moisture as a per centage of 100°, which is the numerb. assumed to represent complete saturation, says, that in Funchal, taking the mean of the whole year it is 76°, and that the most agreeable amount of humidity to healthy people is between 70° and 80° per cent. The absolute humidity of the atmosphere decreases sensibly with the ascent from the sea level, so that the climate may be regulated to suit the patient. There are hotels and furnished cottages at all altitudes in the hills surrounding Funchal, within a radius of three miles; and not only in the neighbourhood of Funchal, but at almost every interesting village or hamlet all over the island, each with a different climate, according to its situation and aspect, and the altitude from the sea. The mean maximum degrees of dryness for the winter season is 4°.13; for the spring, 5.56; for the summer, 5°.96; for autumn, 4°.60, and for the whole year, 5°.05.

Egypt has come into vogue of late years as a resort for invalids suffering from phthisis, commonly known as consump tion, and it would be well to show the difference of the two climates. Egypt 'is excessively dry at Cairo, and at other abodes up the Nile. It is doubtless suitable to invalids of the temperament already spoken of-those who can stand and enjoy the atmosphere of a small close room, with a lighted iron stove in it having a great surface of iron. Our townsman, Mr. Charles Clark, who visited Egypt in the capacity of the President of the Chamber of Commerce, on the occasion of the opening of the Suez Canal, says, "There is something delightfully exhilarating in the air of the desert; so warm, so pure, so dry, it seems to act like a tonic upon body and mind, soothing the brain, and making the mere sense of bodily existence a refined pleasure." But on the other

* See Notes from my Diary in Egypt, a Paper read before the Liverpool Philomathic Society, on the 30th March, 1870, by Charles Clark. Webb, Hunt, and Ridings, Liverpool.

hand, Dr. Patterson, who is a resident physician in Egypt, finds it so dry to some constitutions, that he recommends the introduction of moisture into the air of the apartments, and further advises patients not to come straight on to Cairo, but to stay a few days at Alexandria.

Then, again, the range of the temperature is much greater in Egypt than in Madeira. In Egypt, on the 29th December, 1867, at the morning observation, the thermometer was at 52°, and at the noon it was at 72°, showing a range of 20°, whereas in Madeira, the range is only about 7° to 8°. Both countries are subject to hot dry winds. During the Lest (East) wind in Madeira, the range is about 12° to 13, whilst during the Khamseen in the desert in Egypt, the range is about 50°. Lest I should be suspected of exaggeration, I will quote Dr. Patterson's own words. "This day (in May) gives a full idea of the variations at such periods; at 6 a.m., the mercury stood at 54° F.; at 9 a.m., 78°; at noon, 107°; at 6 p.m., 94°, the greatest difference being 53° Fahrenheit. Dr. Patterson informs us, that in Egypt the temperature falls sufficiently low at times for ice to have been found in the desert as late as February. And Niebuhr says, that his servant found one morning a piece of ice on a cabbage at Cairo. Madeira is not subject to fogs Egypt is after the inundations

at any time of the year, but of the Nile. The houses fitted up for the reception of invalids, at Funchal, are provided with fire places in the sitting rooms, and have all those other conveniences and comforts of an English home, whilst Egypt has them not; it is a rough and ready sort of place, I believe. Mr. Clark says, there is little in Alexandria to compensate the passing traveller for the discomfort he undergoes.

SHOULD THE NATURALIST RECOGNISE A

FOURTH KINGDOM IN NATURE ?

BY REV. W. H. DALLINGER, F.R.M.S. SCIENCE can be conservative of nothing but truth. Its final appeal must be to facts. As the interpreter of Nature it has no power to do other than disclose her disclosures. However disruptive of received truth or disturbing to old foundations its discoveries may be, science is bound to bring them to the front. It has no more to do with harmonising its facts with theory or creed in realms outside itself, than it has to do with industriously endeavouring to prove that they cannot be harmonised. Its work is simply and alone, with rigid exactness, to read the facts of Nature.

But this course is not evenly pursued; profound and eager students of Nature, not content with interpreting to us the latest sentence of the great instructor, interpolate, and tell us what they think the following sentences will be: at times, 't is true, with a splendid penetration; but in the main it darkens counsel, and we are called upon ever and again to disentangle the mesh, to separate the known from the supposititious, the real from the ideal.

In no field of thought, no region of enquiry, have we a more dazzling array of facts, or a more brilliant stream of speculation, than in the science of Biology. In its most

comprehensive meaning it is the resultant of all the sciences. Excepting Astronomy, it lays embargo upon them all, and presents a width of area for minute enquiry which admits of no parallel. On the one hand, it bears us out into the

mysterious border land between the living and the dead; and on the other hand, it seeks to grapple with the cause and conditions of the highest consciousness and thought. Mind is so constructed that it cannot, will not, rest in bare fact. "Fact" must have a place, a meaning; and if this cannot be given it must be correlated to theory. And therefore it is that as Biology is so affluent in ever new and brilliant facts, it is so prolific of speculation and anticipative interpretation, which is not unfrequently conflicting, and often abortive.

It is life in its lowliest developments that has of late claimed the attention of the student-life on the border land. Armed with the latest triumphs in optical art, and his eye educated as an interpreter of microscopical teaching, the student has had a new world disclosed; and here the old land-marks are being constantly removed. By some it is hoped that the problem of life itself may be tracked to its goal here, and its most intricate phenomena distinctively explained.

Now it is in this region of enquiry that the seeming impossibility of sharp demarcation between the several kingdoms of nature most strikingly presents itself. There are forms that in our present state of knowledge we unhesitatingly call animal, which are strangely "mimiced," if not actually repeated, by stages of other forms, which we as unswervingly call vegetable. But more, it has been thought by some observers that there is a realm disclosed which is neither animal nor vegetable, but distinct from either. Haeckel, the great German Biologist, has carefully studied these; he considers them absolutely distinct; he contends that they are marked by non-sexual reproduction, that they form a Kingdom, and thus assuming the borders of the Mineral Kingdom definable; next it, sharply demarked, comes Haeckel's New Kingdom - Protista. Then follows