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Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1640, 25 December 1874, Page 475

Mr Barlow, F.R.S., recently read a paper before the Royal Society, in which he describes a method which he has devised for making diagrams of the articulations of speech. Thus, every word spoken has a certain percussive energy, and, by means of a suitable instrument, he produces lines which vary with the words spoken, and with the intensity or suddenness of the production.

An unfortunate reverse of fortune is brought before our minds (remarks the Melbourne correspondent of the Otago Daily Times), by the recent death of MiMatthew Hervey, at one time a very wealthy man, Acting-President of the Legislative Council, and subsequently a member of the first McCulloch Government, But heavy losses fell upon him, and his large property was almost wholly swept away. Lately, ho had a small appointment from the Government as a sheep inspector ; and the other day he was picked up in a dying state on the plains, having, so far as we can judge from the telegrams, been seized with an epileptic stroke while out riding, and subsequently almost starving to death before he was found. The unfortunate man's family are very poorly provided for—indeed, are almost destitute.

It is remarkable (says the Auckland Evening Star) that the only places where complete and elaborate preparations had not been made for observing the transit of Venus were the very spots where an unobscured sky gave opportunity for noting exactly the ingress and egress of the planet. This was the case at Nelson, and also, we learn, at the Bay of Islands, where the day was clear, and the whole of the transit visible. In this instance, as at Nelson, the opportunity was not lost. Mr Williams at Pakaraka, observed the time of ingress and egress with a six-foot telescope. Except that he had no chronometer) and was compelled to calculate the time with a watch, hio observation was perfect, and will form an important addition to the other information gathered in this colony on the astronomical event which has excited such an amount of interest in all parts of the world.

The New York Nation condenses from an English scientific periodical some interesting speculations of Dr Alfred Russell Wallace, on the probable antiquity of the human species. They may well startle, it says, even those who have long since come to the conclusion that 6,000 years carry tls but a small way back to the original home. In fact, in Dr Wallace's reckoning, 6,000 years are but a day. He reviews the various attempts to determine the antiquity of human remains or works of art, and finds the bronze age in Europe to have been pretty accurately fixed at 3,000 or 4,000 years ago, the stone age of the Swiss lake dwellings at 5,000 or 7,000 years, and an indefinite anterior period." The burnt brick found sixty feet deep in the Nile alluvium, indicates an antiquity of 20,000 years ;' another fragment at seventy-two feet gives 30,000 years. A human skeleton found at a depth of sixteen feet below four hundred buried forests, superimposed upon each other, has been calculated by Dr Dowler to have an antiquity of 50,000 years. But all these estimates pale before those which Kent's cavern at Torquay legitimates. Here the drip of the stalagmite is the chief factor of our computations, giving us an upper floor which divides the relics of the last two or three thousand years from a deposit full of the bones of extinct mammalia, indicating an Arctic climate, Names cut in the .stalagmite more than two hundred years ago are still legible; in other words, where the stalagmite is twelve tcct thick and the drip still very copious, not more than a hundredth of a foot has been deposited in two centuries—a rate of 5 feet in 100,000 years. Below this, however, we have a thick, much older and more crystaline (i.e., more slowly formed) stalagmite, beneath which again, " in a solid breccia, very different from the cave-earth, undoubted works of art have been found." Mr Wallace assumes only 100,000 years for the upper floors and about 250,000 for the lower, and adds 150,000 for the immediate cave-earth, by which he arrives at the sum of half a million years that have probably elapsed since human workmanship were buried in the lowest depths of Kent's cavern,

A correspondent writing from Nelson says :—" We are now having most beautiful slimmer weather, and enjoy the soil warm sunshine, balmy breezes, and clear skies so peculiar to our climate. This is the season of luscious fruits, and beautiful flowers, and we have both in great perfection this year. The late show of the horticultural society was an immense success, and the display of fruit, roses in bloom, and lovely flowers was never surpassed here, and could scarcely be beaten auywherein New Zealand. The season/ will be a good one for the farmer, the crops everywhere looking well. Since the arrival of tho immigrants from England, Nelson has made a start in tho road of progress. Business generally is somewhat brisker, money is more plentiful, house rent is rising, and the number of empty houses is becoming less. The progress'of the railway works, however, is very slow."