Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/297

Rh the precipitous nature of the sides, and the fact that only one landing lies contiguous to the breeding birds, the Great Bird Rock must ever remain the stronghold of this interesting colony of sea-fowl. There is no regular division of the birds into large colonies according to species, but the separation is rather by size, gannets occupying the highest and broadest ledges, and murres and razor-bills taking what is left.

A Buddha, and its Meaning.—A bronze Buddha in the United States National Museum, as described by Charles De Kay, is thirty-eight inches and three quarters, or including the halo, seventy inches high, has a bronze halo, and differs from the famous seated Buddha at Kamakusa in size and in the position of the forefingers. These do not touch each other along the two upper joints, but lie one within the other. A slight trait of this kind is of the greatest importance to a Buddhist. It marks the difference between figures of the greatest of all Buddhas at the moments of his ecstasy or absorption into the Nirvana, or it distinguishes the Buddha from foreign or local saints who have presumably reached Buddha-hood by meritorious pondering. The figure has the famous knob on the forehead, about which many legends revolve; also the short round curls over the head, supposed to be the snails which guarded Buddha from sunstroke, and it carries the mark on the top of the head. It has the large ears, with their lobes pierced and distended, but no ear-rings. The figure represents Buddha, after having taught his doctrine, merging himself into Nirvana. To an adept, the position of the thumbs and forefingers expresses a world of hidden meanings. The figure is luckily provided with a copious inscription which is couched in phrases anything but easy of translation. Its name is "the Buddha of the Five Wisdoms," and its motto, "All the world can share the blessings of Buddhism."

Biological Physiology.—The Director of the Marine Biological Laboratory (Wood's Holl, Mass.) for 1891 calls attention to the needs of physiology as one of the most important branches of biological science which, for want of room, has thus far been neglected. It is not animal or human physiology, as commonly understood, that the director has more especially in mind, but what he calls biological physiology, or the province of the biological economy of organisms. "It is in this almost new province that we meet the great problems of geographical and geological distribution, and those of the interrelations of species in both the animal and vegetable kingdoms. It is here that we study life-histories, habits, food; the influences of the physical environment, and the reciprocal relations, which are ever varying according to the issues of the universal struggle for existence. It is in this direction that experimental physiology finds one of the most inviting fields in the whole range of biology." As instances of what varied and interesting problems here await the experimenter, are mentioned the experiments of Pflüger and others to determine the influence of gravitation on the development of the egg; Boveri's experiments to determine where the formative power resides, and whether it is shared equally by both sexes; Fol's studies on fertilization; Auerbach's determination of the sexual distinction between the paternal and the maternal elements of the nucleus; Weismann's studies on the laws and causes of variation; the effects of chemical agencies on germ-cells as tested by Oscar and Richard Hertwig; the experiments of Beudant, Plateau, and Schmankewitsch in transferring animals from fresh to salt water, and vice versa; Semper's observations on the effect of the volume of water on the size of the creatures living in it; and others.

A Meteorological Poet.—A curious paper has been published by Naval Surgeon Grémaud, of Brest, France, on the tempest described in the first book of Virgil's Æneid. He answers some of the criticisms that have been made of it, and shows that the critics were not meteorologists. Having carefully compared the latest accounts of cyclones with Virgil's description, he has found the descriptions of the dangerous semicircle, the tractable semicircle, the plunging winds, and the columns of water rising like a wall and falling upon the ships to demolish them, correct; and establishes a complete analogy between them and the determinations of science. Hence, Virgil was not only a poet,