God give a blessing to this work; and grant that these sick persons on whom the Queen lays her hands may recover, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

-

Rubrick.-[After all have been presented, the Chaplain shall say]:-
Verse.-O Lord, save thy servants;

Response.-Who put their trust in Thee.”

After some further verses, the responses to which are to be made by those coming to be healed, the service continues with a prayer, after which :

Rubrick.-[Then the Chaplain, standing with his face towards them that come to be healed, shall say] :—

The Almighty Lord, who is a most strong Tower to all them that put their trust in Him; to whom all things in heaven, in earth, and under the earth, do bow and obey, be now and evermore your defence, and make you know and feel that there is none other Name under heaven given to man, in whom, and through whom, you may receive health and salvation, but only the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, &c. Amen.

Mr. Pegge also gives the ceremony practised in the reign of Henry VII. and published by command of Charles II. (1686), in Latin. In this the sick person appeared twice before the king during the service- -once when the latter touches the sore of the patient, and again when it is crossed with the piece of gold.

The Hanoverian monarchs did not pretend to this power of healing; but it appears, from Carte's "History of England," that one of the descendants of the exiled Stuarts undertook the office, and was moreover successful!

F

THE EASTERN QUESTION.

IVE months have elapsed since actual hostilities ceased between Turkey and her vassal Servia, and during this period diplomacy has been trying its best or its worst to settle difficulties and secure a permanent peace. We fear those who maintain that the sword need never be resorted to will look back upon these five months of negotiation with anything but satisfaction. The old fashion used to be for belligerents to go into winter quarters, by mutual consent, as regularly as the season came round; now-a-days it seems the same is done, only by a more complicated process and under another name.

We must, however, give the diplomatists credit for having achieved something during these winter months. They have pretty well undone all that was done by the Crimean War, and the Treaty of Paris which was the outcome of it. If the Protocol signed the other day in London means anything it surely means this-that Russia and Turkey are left to come to some settlement at St. Petersburg if they can, and if not they must fight it out between them. If the word of an Ottoman were as good as his bond, there would be much force in the Memorandum issued in reply by the Sublime Porte; and even after making all necessary deductions on that score, it is unquestionably a weighty document, and one that does credit to the Grand Vizier's ability. We may accept the statement, "Turkey feels that she is now contending for her existence" as literally true, and not merely a cover to the declaration in the next paragraph that she will resist to the uttermost all interference.

Last December we drew attention to some of the "rocks ahead" which would have to be watched; and, like living coral reefs, some of these have grown in the meantime. Prince Nikita still insists upon the territorial concessions which we expected he would claim; and a portion of Albania has now risen against the Sultan, and is siding with the Prince. Crete already shows signs of breaking off her allegiance, and has positively refused to send any deputies to Parliament. In the far East, we have a rumour that the old quarrel as to the succession to the Caliphate is to be revived, and that the Shiites purpose taking the opportunity of regaining the heritage of Ali. The existence of Turkey is, therefore, threatened from all the four points of the compass. The "sick man" is undoubtedly past recovery, and the only thing to be done is to provide that the final dissolution takes. place as calmly as possible, and that the division of the estate may be amicably carried out, to the satisfaction of all parties concerned.

Whether the course our Government has adopted so far has tended in this direction may be open to question. It would appear that we have simply lost our prestige in the eyes of all the subjects of the Sultan, Mohammedan and Christian alike. While the former counted on our friendship, the latter had some ground to hope in our influence to restrain wrong; but now even British subjects resident in Turkey occupy no enviable position. Last autumn, too, it was possible to suggest solutions with fair grounds of hope that they could have been

carried out; now there seems but one alternative, and that the direst of all,

The only satisfaction that can be derived from the retrospect is that all excuse for giving the Ottoman Government the benefit of our support is swept away; and that the will of the nation is too well known to believe that those in power would willingly run counter to it. But the greatest care will have to be exercised in protecting the persons of British subjects during the coming war, without taking such measures as shall involuntarily drag us into the conflict. Every step in this direction should be taken with the utmost circumspection, and should be most jealously watched by the public.

It has become pretty evident that the ruling power will have to pass out of the hands of the Mohammedans; it is pretty evident, too, that the great bulk of the Christians in Turkey have no desire to substitute the Czar for the Sultan, and that neither a strictly Slavonic power nor a strictly Greek power will give satisfaction to the various races that now go to make up European Turkey. Everything points to a confederation, in which these two leading nationalities should occupy the positions of prominence, as the only solution which offers any substantial promise for the future; and it will be for the great Powers to watch their opportunity of interposing with a well-digested scheme of this nature as soon as the belligerents may have been taught the desirableness of listening to pacific overtures.

ADDENDUM.-Since this went to print the formal Declaration of War has been issued by Russia; though virtually this had been done by Turkey in the Memorandum already referred to. The attitude taken by Roumania is very significant. The Suzerainty of the Porte has been utterly disregarded, and the Treaty rights of the United Principalities waived, in order to afford facilities to the Russian army in the approaching campaign. A few more such defections, and the whole Turkish Empire will have crumbled to pieces.

We regret to note a continued antagonism against Russia in a great part of the public press. The only hope of our being able to keep out of the strife, and so avoid a general European war, lies in giving Russia all the moral support we can.

THE LORELEY.

A LEGEND FROM THE GERMAN OF HEINRICH HEINE.

I

KNOW not what it doth betoken,

That I so sad should be,

And a legend of olden time
So run in my memory.

The air is cool, twilight draws on,
And smoothly flows the Rhine;
But aloft on the mountain peaks
The sun's last rays still shine.

Up yonder the beautiful Jungfrau sits,
Deck'd with gold and jewels rare,
That sparkle and dazzle wondrously
As she combs her golden hair.
She combs it with a golden comb,
And sings a song the while;
A plaintive wailing melody,
With a fatal power to beguile.

The boatman in his little skiff
Hears the sound with wild dismay,

He turns his eyes from the reef
And looks up at the cliffs, far away.

The waves, I believe, will engulf him,

And make an end of both boatman and boat,

Beguil'd, alas! by the Loreley's song,

With its plaintive wailing note.

CATHERINE CHARLOTTE JACKSON.

REPORTS ON THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE.

GEOLOGY.-By B. B. WOODWARD.

OME further additions have been made by Professor Lydekker

Som E fu fossila fauna of India.

From the celebrated Sewalik

beds, on the southern flanks of the Himalayas, that will ever be

* Records of the Geol. Surv. of India, vol. x. pt. i., 1877.

associated with the names of Falconer and Cautley, we notice two new species of ox (Bos acutifrons and B. planifrons); a horse (Sivalhippus Theobaldi) resembling the Hippotherium, and represented by four anterior molar teeth; and a carnivore belonging to the genet tribe. The Lameta rocks furnish a new genus of Dinosaurs (Titanosaurus), those remarkable reptiles that walked on their hind legs and tail, and which in some points of their structure form a link between reptiles and birds. The discovery is also recorded of the dental plates of a species of Myliobates, a fish allied to the existing skates and rays, in the nummulitic limestones of Kachh. This is of some interest, as it shows that the Kachh beds were deposited under conditions similar to those which prevailed in this country during the formation of their nearest English equivalents, the Bracklesham beds, that likewise contain remains of this fish.

A pleistocene breccia at the somewhat appropriately named locality of Bone, in Algeria, has afforded evidences of a new species of hippopotamus.* Like the three Indian species described by Falconer and Cautley, in their "Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis," it differs from the existing hippopotamus by the presence of six incisors in the lower jaw instead of four. The enamel of these teeth is thicker, unchannelled, and more clearly marked than in the recent animal; the canines too are finely striated, instead of strongly channelled; but in so much as they differ in certain peculiarities from the Indian specimens, their describer, M. Gaudry, refers them to a distinct species.

As the fossil contents of the different strata become better known it is found necessary to subdivide the beds into paleontological "zones," each characterised by the presence of some particular or more abundant fossil. Well-marked zones were shown, some years back, to exist in the middle and lower lias, each characterised by its especial Ammonite. Of late years those of the chalk have been attracting considerable attention, and both here and in France have formed the subject of numerous papers, the latest being that by Mr. F. G. H. Price,† "On the Beds between the Gault and Upper Chalk at Folkestone," which forms a continuation, so to speak, of

*Bull. Soc. Géol. de France, February, 1877.
+ Proc. Geol. Soc., March 7, 1877.