human economy, one which Sir William, ing of the external organization, if he Gull supposes to be a vestige of the ovipa- could thereby relieve the body of what is rous tribes, and which, when eccentric-in excess of its wants, and, therefore, probally developed, led to the death of a man, ably at least, a superfluous drain upon its otherwise healthy, in whom this superfluity strength. Of course, Sir William Gull had matured. Such superfluous and ec- would be the first to insist on the greatest centrically developed organs he thinks the scientific caution in inaugurating such a surgery of the future may very likely policy; but suppose that such caution had make a practice of removing at once in the been observed, and that a study of the young, when they can be got at without lower animals had triumphantly shown danger to the patient, and he is inclined that particular organs are as needless to to augur great advantages from this deci- men as long hair, and a much more com. sive surgical intervention to remove dan- mon cause of disease, and that they could gerous superfluities. Nay, if we under- be easily removed without danger or any stand Sir William Gull rightly, he would go known bad consequences, - would there further, and be at least disposed to expect be any sort of consideration not derivable that if there be, as he apparently thinks from physiological grounds forbidding there are, in the body of men, not only such a policy of surgical "intervention " eccentrically, but uniformly developed or- Would it be possible to argue with any gans for which men in their present state plausibility, for instance, that reverence have no use, and which Sir William Gull for the body, as a divine work, should forwould regard as "relicts of our ancestral bid us from this pruning away anything relations," "which may be superfluous and that Nature, and of course God through even injurious to us," these organs might Nature, insists on giving? be removed in infancy with very great We cannot think so. For in the first prospects of advantage to the body from place, if there were any such moral veto their loss. We supposc,- for here we are on the dealings of cautious human reason left to conjecture, that Sir William Gull with the body, it would be wrong to cut may refer to such organs, should further and shave the hair, -nor is it easy to see investigation find no use for them, as the any real distinction, except a physiological uvula, which so often causes relaxed sore distinction, between the one intervention throat by its inflammation, the spleen, and the other. If the protection of the we suppose, even if it were discovered to whole is secured by the sacrifice of a part, be useless to the human body, would be we always and rightly consider the whole, far too closely wrapped up in the body to and not the part; and all we really want be thus easily got rid of, but it is clear is convincing evidence that we are pruning that he contemplates the possibility of such away nothing serviceable to man, - - that its real pruning of the body by the surgery of foss is serviceable to him. But then it may the future as would relieve it of some of be said that the best moralists, Bishop the more accessible of those cumbrous Butler at the head of them, have always physiological heirlooms which he believes started from the assumption that, in the to be derived from ancestors with different intellectual and moral nature of man at wants from ours. "For the surgeons," he least, nothing is superfluous, nothing radisays, as I have hinted, a new prospect is cally injurious, but that evil consists opening. Should advancing knowledge only in the ill-regulation of appetites, passhow that we have parts, or organs, of sions, affections, and capacities, all of which doubtful use, and especially if these equiv- have their appropriate purpose in the menocal parts are liable to disease, what a tal economy of man, though all are capable land of promise for operations!" That is, of being exaggerated into dangerous exSir William Gull thinks it very likely that cess or repressed into dangerous deficiency. even of our normal organs some are mere Yet if now we are to assume that specific excrescences on the human body under its organs, uniformly developed in the human present conditions, and if so, are specially body, are absolutely superfluous and even liable to disease, and that surgical inter- injurious, will not the inference be almost vention may prove to be of the greatest inevitable that there is no longer any use in ridding us of them in infancy. As ground to assume that, even in the human almost all physicians support the system mind, each specific principle must have, for of vaccination, which undoubtedly replaces us at least, a divine purpose, the complete the natural state of the organization by suppression of which would be a moral one that is artificially proof against a par- mutilation? "Revenge," says Lord Bacon, ticular disease; so Sir William Gull would" is a kind of wild justice," and Butler has not hesitate to interfere even in the mould-attempted in one of his very ablest ser

66

mons to show the enormous moral value of pect that a distant future might yet the principal of resentment, if kept within come in which, if moral surgery were the right limits. Such positive proof of possible, if there were such a thing as a course would be as admissible if the new moral excision capable of being performed, notion of organic superfluities in the body - it might be of the first benefit to man be granted, as before. But would not even to eradicate some of the persistent there be a very much weaker analogical moral tendencies which we have received case for the real worth of each of the ele- as heirlooms from our ancestors. Take mentary desires, emotions, and other prac- some of the cases of kleptomania, as it is tical tendencies, as we now have them? called, or even of the worst forms of avWould it not be argued very gravely that arice, i.e., of deeply persistent tendencies, if we all really inherit from our ancestors probably in some degree inherited, which superfluous bodily encumbrances of which have become to their present possessors it is our duty to rid ourselves, we are ex- what Sir William Gull asserts that the ecceedingly likely to have also inherited | centrically developed duct he tells us of mental and moral superfluities of the same was to its victim, not only not useful, but kind, where again there would be a new centres of local disease, and can field opening not merely for restraint and doubt for a moment that here we have the culture, but, so far as that is possible, trace of a greed for accumulation, which for the intervention of moral surgery, for in the hard Stone Ages, for instance, may radical excisions of natural impulses and have been almost a condition of existence, tendencies? If the human reason applied developed into a thoroughly unsocial and to physiology has discovered that it has destructive passion in an age of comparapruning duties in relation to some of the tive ease and wealth? And if it be mornormal organs of the human body, will not ally certain, as it seems to us to be, that the human reason as applied to psychology in a higher state of existence the competibe strongly biased in favour of the belief tive instinct so deep in us, and, within that it may have pruning duties in relation limits, so useful to us now, will disappear, to some of the normal organs of the human why should it be incredible that even on mind? this earth in some distant future the moral uses of such a passion might vanish, and it might linger, if it lingered at all, as a mere centre of disease?

to se

of

The

We should reply that it is of course far more difficult to determine what is a distinct organ of the mind than it is to determine what is a distinct organ of the body; We do not see anything really to startle and further, that as the mind is the highest us in Sir William Gull's striking suggespart of man, you might fairly expect nor- tion that science may in the future show inal organs of the body to have become for us how even to prune away superfluous all purposes of advantage obsolete, al- organs of our body with a purely benefithough still inherited from our ancestors, cial result to man; nor why something parwithout expecting normal organs of the allel might not happen, in some still more mind to have already lost all their primi- distant future, in relation even to the mentive functional uses; and that, consider- tal tendencies of men. All such a suging the extremely small number, even if gestion would imply is that God educates there be any, normal bodily organs which us to educate ourselves; and that in the medical science can venture to pronounce course of that education, as the higher really useless to man and mere monuments functions of both body and mind become of a primeval body to which they were developed, some of the lower will gradualuseful, there is no good analogical reason ly be of less and less use, and finally may to expect that anything equivalent would become really superfluous, without, howbe discernible in the mind. But it would, ever disappearing until our own reason and we think, be perfectly true to say that conscience are trained to help in extinthere are, in the mind itself, traces not guishing them. It is hardly possible to perhaps of completely useless habits, or doubt that in the only perfect human naappetites, or impulses which are inherited ture which ever lived upon this earth, in from our forefathers, but certainly and the divine humanity, some of the lower frequently of great excess of activity in principles even of the mind, notably the such habits, or appetites, or impulses; competitive impulse, -was kept altonor would it be at all unreasonable to ex-gether inactive.

and en

we

WEST AFRICA.

aud, according to native report, there is a second volcano, named Onshiko, beyond this one in the same direction. The existence of a great lake far in the interior was confirmed to the traveller by every report, but whether this forms the source of the Okanda could not be ascertained.

More recent excursions by the French have completed a rough survey of the region of the delta. The Ogowai is the gate through which our knowledge of Central West Africa must be obtained. Academy.

Another paper in the same the rock-islands in the river, the smoking mounjournal, accompanied by a map, gives a com- tain of Otombi can be seen to the north-east, plete history of the attempts which have been made to penetrate West Africa in the neighborhood of the delta of the Ogowai river, along with a summary of our knowledge of that part of the continent. Ogowai must be one of the main arteries of the country, but nothing whatever is yet known of its course beyond a distance of 150 miles inland from its great delta, the outmost branches of which are more than 50 miles apart on the coast. In recent years attention was drawn to the magnitude of this river, first reported by Bowdich in 1817, by Du Chaillu's journeys in the const regions north of the Gaboon and south of the Ogowai, in the years 1856-59. The French, who have long had settlements in its neighbourhood, have at various times made efforts to navigate its waters, as yet without much success, though there do not appear to be any great barriers in the way of a determined explorer. Their first trial in 1862, under Lieut. Serval in the steamer Pionnier, was made in July, the season when the river is lowest, and soon the journey had to be continued in boats, but at a distance by river of about 100 miles from the coast, on the rumour of an attack by the natives, further progress was abandoned. Neglecting the experience of the former attempt, a second, under Lieut. Albigot and Dr. Touchard, also in the Pionnier, was undertaken at the same season in 1864, but, waiting till October, the expedition reached the mouth of a large tributary from the southward, named the Ngunië, at a distance of about 50 miles beyond the turning point of the first trial, A third voyage in 1867 under Lieut. Aymes did not reach farther than this confluence, beyond which the main river is named the Okanda. Overland from the Gaboon in 1864, Lieut. Genoyer, after an ascent of the coast range named by the Portuguese the Serra do Crystal, reached the Okanda above the confluence of the Ngunie, and returned to the Gaboon by one of the tributary streams of that estuary. Retraversing the country south of the Ogowai, visited by him in 1858, Du Chaillu came upon and traced the Ngunië down towards the Ogowai for a considerable distance in 1864, previous to his longest journey inland to Ashango. In 1866 a journey was made by an Englishman named Walker from the Gaboon to the Ogowai, during which be followed up the tributary Ngunië to the point at which Du Chaillu had turned, and afterwards navigated the Okanda by boat in its course from north-east to a point 50 miles above the conflu

ence,

the farthest yet reached by any European. Here in July, the time of lowest water, at a distance of more than 200 miles by river from the coast, the first hindrance in the form of rapids was encountered. The river breaks into several channels of from 100 to 300 yards in width, and has a very tortuous course. From one of

Corresponding to the rainy season under the equator, the Ogowai has a considerable rise in April

and a lesser in October.

THE STRUCTURE AND CLASSIFICATION OF COMPOSITE. - At the meeting of the Linnean Society on February 1st an important paper was read by Mr. Bentham, the president of the society, on this subject, to which he has recently given much attention. The order Composite or Synantheræ is remarkable not only from its enormous size, but also from its extremely natural and well-marked characters, there not bewhether a plant should be referred to this order ing a single instance in which it is doubtful or not. All the essential characters of the anseed, and inflorescence, are absolutely constant droecium, pistil, structure of fruit, structure of within it. This very fact, however, renders its throughout the ten thousand species comprised subdivision into tribes and genera a matter of extreme difficulty, the systematist being compelled to adopt characters as generio which in other orders would hardly be considered as specific. The parts of the plant from which the best distinguishing characters are derived were treated at length by the author under the following heads:-1. Sexual differences in the florets contained in the capitulum; these are sometimes variable in closely allied species. 2 sometimes constant in large genera or subtribes, Di- and tri-morphism; very rare in Composita except as connected with sexual differences. 8. Differences in the pistil; these depend on variations in the style where it is not used for tilization of the ovules. 4. Differences in the its primary purposes in connection with the forfruit and its pappus. 5. Differences in the androe; these depend on the minute appendages or tails which have apparently no functional office. 6. Differences in the corolla; numerous and important. 7. Differences in the calyx; these are not important. 8. Differences in the ultimate inflorescence and bracts; not of essential importance. 9. Differences in foliage; there is no type of foliage in Composite which may not be found in several other orders, although the leaves are never compound with articulate leaflets; the opposition or alternation of the leaves is sometimes of tribal importance, sometimes not. 10. Geographical distribution; on this portion of the subject a further paper is promised at a future meeting.

Academy.

2. OFF THE SKELLIGS. By Jean Ingelow. Part VI.. Saint Pauls,

Blackwood's Magazine,

POETRY.

Saturday Review,

130 SPIRITUAL SONG. From the German of Novalis. By Geo. MacDonald,

192

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