Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/672

654 found in considerable numbers near where the professor made the discovery.

I will name a few of the interesting if not rare plants that I have collected here during the present season: Ilex monticola, Ilex mollis, Gaylussacia ursina, Dyrhylleia cymosa, Parnassia asanfoliaasarifolia [sic], and Drosera rotundifolia. The little Houstonia serpyllifolia grows on the banks of all the mountain-streams, while H. elongifolia grows on the drier hill-sides. Galax aphylla is interesting to me, on acccountaccount [sic] of the beautiful tints which its leaves put on during the winter months, which make it one of the most enlivening features of the landscape during that season. I might fill pages describing plants that occur here, that would be most interesting objects of study to those who have never visited this region; but my principal object in writing this is to suggest the query whether it is not probable that there are undiscovered plants yet to be found in a part of the country which is so virgin and has been so little explored as this.

 

T the dinner given to Professor Tyndall in London, on the 29th of June, the chairman, Professor Stokes, in proposing the health of the guest of the evening, said: A social gathering like the present is not an occasion on which it is desirable to enter into detail as to the scientific labors of a man, however eminent. Yet the circumstances of the present meeting seem to demand that I should say a few words on some of Dr. Tyndall's researches. Some of his earliest scientific work related to diamagnetism and magnecrystallic action, and in part of this he was associated with the well-known German physicist, Knoblauch. But I can not dwell on these now. And I will even dismiss with this brief mention his researches on the properties of ice and his application of them to the theory of glaciers and the observations which he made in common with his friend and colleague Professor Huxley, whose necessary absence from among us to-night we so much regret. If I be not trespassing too much on the patience of those who listen to me, I would wish to say a little more on that elaborate series of researches, forming no less than six separate papers in the "Philosophical Transactions" in which Dr. Tyndall investigated the relation of simple and compound gases and of vapors to radiant heat, especially radiant heat from sources at a moderate temperature. According to his researches, while the main constituents of the earth's atmosphere, nitrogen and oxygen, are practically diathermous, at least with regard to radiations which can traverse rock-salt, as we know that by far the greater part 