wealthy citizens would not only be highly appreciated, but would meet with a prompt response from its members. September in the past sixteen years except | City Academy of Science from one of our in 1881. Its rainfall was three times the average for the month, and nearly three inches greater than that of any previous September. Excepting June, 1876, which produced 12.11 inches of rain, it was the rainyest month of any name upon our seventeen years record. There were two days in this month which registered over three inches of rain, there having previously been but five such days in the entire period of our observation. LIEUTENANT JOHN P. FINLEY, who will be remembered by our citizens on account of his tornado investigations in this region of the country, and his articles on the same subject in the REVIEW, is now stationed at Fort Myer, Virginia, where, with the aid of four assistants, he is vigorously prosecuting his scientific observations and experiments in the same direction. Lieutenant Finley has fairly earned his promotion by hard and meritorious work, which has also been otherwise recognized by his having had conferred upon him the degree of "Master of Science," by the Michigan State College; "Fellow by Courtesy," by Johns Hopkins University, and election to permanent membership in the Meteorological Society of France. DR. A. A. HOLCOMBE, State Veterinary Surgeon of Kansas, has written a special report upon the nature, cause, prevention, and treatment of hog-cholera, which has been published by the State Board of Agriculture for distribution among the people. Copies can be obtained by addressing Hon. Wm. Sims, Secretary, at Topeka, Kansas. THE St. Louis Academy of Science and the Missouri Historical Society have finally gained the property which has been so long in litigation and will probably at once erect a building suitable for the purposes of both bodies. The property was donated by the late James H. Lucas, a number of years ago, but the delivery was refused by his heirs on account of delay in complying with the terms of the grantor. Such a gift to the Kansas THE International Congress convened at Washington, October 1st, to confer with regard to the establishment of a standard prime meridian for the world, was organized by the election of Admiral Rogers, of the U. S. Navy, as President; Mr. W. E. Peddrick, Secretary, and Professor Jansen, of France, General Strachey, of England, and Dr. Luis Cruls, of Brazil, Scientific Secretaries. The meridian of Greenwich seemed to be favored by the majority of the nations represented, and was finally adopted. At present, England and the United States use the Greenwich meridian, Spain uses that of Madrid, Portugal that of Lisbon, France that of Paris, and Russia that of St. Petersburg. PROFESSOR E. B. TYLOR, president of the anthropological section of the British Association, and Professor H. N. Mosely, president of the biological section, of England, who attended the session of the British Association, at Montreal, as well as our own Philadelphia meeting, accompanied by Professor G. K. Gilbert, of the United States Geological Survey, passed through the city last month on their return to England from a visit to the Zunis, Navajoes and other tribes of New Mexico. Professor Tylor expressed great satisfaction at the result of the visit. He said he had found the Zunis to have retained in a remarkable degree, the customs and religion of their ancestors, while the Navajoes had been much altered by contact with the white race. Professor Tylor and Professor Moseley are both fellows of the Royal Geographical Society. THE first meeting of the Kansas City Academy of Science for the winter session of 1884 and 1885 will be held at the rooms of the Young Men's Christian Association, on Friday, November 7th, at 7:30 P. M. The opening address will be delivered by the President Col. R. T. Van Horn. THE monument of Fresnel, at Broglie, France, recently inaugurated, is of very simple design-a stand of worked stone supporting the bronze bust of the philosopher. A tablet of black marble on the wall above bears the following inscription: "Augustin Fresnel, engineer of bridges and highways, inventor of the lenticular rays, was born in this house on the 10th of May, 1788. The theory of light owed to this rival of Newton the most lofty imaginings and the most useful applications." A deposit of excellent fire-clay has recently been discovered near Santa Fe, N. M., which is said to be of fine quality and very extensive in amount. ITEMS FROM PERIODICALS. Subscribers to the REVIEW can be furnished | through this office with all the best magazines of this Country and Europe, at a discount of from 15 to 20 per cent off the retail price. To any person remitting to us the annual subscription price of any three of the prominent literary or scientific magazines of the United States, we will promptly furnish the same, and the KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY, besides, without additional cost, for one year. THE Popular Science Monthly for November presents the following table of contents: The Relations between the Mind and the Nervous System, by William A. Hammond, M. D.; German Testimony on the Classics Question, by Frederick A. Fernald; Origin of the Synthetic Philosophy, by Herbert Spencer; The Future of the Negro in the South, by J. B. Craighead; Pending Problems of Astronomy, by Prof. C. A. Young; Drowning the Torrents in Vegetation, by S. W. Powell; What is Electricity? by Prof. John Trowbridge; Chilian Volcanoes-Active and Extinct, by Dr. Karl Ochsenius; The Chemistry of Cookery, by W. Mattieu Williams; Domestic Arts in Damaraland, by Rev. C. G. Büttner; Old Customs of Lawlessness, by Herr M. Kulischer; The Oil-Supply of the World.-I; XVI.-Sketch of Prof. James Hall, (With Portrait); Editor's Table: The American Association at Philadelphia; Harrison, Comte, and Spencer; Is the Contrast Valid? Literary Notices. Popular Miscel lany. Notes. WE find the following appreciative notice of the REVIEW in the Boston Journal of Education for September 15, 1884: "The KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY is a strictly popular magazine, better adapted to family reading than any other scientific journal in the country. It comprises original articles by the best writers, and selections from the best periodicals of this country and Europe, upon geology, mining, archæology, medicine and hygiene, meteor arts, history and biography, book reviews, etc." THE October Magazine of American History is a strong and notable number. Its articles are all readable, and of timely and varied interest. The opening article, Curiosities of Invention- a Chapter of American Indus-ology, exploration and travels, mechanic trial History, from the able pen of Charles Barnard of the Century, will be read with interest. It is illustrated with some of the best portraits ever published of Whitney, Blanchard, Howe, Lyall, McCormick, Goodyear, and Edison, and with numerous pictures of early inventions. The Nation's First Rebellion (in 1794), by H. C. Cutler, throws new light upon a singular episode in our national history. A second scholarly paper from M. V. Moore, (copied in this month's REVIEW,) Did the Romans Colonize America? completes the list of the most important contributions for the current month. | WE have before referred to The Dial, published by Jansen, McClurg & Co., Chicago, as the best journal of its kind (literary review) published in the West. After nearly four years acquaintance with it we are enabled to speak in still stronger terms of its excellence. No journal of the kind in the whole country excels it as a purely literary review. Its leading feature is the presentation of the carefully formed conclusions of special students of subjects treated on books, CHICAGO & ALTON RAILROAD. No Change of Cars of any Class{ Palace Reclining Chair Cars Kansas City & Chicago. Kansas City & Chicago. On All THROUGH TRAINS, FREE, Between St. Louis & Chicago. Pullman Palace Sleeping Cars and PALACE DINING CARS ON ALL PROPER TRAINS BETWEEN Office, 533 Main Street, Kansas City & Chicago. Kansas City & St. Louis. KANSAS CITY, MO. KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY, A MONTHLY RECORD OF PROGRESS IN Our culture is drifting to specialty-is becoming one-sided. Our science and philosophy are specialized. Science confines itself to merely physical things, ignoring ethics; while theology restricts its teaching to the future life of man. There is no unity, each following its own lines of thought. There can be no completeness by this method. It is unscientific because all we can know of physical phenomena is from the action of unseen force. Nor can we comprehend the unseen by passing the facts and laws of the physical world. never reach true knowledge until he studies both by the light which this inseparable relation suggests. It is from this fact that the subject of this paper is chosen the occult in nature. Man can And it is well before beginning a topic to know the value of words. Occult in its strict etymology means to hide-hidden. Its popular use, including the so-called supernatural or superstitious, is not the sense in which it will be employed in what follows. In the newer philosophy there is no such thing as the supernatural. The ancient philosophers used it in the sense of the principle of things- or the unseen in nature as distinguished from the manifest. 1 Read November 15, 1884, before the Kansas City Academy of Sciences. VIII-27 But modern science has rejected this conception of Aristotle, and substituted force and molecular action in its stead. In the history of knowledge, however, we find the occult to be but a relative term. What was so in a former age is known in this, and what was occult yesterday is manifest to-day. It is in this sense we propose to deal with the word and the idea. The world had the occult in astrology, alchemy, magic, and the lightning and thunder. To-day they are knowledge, under the names of astronomy, chemistry, magnetism and electricity. The occult is now only as to the nature of these things. And this is so only, as modern thought apprehends, because thinking is fettered by fundamental conceptions as to premises, that obtained when all these were occult. The modes of thought have not been revised with the facts. Or, in other words, the basic conception of nature has not changed with the observed facts of investigation. When we go back to the time when astronomy, chemistry, magnetism and electricity were hidden from man, or obscured, we can readily grasp the theories resulting. But when we come to interpret phenomena by the light of what is now revealed we find the old systems inadequate and irreconcilable. This fact, lying at the very bottom of the discussion, accounts for the confusion of what we call the science and ethics of the time. Our How then can They but con We are gradually changing the old form, from the occult and manifest, to a definition more in harmony with our own idioms-the seen and the unseen. Metaphysicians tell us that things as we see them are not real, only apparent or relative; that this being so, we cannot really know anything. Or, that beyond what is material and tangible is unknowable. But this is again because of the old mistake as to fundamental conceptions-or a mistake as to what is real. senses are for objective uses-to guard and protect the body. they be the sum of knowing, or the only vehicle of knowledge. vey forms of knowledge to the real knower. We now recognize that the unseen governs the seen in all things. We can never attain to true wisdom by searching for the secrets of nature through matter, or for the causes of things in the physical realm. Man ought to know that it is the unseen part of himself that rules the seen. Why, then, cannot knowledge accept this fact for all as well as for self? Science calls these things the "imponderable forces." Is there any force that is ponderable? Is not, then, the unseen the real? Without the presence of the unseen everything is dead. Why then beat over the old straw of matter which when the unseen is absent is nothing? Monotheism has been but in part developed. It reached the plane of one God, took the form of a personality distinct and apart from all else, and has so remained for thousands of years. This personality, thus dwarfed, ruled the universe and managed it as will or caprice determined. But monotheism itself now feels the impulse of the newer thought, and is unfolding as a universal principle, the conception of which is to be interpreted from universal nature. Or, in other words, the one God pervades every atom of nature as one force, one prin |