and carefully bred; and even in the crooked pointed stick driven by hand, hieroglyphics the birds are so carefully whereas this is drawn by an ox, and portrayed that the species designed is has a cross-handle, painted red. Then easily recognizable. Three species of there are the bearers of the palanquin, domesticated dogs appear with charac- two of whom appear to be shaven, as teristics resembling those of to-day. was the manner of the Egyptians; There is a great lean-bodied, long- whilst a third wears a full crop of hair legged creature which might be the or a wig, probably to denote superior ancestor of our greyhound; but the rank. In another painting, rank is legs are much thicker, and it is alto-shown by the leopard-skiu robe, worn gether more clumsy and less graceful. apparently by an Overseer, who is Then there is a dog possessing the directing two workmen; and it may be characteristics of the boarhound, but remarked that even to the present day with a mottled coat somewhat resem- the leopard skin denotes the priestly bling that of a tortoise-shell cat. This caste, medicine-man, or chieftainship, coloring is also observable in the third in all parts of Africa. species of dog, which has a strong Perhaps the most interesting of the affinity with the modern spitz or dachs- human figures depicted is a group, or hund, having a long body and short, rather procession, of red-haired, lightbandy legs; but the latter character-skinned, blue-eyed people, supposed to istic is not so decidedly marked as at be Lybians, the men bearing in their the present day. This little dog would hands crooked clubs resembling boomeseem to have been a favorite with the rangs, and having other weapons, Egyptians at that remote period, for notably a huge knife, thrust through two of the kind are depicted, a male their shaggy red hair; whilst the and female, one accompanying a lady women carry their children in baskets in a close palanquin. It may here be on their backs; and two are depicted remarked that a dog very closely re- bearing monkeys instead of children. sembling the one here portrayed is Conventionally, the Egyptian women still found in South Africa, where it is are always represented as much lighter bred and highly esteemed by the Hot- in color than the men, and two groups. tentots, who even make the women in these paintings are especially renurse the puppies with their own chil-markable. In one, two women are dren. This dog, known as a "brach-represented standing facing each other, hond," is long-bodied and short-legged, one foot raised, touching that of the but not so bandy-legged as the dachshund; the coloring also is more like that of the ancient Egyptian dog, being mottled, and often spotted with red like a cow.

adversary, one hand being also placed on that of the other, whilst a round object, supposed to be a bladder, is attached by a long string to the hair of each at the back, hanging down to the shoulders. This is evidently a game, in which the performers whirl round and strike each other with the ball or bladder attached to the hair; and it is easy to see that if the ball were not very light, the game might be an exceedingly rough one. In the other group, two women tossing balls are seated on the backs of two other The types of mankind shown on women, the supposition being that these very early paintings are of pecul- when they fail to catch, they in turn. iar interest. There is the swarthy become horses for the others. These Egyptian ploughman, holding the prim- two games of ball strike one as new, itive wooden plough, not, however, of and especially noteworthy from the the earliest type, which was only a performers being women. The great.

There is also a cat, large and gaunt and fierce, certainly not our domestic tabby, but something approaching to the wild-cat. Whether this was the variety dedicated to Pasht, and of which so many mummies are found, can hardly be determined by the painting; but probably it was intended to represent that sacred animal.

peculiarity in all these human figures and have diligently chipped away the is the extraordinary length of the fin- figures from all the fragments which gers and toes. In those days, it was have fallen into their hands, either out evidently a mark of beauty to have of pure love of destruction, or more a long foot and hand, and the artists probably in order to sell the painted must have complimented their subjects hieroglyphs thus detached as amulets. by exaggeration in these points. This shows the necessity for completHere, too, we may see the mode of ing the Survey as soon as possible, in making fire in the twenty-fifth century order to preserve these precious relics B.C., for we see a man represented of hoar antiquity from the hands of the using a fire-drill such as is still in use modern spoiler, for the value of these among some uncivilized races, which paintings and hieroglyphs in illustratconsists of a thong or bowstring ing the history of the world cannot be twisted round a pointed stick, inserted over-estimated. In them we see life in a very dry board, the thong being as it existed in the most civilized counpulled rapidly backwards and forwards try of the world three thousand years until fire is produced by friction. This and more before the birth of Christ; is of course an advance upon the earlier the manners and customs, dress, andin practice of rubbing two sticks together, even the amusements of this remote b which is the custom among very prim-time are here revealed to us. We can itive savages, and upon the drill twirled trace their commerce with distant in the hand, which is also still in use.

lauds, their modes of navigation and The figures and hieroglyphs of these agriculture, their method of trapping tombs, which are situated in the rocky birds, as well as the game they hunted ground on the east bank of the Nile, in and the water-fowl they domesticated, i the provinces of Minieh and Assiut, in all so faithfully delineated as to be unUpper Egypt, differ from the general- impeachable witnesses of the truth of ity of Egyptian hieroglyphs, which are ancient historical records; whilst the usually incised in the granite, whereas, inscriptions enlighten us as to the in these the figures having been first names and exploits of their rulers, traced on the stone, the interspaces probably with some exaggerations and were then chipped away, leaving the embellishments, yet on the whole trustdesign in relief, these raised figures worthy as to matters of fact, and incibeing afterwards very carefully and dentally throwing light upon much that beautifully painted. The Arabs have is obscure in the writings of ancient taken advantage of this raised-work, | historians, both biblical and secular.

THE STORY OF ZERO.- The word "zero" scientific discovery, and hastily concluded is from the Spanish, and means empty, that he had found the lowest degree of temhence nothing. It was first used for a perature known in the world, either natural thermometer in 1795 by a Prussian mer- or artificial. He called the degree zero, chant named Fahrenheit. From a boy he and constructed a thermometer, or rude was a close observer of nature, and when weather-glass, with a scale graduating up only nineteen years old, in the remarkably from zero to boiling point, which he numcold winter of 1709, he experimented by bered 212, and the freezing point 32, beputting snow and salt together, and noticed cause, as he thought, mercury contracted that it produced a degree of cold equal to the thirty-second of its volume on being the coldest day of the year. And that day cooled down from the temperature of freezbeing the coldest that the oldest inhabitant ing water to zero, and expanded the onecould remember, Fahrenheit was the more hundred-and-eightieth on being heated from struck with the coincidence of his little the freezing to the boiling point.

No. 2599.- April 28, 1894.

{

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From The Contemporary Review.

SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE.

BY LIEUT. COL. ELSDALE.

AN able writer, Mr. Pearson, has recently observed in his work, "National Progress and National Character," that few or no further leading discoveries or new departures in physical or mechanical science are to be expected; that future generations have now only to fill in the details and to supplement what has already been done.

I.

THE Conquest of the air is the first of them. Aërial navigation has been the dream of enterprising and inventive men in all the ages, and that dream is now drawing near to its realization.

The invention of balloons has no doubt given some impetus to the study of the subject, and navigable balloons of increasing speed and importance are at this moment being made on the Continent. Thus, the latest improved machine now under construction for the French War Office is expected to obtain a speed of forty kilometres, or nearly twenty-five miles, an hour. The navigable balloon, however, at its best, will, on a broad view, provide nothing more than a convenient stepping-stone or intermediate stage, to pave the way for the flying-machine proper, which will certainly follow and supersede it in the future. Meanwhile, unless some bold inventor should bring forward speedily a true flying-machine, we may expect to see successive modifications in, or progressive forms of, navigable balloons introducing the principle of the flying-machine proper gradually and tentatively.

I cannot agree with him. We must not thus set limits to the inventiveness of mankind. The well-known epithet #popadis výp will justify itself in the future as in the past. Nor can we set arbitrary bounds to the inexhaustible secrets of nature, and to the importance of the new arrangements and fresh combinations which are open to further research into them. An ever larger and larger number of fertile brains are continually at work in discovery and invention, as is clearly shown by the most cursory study of the annual publications of any of the various State patent offices. And these fresh brains start from an ever-widen- Thus, whereas at present all the ing vantage ground of accumulated re- weight is sustained by the balloon, in search and proved experience. The future models the greater part of the result must surely be that important weight only will probably be gas-susinventions and new discoveries will tained, and the rest of the lifting power, crowd thicker upon the world in the and necessary changes of elevation, twentieth than in the nineteenth cen- will be provided for by the lifting actury. I think that we have now loom-tion of air screws. By and by the air ing before us in the immediate future, screw, or air propulsion in some form, darkly, no doubt, but still very distinctly, leading discoveries in science which will constitute new departures fully as large as, if not larger than, those which have resulted from, let us say, the introduction of railways or telegraphs in the past. Their number may possibly be legion. I propose When first it became my duty to here to confine myself to the consideration of four leading problems, some, if not all, of which seem practically certain of solution in the next generation, if not in our own. And their solution will involve results of enormous and almost incalculable importance to the future of mankind.

will predominate. The balloon will be first reduced to an auxiliary appliance, and then laid aside altogether. The result, of course, of its final rejection will be an immense gain in a greatly diminished resistance and a corresponding increase in speed and power.

study this subject, some thirteen or fourteen years ago, the flying-machine proper was a demonstrable impossibility, in the then condition of mechanical science. Since that time the problem has been attacked, and its great acknowledged difficulties steadily minimized, from three different quarters