FOREIGN LITERARY NOTICES. THE Historische Zeitschrift pronounces Fontane's "Der Deutsche Kreig von 1866," the best history of that war. A LETTER from London says that two manuscripts by Thackeray have been discovered, and will soon be published. MR. MORLEY says Voltaire is the most trenchant writer in the world, yet there is not a sentence of strained emphasis or overwrought antithesis; he is the wittiest, yet there is not a line of true buffoonery. DR. NORMAN MACLEOD, whose death is announced, was the editor of "Good Words," and well known as a theological leader, and the author of "Parish Papers," Eastward," "Character Sketches," etc. SEVERAL HIGH personages of Rome have urged the municipality to grant the title of Roman citizen to Allessandre Manzoni, Gino Capponi, and Terrenzio Mamiani, whose writings have contributed to the glory of Italy. THE FIRST volume of the poems of the Polish poet, Theophilus Lenartowicz, has been published at Posen, with the title of "Echa Nadwislandskie," or "Echoes of the Vistula." The poems are all patriotic and national in character. THE CONDUCTORS of the Anglo-American Times announce their intention of starting, in London, a magazine made up of selections from American periodicals, after the manner of our eclectic pub. lications, provided enough subscribers are secured to encourage them in their enterprise. A NEWSPAPER has been established in Florence, entitled the Cornelia, under the editorship of the well-known authoress Signora Aurelia Cinimo Folliero de Luna. Its aims are the advocacy of women's rights, and the promotion of the education of Italian women. A NEW Library Edition of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's "History of William Penn," founder of Pennsylvania, in I vol., demy 8vo., is shortly to be issued by Messrs. Hurst & Blackett, London. The work, it is said, has been almost re-written, and will be substantially a new book. THE FIRST BOOK printed on English paper was "Bartholomæus de Glanville," (1495,) translated into English by John Trevisa, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, at Westminster. The paper was made by John Tate, at Hertford, the first paper mill having been set up there in the reign of King Henry VII. MORE than twenty American and English publishers have sent letters to Dr. Livingstone, offering to bring out the record of his last explorations. One publisher had his letter lithographed and sent copies to Gondokorn, Khartoun, Zanzibar, Magdala, Sierra Leone, Cape Town, Gambier, Aden, Simanli, 'and every other point which it was thought might be reached by the great explorer in his long seclusion. THE LONDON Times, reviewing Mr. James T. Fields's "Yesterday with Authors," says: "The description of the death and burial of Hawthorne in this volume is one of the most affecting passages in English literature, and will take the rank in pathos with Lockhart's account of the last days of Sir Walter Scott." IN A LECTURE by Father Hyacinthe, delivered recently in Rome, he surprised those who heard him by the length to which he went in denouncing several of the distinctive doctrines of the Church of Rome, such as the invocation of saints; and he attacked also the celibacy of the clergy, and spoke of the doctrine of the Real Presence as Paganism. THE TOTAL number of works published in Germany during the past year was 10,669, being an increase of 611 upon the preceding. The classes of literature most numerously represented aretheology, with 1362 publications; jurisprudence and politics, with 1052; education, with 1059; belles-lettres, with 950; and history, including biography, with 891. THE NUMBER of periodicals published in the Italian Kingdom on December 31, 1871, was 805, being an increase of 82 on the previous year. Of these 94 were published in the province of Milan, 78 in that of Florence, 70 in that of Turin, 65 in that of Naples, and 53 in that of Rome. Nine provinces have but one journal each; two, the two divisions of the Abruzzo Ulteriore, having none. Sixty-one of the 805 journals have a semiofficial character, from the insertion of Government advertisements. LORD DALLING (Henry Bulwer) left the "Life and Letters of Lord Palmerston" in a more perfect state than might have been expected, when we remember the state of his health during the last year of his life. Down to 1848, the work is in type, and the portions relating to the events of 1851 and 1852 are complete in manuscript. He had also finished the better part of the Essay on Sir Robert Peel; which, with a sketch of Lord Brougham's career, was to form a part at least of a second volume of "Historical Characters." LITTRE's great French Dictionary has reached its twenty-seventh part and the title tendre. Of the author himself, Philarète Chasles gives this for a pen portrait. Quite a Benedictine of the oldest school, visiting no drawing-rooms, no parlors, no salons; the chief of an atheistical Positivist coterie; learned, most precise and conscientious in his studies, harsh and inelegant in his style; uncompromising in his opinions; more like the Scioppiuses and Lipsiuses of the six teenth century than our own savans; a very unobtrusive, equitable, kind, but acrid and self-willed Holofernes. ACCORDING to the English Western Daily Mercury, considerable light has lately been thrown upon the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian creed by a discovery recently made in Venice. There has been discovered in St. Mark's Library in that city a copy of this creed, which is believed to be the oldest in existence, and the damnatory clauses are nowhere to be discovered in this ver sion. A correspondent of one of the leading English Nonconformist journals says he believes the creed to have been written by an Arian, who, being imprisoned for his opinions, produced it as a satire on Trinitarian doctrine, and owed his liberty to the circumstance, since the authorities took the squib for a recantation, and released him accordingly. THOMAS CARLYLE, Kinglake, and Froude have written notes in favor of the Canadian copyright plan. Mr. Carlyle writes to Mr. Trevelyan : "Some weeks ago, I signed a petition drawn up by Huxley, which probably you have seen, accepting cheerfully the American offer to English authors, and leaving English publishers entirely to their own devices in the matter-which latter class of persons, as you justly urge, should never have been imported into the discussion at all! This Huxley petition, I have heard somewhere, is not to be granted; whereupon I gladly fall back on your proposal; and, indeed, from the first should have preferred it as the really practical method. If you can push forward this proposal of yours to a victorious issue, I shall, out of public spirit, have a true satisfaction; though, for my own poor share, taking little or no interest in the question for a good while past." SOME GERMAN professors have perpetrated an elaborate practical joke at the expense of France, by starting the theory that their own Kutschkelied is not only Indo-European, but Semitic, and more. They have, accordingly, produced a number of originals (that is translations of the German) in other languages-Icelandic, Lithuanian, Sanscrit, Arabic, Hebrew, Ethiopian, etc., and in cuneiform characters and hieroglyphics. The French savants of the Revue Critique have taken the joke in good part, but have pointed out to their Teutonic brethren that before professors translate a jocose poem into any language, they ought to know that language, and that to pass over mistakes in French, Provençal, Sanscrit, etc.—the way to compose in Egyptian is not to find the equivalents of some German words in Egyptian, and write them down in the German order. That a line of the Germano French version of the poems means exactly the opposite of its original, is also looked on as an error of judgment. EVERY COLLECTION of English verse, made within the last quarter-century, has contained a certain poem on the birth of Christ, through which runs the refrain: In the solemn midnight, Centuries ago. Thirty-five years ago, its author, Alfred Domett, gave a royal entertainment to his friends; left them, leaning on Robert Browning's arm; left him, and vanished. Many years after, he was seen, in a boat manned by savages, off the coast of New-Zealand, but this was the only glimpse vouchsafed his friends. He was long ago given up for dead. Browning's poem of Waring" is founded on this strange career. Recently the supposed dead man came back, wearied with wandering, to tell the story of a life spent in ruling the barbarians, among whom he had hidden himself from civilization. He has brought with him the fruit of thirty-five years' practical solitude, in the shape of a poem of 14,000 lines, which is soon to be published. Its author's life will be an advertisement, such as no book has ever had before. THE FIRST newspaper published in France was founded by Renaudot, physician to King Louis XIII., and took for title La Gazette de France. Renaudot, coming from Loudun, which was the native town of Cardinal Richelieu, obtained chiefly on that account the extraordinary privilege of founding the Gazette de France, which has existed ever since as a kind of Court Circular. It is curious to observe the ludicrous timidity of primeval journalists. In his first number Renaudot announced that he did not intend to meddle in the least with what was going on in France; he published regular news from Vienna, Constantinople, St. Petersburg; but the prudent doctor seemed to ignore what was going on at the Court of Saint Germain, where he was. Cardinal Richelieu often sent articles to the Gazette, and these specimens of the redoubted Minister of Louis can still be seen in the old copies of the paper. Richelieu, however, often suppressed the numbers which displeased him, and rehandled the articles himself just as he would have liked to rehandle Corneille's tragedies. Louis XIII. himself wrote occasionally in Renaudot's paper, on "The Art of taking Citadels."- From "The Week." THE PARIS CORRESPONDENT of the Trade Circular writes: "The question of what constitutes plagiarism has been very categorically settled of late on the occasion of a lawsuit between Mr. Porchat's and Mademoiselle de Bray's publishers. Mr. Porchat published, some years ago, in the Magazin Pittoresque, a little story entitled Trois mois sous la neige,' which story was subsequently gathered into a children's book, which was crowned by the Academy, and obtained a very legitimate success. A short time after the publication of 'Trois mois sous la neige,' appeared a work by Mlle. de Bray, (nom de plume of Mlle. Davigny,) under the title of Robinson des Neiges.'" "Although Mlle. de Bray acknowledged her 1872.] SCIENCE. indebtedness to Mr. Porchat for the idea, the publishers of Mr. Porchat's work sued the author of the Robinson des Neiges' and her publisher for the sum of 10,000 francs, which sum was, however, reduced by a final decision of the court to 1000 francs and damages. Meanwhile plagiarism was brought within the following rules: 1st. It is the invention that constitutes the principal merit of all literary works, and there is plagiarism when a book, in respect to invention, is only the reproduction of a former work, with the same place of the scene, incidents, and personages. 2d. The fact of having developed certain situations, and having in some instances departed from the subject of the author, far from exonerating the plagiarist, only puts the delinquency into stronger light by the effort made to conceal the imitation. 3d. When the plagiarism extends over all the parts of the work, it is not enough to require portions to be cut out, but the whole of the counterfeit work must be suppressed." SCIENCE. DANGER FROM LIGHTNING.-We have mentioned one precautionary measure adopted by the ancients. The notion that lightning does not penetrate the earth to any considerable depth, It is was in ancient times a wide-spread one. still prevalent in China and Japan. The Emperors of Japan, according to Kämpfer, retire during thunder-storms into a grotto, over which a cistern of water has been placed. The water may be designed to extinguish fire produced by the lightning; but more probably it is intended as an additional protection from electrical effects. Water is so excellent a conductor of electricity, that, under certain circumstances, a sheet of water affords almost complete protection to what ever may be below; but this does not prevent fish from being killed by lightning, as Arago has pointed out. In the year 1670, lightning fell on the Lake of Zirknitz, and killed all the fish in it, so that the inhabitants of the neighborhood were enabled to fill twenty-eight carts with the dead fish found floating on the surface of the lake. That mere depth is no protection is well shown by the fact that those singular vitreous tubes, called fulgurites, which are known to be caused by the action of lightning, often penetrate the ground to a depth of thirty or forty feet. And instances have been known in which lightning has ascended from the ground to the storm-cloud, instead of following the reverse course. what depth these ascending lightnings spring, it is impossible to say. Still we can scarcely doubt that a place underground, or near the ground, is somewhat safer than a place several stories above the ground floor. Another remarkable opinion of the ancients was the belief that the skins of seals or of snakes afford protection against lightning. The Emperor Augustus, before mentioned, used to wear seal-skin dresses, under the im From pression that he derived safety from them. Seal- reverse. It is related by Kundmann that a stroke of lightning once struck and fused a brass bodkin worn by a young girl to fasten her hair, and that A lady (Arago tells she was not even burned. us) had a bracelet fused from her wrist without suffering any injury. And we frequently see in the newspapers accounts of similar escapes. If it is conceded that in these instances the metal has attracted the lightning, it will, of course, be abundantly clear that it is preferable to remove from the person all metallic objects, such as watches, chains, bracelets, and rings, when a thunder-storm is in progress.-Chambers's Journal. A NEW MILL.—Most people are aware that it is exceedingly difficult to reduce to powder any stiff or sticky substance. Superphosphate of lime, an artificial manure, is one of these substances; and in consequence of the difficulty, Mr. T. Carr, of Bristol, England, designed a disintegrating flour-mill, and machine for pulverizing minerals without grinding, crushing, or stamping. The principle of this machine may be familiarly described: A lump of sticky material thrown into the air, and struck with a stick, will fly to pieces; so Mr. Carr constructs cylindrical iron cages, with sticks or beaters whirling round therein, and with a contrivance for driving through the material to be crushed, in such a way, that the lumps are struck by the sticks and reduced to any required degree of smallness, or even to powder. The flying lumps offer but very little resistance, consequently, there is but little friction, and the power of the beaters is not impeded, as it would be by the passing through a mass of lumps at rest. And thus it is found in practice, that clays, ores, and other minerals can be granulated or pulverized at pleasure. But, perhaps, more important is the adaptation of the machine to a flour-mill. In this case it is not lumps of clay or iron ore, but grains of wheat that are struck by the beaters, which are driven round at a speed of about four hundred revolu. tions a minute. So effectual is the process, that the grains are instantaneously reduced to meal; this meal is removed in the way usually adopted in flour-mills, and the bran and flour are separated. The quantity of flour yielded is the same as from mill-stones, but the quality is far superior. The reason for this is easily seen: the flour has not been pressed or squeezed, and, to use the miller's term, is not "killed," but is delivered in a finely granular condition, whereby it absorbs more water when used. Bread made from this flour is lighter, and will keep better than ordinary bread; and another point worth attention is, that, as the bran is beaten off the grains in comparatively large flakes, there is a perfect separation of bran from flour than in that ground by mill-stones. more Two mills of the construction here described have been in work at Edinburg more than a year. Each one disintegrates twenty quarters, or one hundred and sixty bushels of wheat an hour; as much as could be produced by twenty seven pairs of ordinary mill-stones in full work. And in actual practice, the difference in value on sixty eight sacks of flour is five and a half per cent in favor of the new mill, which, at the rate of twenty quarters an hour, would produce a large sum in the course of a year. THE HEAT OF THE SUN.-The most recent theory concerning the heat of the sun is, that it is caused by the shrinking of the sun's own mass. and some of our astronomers and physicians are discussing the question. Of course, a mass so enormous will give out an amount of heat enor mous in proportion; but the shrinking goes on so slowly that many ages must elapse before any diminution in the amount of the sun's heat will be come perceptible. In the last number of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Socie ty, calculations are given of the rate and quantity and the author remarks, in conclusion, that th application of this theory to other bodies is almos without limit: "the earth has contracted, and ha stored up a corresponding amount of heat in the non-conducting rocks and soils; the stars, by the intrinsic brilliancy, indicate the operation of th force of gravity upon contracting matter; th nebulæ afford examples of the commencement this operation; and periodical variations in lig now become perturbations; and all these phene mena are subject to the great principle known the conservation of energy." The nebula in Argus has been observed recer ly in Tasmania, where it is always visible. T foregoing views acquire importance, from the fa that the light of this nebula has largely increase while the whole form has changed its appearanc Grand changes are going on in those far remo regions of the sky. AN AUSTRALIAN TELEGRAPH LINE.-By re advices from Australia, we learn that the line telegraph which is to cross that great country fr north to south is nearly complete, and that colonists look forward eagerly to the day w they shall send a message direct to England. entire distance is seventeen hundred miles, and this more than fourteen hundred miles are fin ed, so that intercommunication will not be m longer delayed. When we remember that the terior of Australia has always been regarded as howling desert, this enterprise appears the m remarkable, and one of its immediate effects been to make known the fact, that the interior not a desert, but presents a vast expanse suita for grazing and agriculture. There are, howe no great rivers, and the sea-board is distant the colonists propose to construct a narrow-ga railway, at a cost of about three thousand pou a mile, supplemented by grants of land, by side of the telegraph, which shall be to sett what rivers or the sea are to other places, W a field this will open for industry and enterpr As an instance of the unconcern with which a mention that the superintendent of the teleg ney through the interior is now regarded. distance of seventeen hundred miles, to see is to drive in an American buggy down the v the line is in working order. ANTS AND THEIR FOOD.-Some natur have questioned the fact, that ants store up sec |