwick's election to the Woodwardian professorship to fill another long chapter with notices of its founder, and of the first six occupants of the chair. One may be thankful that a line has been drawn somewhere in the range of possible topics, and that the record of Sedgwick's election on the foundation of Trinity has not been expanded into a history of the great college, with notices of its royal founder. Speaking more generally, we should say that the letters selected for publication, Willis Clark and T. McKenny Hughes. 2 vols. Lon- charming as many of them are beyond all other contents of the work, are twice as

In the case before us, the mischief may be partly due to the fact that the work is the joint production of two authors, one of whom undertook the biography proper, and the other the science; in practical independence of each other, we should guess, and light-hearted irresponsibility for the resulting bulkiness. At any rate

The Life and Letters of Adam Sedgwick. By J.

don, 1890.

many as are needed to exhibit the writer's Yet what more cynical than the language personality and character; and that a of his early manhood about the tenderest great deal of space besides is needlessly of all relations! To his most intimate taken up by trivial details of geological tours, which really afford neither instruction nor entertainment. Occasionally, too, a more severe reticence would have been desirable about unedifying and long-buried contentions, notably the quarrel with Sir Roderick Murchison, and the war of pamphlets with Dr. French, the master of Jesus College. The account given of the latter incident has, we notice, elicited, and we fear with reason, an indignant protest from one of Dr. French's representatives. Having thus despatched the least grateful portion of our critical task, from which as wielding for the nonce the bâton of the literary police we have not thought it right to shrink, we pass on with relief to the more pleasing part of our office. While endeavoring to arrive at an estimate of Sedgwick's character and achievement, it must be borne in mind that his bringing up was an entirely rude and rustic one, among the hardy dalesmen of the northwest corner of Yorkshire where it juts into Westmoreland, whose warm blood, simplicity of character, and sturdy features of both mind and body were his best inheritance. He tells us himself, "I never saw London till I was a fellow of Trinity College, after six years of university residence." Here may be found, it seems, the explanation of the singularly dull and barren record of his youth and early manhood, during which he was wearing off his awkward rusticity and ignorance of the world, and slowly growing into familiarity with a more advanced culture and thought. In fact, the only point of interest presented by this portion of his life is the piquant contrast between his strong domestic affections, and his professed contempt, perhaps in part af fected, for matrimony. What could be tenderer than his language about his mother! "The word mother' has a charm in its sound, and there was a blank in the face of nature, and a void in my heart, when I ceased to have one. . . . The memory of my dear mother and my dear old father throws a heavenly light over all the passages of my early life."

friend, William Ainger, afterwards principal of St. Bees, and canon of Chester, he writes at the age of twenty-three: "Marriage may be well enough when a man is on his last legs, but you may depend on it that to be linked to a wife is to be linked to misery. From the horrid state of matrimony I hope long to be delivered;" and three years later, he rejoices that a friend with whom he is staying "is not tormented by that bane of domestic happiness, a wife." Yet, if ever a man revelled in female society, especially that of lively damsels, finding in it a stimulus which quickened his faculties and brightened his life, it was Sedgwick in his maturer years. Nor, by his own confession, was even his earlier life free from affairs of the heart. In a letter written in his seventieth year, giving an account of a visit to Matlock in 1818, when he was thirtythree, he says: "That year I was a dancing-man, and I fell three-quarters in love, but as you know did not put my head through love's noose." Again, in a playful letter to one of his young female confessors three years earlier, he parenthetically acknowledges, "I have all my life been thought like Romeo, and, like him, I have been sadly crossed in love." Not till late in life did he quite renounce the prospect of marriage, and even then with an evident pang, as we learn from a letter written when he was sixty: "I have now given up all thoughts of marriage, and it is high time, is it not? But, do you know, it is a very hard thing for a man to give up, even at my own time of life." In the whimsical manner which was characteristic of him, he laid at the door of his sponsors his doom to die unmarried. Both my godfathers," he used to say, "are old bachelors, and my godmother (God be with her!) is as arrant an old maid as ever whispered scandal round a tea-table. My own destinies were therefore fixed at the font, and I already feel myself fast sinking in the mire of celibacy." But the lot was of his own choosing. If till middle life want of pecuniary means was an insurmountable hindrance, before he had com

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