PREFACE. Since the method of treating snakebite-poisoning by hypodermic injections of strychnine, discovered by the writer and published but a few years ago, has already been adopted by the medical profession throughout the Australian colonies, and practised even by laymen in cases of urgency with much success, it has been repeatedly suggested to him that the subject calls for further elucidation at... more...

I HAVE endeavoured to show, in the preceding Essay, that the ANTHROPINI, or Man Family, form a very well defined group of the Primates, between which and the immediately following Family, the CATARHINI, there is, in the existing world, the same entire absence of any transitional form or connecting link, as between the CATARHINI and PLATYRHINI. It is a commonly received doctrine, however, that the... more...

A PLEA FOR THE SIMPLER DRAMA It is with the drama as with plastic art and many other things: the plain man feels that he has a right to put in his word, but he is rather afraid that the art is beyond him, and he is frightened by technicalities. After all, these things are made for the plain man; his applause, in the long run and duly tested by time, is the main reward of the dramatist as of the painter... more...

WHERE UNION DWELT Beside the deep ravine the cottage stood,O'erlooking elm and willow, beech and birch,In growth profuse and wild o'er shady stream:And viewing cedar, oak and towering pineOn yonder crest aglow with light. How grandThe vision in the greenness of the spring,When birds of blue and scarlet vestments come;The greater glory of the summer time,When twinkling wings outvie the rarest... more...

This time two hundred years ago—in the beginning of January, 1666—those of our forefathers who inhabited this great and ancient city, took breath between the shocks of two fearful calamities: one not quite past, although its fury had abated; the other to come. Within a few yards of the very spot on which we are assembled, so the tradition runs, that painful and deadly malady, the plague, appeared... more...

Up to the present time but very little has been known of the existence of the peculiarly American family Procyonidæ in any deposits older than the very latest Quaternary. Leidy has described and figured an isolated last upper tooth, from the Loup Fork deposits of Nebraska, under the name of Leptarctus primus, which has been referred to this family. The Museum Expedition of last year into this region... more...

The study of the History of Chemistry as an art, or as a science, is one which possesses peculiar fascination for its votaries. It has been the subject of deep research and much discussion, much has been written upon the subject, and many theories have been broached to account for its origin. We have had laid before us by Professor Ferguson, in his papers on this subject of Chemical History, very... more...

LECTURE I INTRODUCTORY WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1916 I In the third book of the "Ethics", and in the second chapter, Aristotle, dealing with certain actions which, though bad in themselves, admit of pity and forgiveness because they were committed involuntarily, through ignorance, instances 'the man who did not know a subject was forbidden, like Aeschylus with the Mysteries,' and... more...

LECTURE I. INAUGURAL Wednesday, January 29, 1913 In all the long quarrel set between philosophy and poetry I know of nothing finer, as of nothing more pathetically hopeless, than Plato's return upon himself in his last dialogue 'The Laws.' There are who find that dialogue (left unrevised) insufferably dull, as no doubt it is without form and garrulous. But I think they will read it with... more...

My school-boy days and friends. I might find an excuse for being proud, if I were so,—not because my ancestors were of exalted rank or title, or celebrated for noble deeds or unbounded wealth, or, indeed, on account of any ordinary reasons,—but because I was born in one of the highest cities in the world. I saw the light in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, then forming the northern part of the... more...