With the stench, and the glare, and grime of To make a case that would hold herself;

As the small manufacturers find their own paste. Then a scantling of wood, some nails as well,

No. 1198. Fourth Series, No. 59. 18 May, 1867.

CONTENTS.

POETRY: First Words, 418. Spring, 418. New England, 418.

SHORT ARTICLES: Wholesale Manufacture of Ozone, 456. Nutmeg, 456. Chymical Toys, 456.

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To utter thoughts that help to work and The peasant, plough in hand, plods whistling

T

From the Quarterly Review. of secondary post-mortem arrangements. A corpse is not an engine at rest it is a ruin. Nachrichten über Leben und Schriften des To put together into a working whole the Hernn Geheimrathes Dr. Karl Ernst v. bits of machinery of which the anatomist Baer, mitgetheilt von ihm selbst. Veröf and the physiologist tell us, is as hopeless a fentlicht bei Gelegenheit seines Fünfzigjäh-task as that of piecing together into an actrigen Doctor-Jubiläums am 29. August, ing engine the fragments of an exploded 1864, von der Ritterschaft Esthlands (a boiler. Sketch of the Life and Writings of Dr. Charles Ernst von Baer, contributed by himself. Published on the occasion of the Jubilee of his Doctorate on the 29th of August, 1864, by the Ritterschaft of Esthonia). St. Petersburg. 1865. (For private circulation only.)

But that which we cannot do ourselves, is being continually done for us all the world over. Every moment an animal is born. Every moment the entrance of a new young life upon the globe proclaims that the task of building up a living frame has once more been accomplished. Nature is constantly in travail; for ever, in things great and small, teaching those who care to listen, how an animal is put together; for ever pointing out with her finger, to those who care to see, the ways in which an almost formless and structureless egg is, little by little, changed and moulded and worked up into the intricate and perplexing system of a grown-up

WHEN a skilled man sets about learning for himself the working of any engine or piece of mechanism, he begins by taking it to pieces and then tries to put it together again. The first step is generally easy enough, but it teaches little. It is, in fact, only preliminary to the second, which is at the same time far more difficult and in-being. finitely more instructive. The taking to pieces of that puzzling mechanism, the animal body, was begun long ago, in very early times, and has at the present day arrived at so near an approach to perfection, that weak faint-hearted men are sometimes heard to complain that in anatomy there is very little room left for discovery. In most animals all the parts have been unriveted, all the joints loosened, and all the pieces, even to the tiniest bits, carefully sorted out, so that everything seems ready for the higher task of synthesis to begin. The putting together, however, of an animal is a work the very beginning of which is far above our might, far above the might of all the king's laboratories and all the king's men. So far are we from being able to construct an animal, that we cannot put together even the simplest vital pieces; the very nails which bind the plainest work of life are to us as yet magic nails, not to be had from any manufactory. Nay, the case is even worse. A common engine may be stopped from its work without damage, and when it has been stopped all the parts remain as they were, except just so far as that they were moving and are now at rest: the fly-wheel is the same body whether it be revolving or whether it be still. With the vital machine it is otherwise it can be stopped only at the cost of being spoilt; with it, arrest means confusion and obliteration. That which the anatomist laid before us as the machinery of life is, to a very great extent, not the original mechanism, but, looked at from a chemical point of view, only a group

:

Of course for a long time mankind did not care to see, though great men like Harvey had glimpses of the process. For a while, at an epoch when inquiry into other matters was rife, men's eyes, as regards this, were blinded by a plausible untruth. They were told that the infant animal was, even in its earliest stages, an invisible miniature of the future adult, carefully and neatly folded up in the body of its parent. Growth was said to be an unfolding and a getting bigger. a mere amplification. The progress of an animal from the egg onwards was thought to be like that of the lion's head on the screen of a child's magiclantern, which, appearing at first as a tiny thing not bigger than a shilling, and yet with all its parts perfect, gradually swells out into a life-size picture. The benumbing influence which such an idea, potent because so seemingly natural, would exercise upon all inquiry, is evident. If it were true, the formation of an animal would be so perfect a mystery as to seem no mystery at all. To Caspar F. Wolff, a prophet unknown and unhonoured save among a few biologists, is due the credit of having demolished this false theory, and of having shown that growth is the putting on of forms and parts that, in the making of an animal, Natu re first lays down a rough sketch, and then fills in the details as the mass enlarges in size. The path which he thus opened up has since been trodden by many inquirers, the results of whose labours have served to justify the idea which he nursed, that in the history of development are to be found the

very essentials of biology, and that all other | vigorously did he set to work, that in about studies, anatomical and the like, are, com- three weeks he could read in the ordinary pared with it, hardly more than a mere way with ease, and in a few more he had scratching of the surface. Among Wolff's gained the unusual accomplishment of readsuccessors, the chief place may fairly be given ing a book held upside down before him to the man whose name stands at the head of without trouble. Within three years this article, and who, though the greater we find him studying Latin, Mathematics, part of his work was finished while many History, Geography, and French, under the of our present distinguished Naturalists were guidance of a tutor of solid worth, with a at school, and though his name seems to be- mathematical turn of mind, who, however, long almost to a past generation, is still en- was soon succeeded by a man of a different joying an old age full of honour and good stamp, a dilettanti, with a leaning towards report, and fragrant with the satisfaction of poetical literature and the natural sciences. fruitful well-spent days.

terschaft

The world in general, and men of science in particular, speak lightly of dilettanti, and often count them as worse than useless. But they have at least this merit, that they are frequently the means of starting true men on their proper career. They act, as it were, the part of matches or tapers; they themselves are of no use for illumination, and yet serve to light up many a brilliant lamp. So was with it Herr Glanström. He himself has vanished leaving no visible work behind; but it was through him that the young Baer was led into his own true path of biological science.

It may seem somewhat out of place to dwell on the life and doings of one who is still amongst us; but we have, so to speak, his own authority for it. On the 29th of August, 1864, he celebrated the jubilee of his Doctorate, on which occasion the Ritor, as we should say, the county families of his native province presented him with a splendidly printed and elegantly bound copy of an autobiography and list of published works, which he had prepared at their request. It is from this quaintly written and interesting volume that we have gathered the following incidents of his life, Medicine, however, was the first purand we very much regret that, owing to its suit of the future anatomist, and according having been printed for private circulation ly after a sojourn of three years in the High only, the general public are not invited to the School of Reval, where the irregular devel perusal of the work: for, besides being pleas-opment of home culture was clipped and ant reading, it contains many valuable discussions and wise sayings on the principles of education, the position of science and scientific men, and topics of a like nature.

trained into a more orderly and orthodox growth, he entered the University of Dorpat as a medical student. This university, now one of the most famous in Europe, was at Karl Ernst von Baer was born at the fam- that time in a condition the like of which ily estate of Piep, in Esthland (Esthonia), could hardly be found at the present day, at on the 28th of February, 1792, and is a least in Germany. The medical and scienstriking instance that the offspring of cous-tific chairs especially were very inadequateins are not necessarily degenerate in body ly filled. Parrot, the Professor of Physics, or mind. While still an infant he was adopt- took Chemistry also, and taught next to ed by an uncle and aunt, who were child-nothing. Ledebour, who held the chair of less, and was carried away to live with them Natural History, and who was supposed to at Lassila, in Wierland. The uncle, a dry lecture on Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, and pedantic trifler, an agriculturist, amateur Geology, was competent in the second only glazier, and family shoemaker, thought that of these subjects. Burdach, it is true, called the best way of educating his adopted son forth among the students a temporary enwas to let him run about as much as he thusiasm by his ingenious and doctrinaire pleased. It was not till he was nearly eight lectures on Physiology; but the chair of years of age, that Baer was brought back to Anatomy, that keystone of every medical his father's house to begin to learn his let- school, was occupied by Chichoius, an eccenters. But neither he nor his father had any tric character, animal curiosum, who in the reason to regret such a prolonged period of daytime shut his shutters and lived by candlefreedom. "I count it," says he, " among the light, and who taught his students to classify happiest circumstances of my life that I was all animals into the wholly fluid and the seminot too early troubled with lessons. By the fluid. The Professor of Medicine was a good time I left my uncle I had so far grown in practitioner, but no teacher; while Surgery mind that I was heartily ashamed of being was wholly wanting. Where there was not ig unable to read, and most eager to learn." norance there was pedantry, and in most Instead of trudging unwillingly to school, so I chairs learning was reckoned as knowledge