be attempted on the Woodruff Expedition, and the facilities therefor, I must premise: first, that the published list of professors does not include several who are expected to conduct special departments of botany and zoölogy; second, that the faculty have had no official conference, so that I can speak only for myself.
My own duties will include—1. General lectures on the habits and structure of vertebrates. These will be nearly free from technicalities, so as to be intelligible to all. 2. Special instruction of those who may wish to go more deeply in certain directions; this by superintendence of dissections, and occasional lectures. 3. Instruction in methods of collecting, preparing, and preserving specimens. 4. Preparation of, and research upon, embryos, brains, hearts, and other soft parts, which are usually neglected by foreign collectors.
The students will provide their own dissecting instruments, cans, and preservatives; but, as stated on page 21 of the announcement, the management engages to furnish a library and apparatus for instruction.
I understand such requisite apparatus to include nets, dredges, and sounding arrangements, chemical and physical instruments, microscopes, diagrams, blackboards, stereopticon, and the means of preserving certain typical forms for illustration of lectures.
To insure the fulfillment of the promises made in the announcement, the trustees are to control the transfer of the fees to the director. The trustees are also members of the faculty, and their interests are therefore identified with those of the students.
From what I know or have heard of those concerned in the management of the expedition and the instruction, I feel confident that all possible facilities will be afforded for the acquisition of general information, and for the pursuit of special lines of investigation.
| Respectfully yours, |
| Burt G. Wilder. |
| Ithaca, New York, September 1, 1877. |
CARPENTER ON SPIRITUALISM.
THE recent publication of Dr. Carpenter's little volume entitled "Mesmerism, Spiritualism, etc., Historically and Scientifically Considered," has given a renewed impulse to the discussion of this subject, and called out the strongest champions of the doctrines assailed. We have been accused of unfairness in not opening the columns of the Monthly for the spiritualists to present their side of the question; and so we print two replies to Dr. Carpenter, one English and the other American, by distinguished representatives of the spiritualist party. In The Popular Science Supplement, No, V., appears the answer to him made by Mr. A. R. Wallace, in the Quarterly Journal of Science; and in our present number the reader will find an original contribution, to the same purpose, by Dr. J. R. Buchanan, well known for the last thirty years as an eminent investigator and expositor of the so-called spiritualist phenomena. Dr. Buchanan is one of those who objected to our editorial course on this question as one-sided and unjust. Not liking this imputation, we offered him space in our pages to answer Dr. Carpenter. He accepted the offer, and we fulfill our promise. How far his article is to be regarded as a reply to the reasoning of Dr. Carpenter, or as convicting him of error, will probably be a contested question with different classes of readers; but he has, at all events, given us his very decided opinion of that gentleman, his book, and his backers. We fear, however, that the critic has forgotten, for once, that denunciatory epithets, however profuse and peppery, are not arguments. Dr. Buchanan seems to have vividly remembered all the hard hits that he and his coadjutors have received from scientific writers, and is bent upon using the opportunity to get even with them. This is laudable enough, within judicious limits; yet incontinence of vituperation is a symptom of weakness. Besides, something is due to self-respect; and if we thought Dr. Carpenter was the silly,
