1814.] Public Establishments for Education at Geneva. a man deeply conversant with mathe matics, is joint professor in that branch. Mr.L'HUILLIER succeeded a man who, during a number of years, had very ably filled the same chair, Professor BERTRAND, who died in 1813, after a long and useful career, and was well known in the philosophical world by his ingenious Développement de la partie elementaire de Mathématiques,' a work highly esteemed for the spirit of acute analysis which is observable throughout. That learned and good man had also published a Theory of Geology, quite new and original, the title of which is, Renouvellement périodique des Continents terrestres.' I have also heard mentioned, with a particular degree of praise, the name of a young professor of mathematics, an honorary one, now absent from Geneva, Mr. MAURICE. He devoted himself very early, and with great success, almost exclusively to the study of the high mathematics, and gave occasional lectures on Astronomy to those students who were the most advanced in that branch of their studies. The School of MEDICINE, though still in its infancy, may boast of several ceJebrated professors, who do honour to the University of Edinburgh, where most of them have received their professional education. It is singular enough that, for a great many years past, all the medical men of Geneva have studied at Edinburgh, and that three amongst them, Dr. ODIER, Dr. DE LA RIVE, and Dr. DE ROCHES, all professors in this school, have, at some long intervals, each of them presided at the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh. Dr. ODIER teaches the Theory and Practice of Medicine. He is universally admired for his medical erudition and success in practice, for his prodigious memory, for the order and method with which he arranges his ideas, and above all for the case and fluency with which he expresses himself on all subjects. He was one of the most zealous propagators of Vaccination on the Continent, and has written a popular exhortation on this useful discovery, which is singuJarly well adapted to the purpose. It has frequently been observed, that Geneva, which, three centuries ago, was the cradle of the Protestant reli. gion, has, since that period, constantly set the example of useful reforms, and reduced to practice the gradual progress of reason and philosophy. Vaccination, for instance, was already an established 311 practice at Geneva, when it was yet The use of nitrous fumigations, for the Dr. DE LA RIVE is Professor of Phar maceutic Chemistry. He is known in the scientific world by several valuable papers. He has, for many years, en. tirely abandoned the practice of medicine, and devoted himself to philosophi cal pursuits. During the late critical events which restored Geneva to inde pendence, he has taken a share in the provisional Government of the Republic; and, whether he continues to serve his country that way, or prefers to return to his former pursuits, his learning and talents will always place him among the distinguished characters of Geneva. He has published, in the Bibliothéque Britannique, an interesting account of some institutions in England for the cure of insane people; a description of the English Dispensaries for the relief of the poor; and other papers on various medical subjects. He has also given, in the Journal de Physique, a paper on the Musical Tubes, (by the combustion of hydrogen gas) in which he proposes an ingenious theory for the explanation of a curious phenomenon, little known till then, and still less understood. Mr. JURINE, now Professor of Zoology, formerly filled the chair of Angtomy and Surgery. He has been long valued in his country as a most amiable and distinguished practitioner, and in the learned world by his 'Mémoire sur les airs ou gaz perspirés,' in which he attributes to the skin important functions which had been till then overlooked. He has also published a medical paper, which was crowned by the Royal Medical Society of Paris. He is an ardent pursuer of Natural History, and and especially of the branch of Insects, on which he has written several interest ing papers. His successor in the chair of Anatomy, which he declined on account of ill health, is Mr. J. P. MAUNOIR, a very eminent and skilful surgeon, equally remarkable by his operative skill, and by the extent of his professional knowledge. Professor MAUNOFR has published several interesting papers; and some, among the rest, on the organ of sight, which he has studied with uncommon success. His Questions de Chirurgie,' a work published at Montpellier in 1812, is considered as a valuable specimen of his talents and abilities. Mr. MAUNOIR's younger brother, who is also a surgeon of great merit, is joint professor of anatomy. Natural History is a branch of study for which the citizens of Geneva have a very decided partiality; and it is not to be wondered at, that the example of such men as BONNET, DE SAUSSURE, DE Luc, and HUBER (the ingenious historian of the Bee), should have developed this taste in so philosophic a city. 1813, his Philosophy of Botany,' which has been universally admired. Mr. THEODORE DE SAUSSURE, the worthy son and pupil of the celebrated philosopher of that name, fills the chair of Mineralogy. Equally ardent as his father in the cause of natural science, he has distinguished himself by many very excellent chemical analyses, and by a variety of interesting papers published in the Journal de Physique, and in the Annales de Chymie, particularly on gasses, and on the germination and the respiration of plants. His 'Recherches chimiques sur la Végétation,' published in 1804, are full of new views and well digested observations; and his recent publications on Ether and Alcohol, afford beautiful instances of the resources of modern chemical analysis. Lastly, Messrs. TINGRY and BOISSIER are appointed to a chair separate from, and independant of, all the others, in which they teach Chemistry applied to the Arts. Mr. TINGRY is an apothecary and chemist of considerable repute, well known by several valuable publications, especially a Treatise on Varnishes, and by his lectures. Mr. BOISSIER was formerly one of the Professors of Belles Lettres; but, for some years past, his attention has been entirely engaged by Natural Philosophy and Chemistry, and he has enriched the Bibliotheque Britannique, and the Journal n.de Physique, with several well written memoirs, particularly on Galvanism. The Rev. Mr. VAUCHER, whom I have already mentioned as one of the Theological Professors, is Professor of Bolany, conjointly with Mr. NECKER, a zealous observer of nature, whose first pursuits were directed to a very different career, but who was induced by his love of science, to take an active part in the public instruction of his countrymen. Mr. NECKER is connected with the sciences by more than one tie; being son of a late Professor of Geneva, nephew of the celebrated Minister NECKER, and married to the accom plished daughter of the late great naturalist DE SAUSSURE. His son, Mr. NECKER, is honorary Professor of Geology, a branch which he prosecutes with great zeal and success. Geneva has lost, for a time, one of its brightest ornaments, Mr. DE CANDOLLE, who fills the chair of Professor of Botany in the University of Montpellier, though he still retains the title of Honorary Professor in his native city. Few men of his age have occupied so high a rank in the sciences; he is known by several interesting works on Vegetable Physio logy, and on other branches of Natural History, particularly his Treatise on the Plantes Grasses, a work most splendidly executed; his second edition of the 'Flore Française,' a superb monagraphy of the species of the Astragales; and, in During the French administration, Mr. BOISSIER was appointed Rector of the Academy of Geneva, a situation of considerable importance. It remains for me to add a few words on the department of Belles Lettres, which is most ably and carefully con ducted by four professors. Mr. SIMONDE SISMOND is appointed to give lectures on the philosophical department of the Belles Lettres. The mere enumeration of his works, every page of which is stamped with talent and marked by sound sense, will be sufficient to give evidence of the extent and variety of his pursuits. His reputation was first established by his Treatise on the Richesse Commerciale,' in which he has developed, in a master, ly manner, some parts of the subject which Adam Smith had left unfinished. He next published a History of the Italian Republics;' and lastly, a full and elaborate account of the Litterature 1814.] Effects of Imagination on the Fatus. du Midi, a work which is replete with curious and elegant information. Younger than his colleagues, he has nevertheless shown the maturity of age in his numerous works; and, after having travelled in France and Italy, as an accurate observer of manners, and having displayed an indefatigable zeal in collecting historical documents, he returned to his native land to inake it partake of the fruit of his labours. Mr. DUVILLARD lectures on Latin and Greek Literature; and, to a great deal of erudition in the classics, he unites a perfect critical knowledge of his own language, and a happy mode of eonveying information in this arduous department. Mr. WEBER's distinct branch is French Literature, a subject to which he is particularly well fitted, as few meu will be found equal to him in taste, accuracy of expression, and politeness of manners. Mr. Picor, the eldest and worthy son of the respectable Dean of the Clergy, Las been adjoined to the above-mentioned professors as an honorary one, and gives a Course of History. He has, with laudable zeal and patriotism, devoted much of his tune to the history of his own country, and has given proof of much patience and laborious eru dition in the works he has published. After fulfilling the painful task of res cording the fall of the Republic, he will, no doubt, resume his pen with in creased ardor and heartfelt delight, to relate its providential restoration. These, my dear friend, are the details I promised you. You will think, perhaps, I have been too prodigal of praise, and that I show too much partiality to my guests; yet, as I have stated facts rather than opinious, you will easily form your own judgment on the subject, I might have abridged my account, by the omission of many names and particulars, but all appeared to me deserving of notice, and I was really at a loss how to make a more concise selection. I should observe, that if an unneces sary degree of complication, and occasional redundance, should appear to occur in some of these academical arrange. ments, it may in a great degree be ac sounted for from the attempt which was made at Geneya, during its union with France, to combine its old institutions with the French system of education, the latter of which will now, of course, be entirely abandoned. There must be, no doubt, in so ex $18 tensive a system of education; many To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. I WAS somewhat interested by a cu rious communication from W. N. inserted in your Magazine for July, in which is exposed to derision the commonly-received notion that the buman fetus is sometimes affected or impressed by a sudden alarm, or a passion cherished by the mother during pregnancy. That same such effects have been produced by these causes, I have been induced to be lieve from the multitude of evidence which is every day brought forward. I myself have a brown hairy mark on my left leg, which my mother made me be lieve was caused by the terror of a vats and a friend of mine has a rough reddish excrescence on his breast, which was un derstood to have been occasioned by his mother having longed for strawberries; so that different and various passions are supposed to have the power of imparting these internal impressions. At the same time I have the same difficulty with your correspondent, in conceiving the possi bility of the power of thought producing a physical mark. I wish the subject would engage the serious attention of physiologists, not only because it is in itself important, but also as it on many occasions influences the conduct of life. There is some kind of countenance given to this mysterious hypothesis, (though I allow the cases are not exactly. similar,) in the subtle conduct of Jacob towards Laban, recorded in the 30th chapter of Genesis. It was stipulated, that the spotted and speckled of the flock should be the portion of Jacob, and those of an uniform colour belong to Laban. In order that those of his own description should be the most numerous, the interested Patriarch, (ver. 87,)" took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and peeled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had peeled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs, when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks.conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ring-straked, speckled and spotted. And Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces faces of the flocks toward the ring. straked, and all the brown in the flock of Laban: and he put his own flocks by themselves, and he put them not unto Laban's cattle. And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods. But, when the cattle were feeble, he put them not in; so that the feebler were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's. And the man increased exceedingly and had much cattle, and men servants and maid servants, and camels and asses." The instance which W. N. has produced of a woman near Highgate, whose skin is divided by a straight line into equal portions of white and black, is certainly most striking and singular; because a lusus nature, as the name implies, is generally sportive and irregular. Perhaps, however, such a phenomenon is not altogether unprecedented, as something of this kind appears to be alluded to in the following passage of a book, published in 1607, called "Lingua, or the combat of the tongue and the five senses for superiority." "I remember, about the year 1602, many used this skew kind of language, (a frequent mixture of Latin words,) which, in my opinion, is not much unlike the man whom Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, king of Egypt, brought for a spectacle-half white, half black." Snowhill, Aug. 20, 1814. J. BRIGGS. For the Monthly Magazine. SPACE OCCUPIED by the DECALOGUE. graved on a very small altar. For, in cluding the title, it occupies in my 8vo. PLANTIN only 2 inch. 03 by 1 inch. 04. and yet it is widely printed, with large spaces between the verses. It would not require an enormous altar to inscribe the Decalogue in characters 8 or even 16 times as large as those of KENNICOT, which are one-eighth of an inch. tion, or throwing them into the adjoining hundreds, opening them to householders, or how?-If it were effected, there are then boroughs, now called individual property, or usurpation, which would then either become government or treasury boroughs; or the aristocratic or oligarchic influence of families, or of wealth, would encrease by being left, after its counterpoise from government was so far taken away. In politics, rarely any beneficial or even safe, if practicable, plan of reform can be introduced by attempting to reme dy an evil on one part without reference to the whole as a system; any more than it is a good method of cure of the gout to attempt to dislodge it from one part to another-perhaps still more dangerous. Arithmetical Compendia. The hints of AMICUS, p. 22, might be usefully extended; but, instead of an exact dividend, he seems to have meant an exact divisor or aliquot part of a whole number. Least Distance of the Fixed Stars. Supposing the fixed stars to be disposed in the circumference of a sphere, so that those of the first magnitude shall be at a radius of 38,000,000,000,000 (thirty- · eight billions,) of miles from our Sun. Circumference, 240,000,000,000,000 (two hundred and forty billions) nearly. Small arcs and their chords may be taken as equal without very material 90 180 or. 50 nearly, being the side of the inscribed square. 76, being the diameter or chord of the semicircle. Considering that the Herschelian plarevolving satellites in the most perfect net is still retained by the Sun with its order, and the comet of 1680 at above 5% of that Aphelian distance, we must have a vast idea of the extent of the planetary orbits. But, if our system extends even as far again as ascertained, (suppose even S0 thousand millions of miles,) it would occupy less than the 2th of a degree, on the radius here taken for the least distance of the fixed stars, or 18", (eighteen seconds.) And we must take about 20 billions of miles to find the shortest line between any two stars of our hemisphere, clearly of the first 1814.] Mr. Hanson on Rain.-Biographical Dictionaries. first magnitude. And at this distance, if of equal size and brightness with our sun, they would appear near four times as large and luminous to each other as to us. It is in vain to argue against the immensity of the universe from the vast ness of unoccupied space, when so much probably is occupied with worlds and beings beyond our reach, even in the nearest portion of our sidereal heavens. Saturn. Saturn is approaching to the disappearance of his ring: however, it is in a position toward us to have the ring sufficiently open to be still, and for some months to come, a fine object. When at Eton, on the 24th of July, (a most agreeable journey, on a highly interesting occasion), we had the pleasure to be favoured by Dr. Herschel with a view $15 both of Saturn and the Moon. Two of For the Monthly Magazine. CAPEL LOFFT. Seven Years' Results of the Rain, deduced from Diurnal Observations made at Manchester, by THOMAS HANSON. April May. June 10.5 January 2.840 18 2.700 162.665 131.385 42.205 93.490 81.445 62.3900 February 2.595 20 1.475 91.955 102.570 92.730 54.575 122.040 14 2.5628 11.2 March .825 10.240 6.345 33.185 122.985 .570 71.325 13.955 151.915 10 1.715 3,825 12 1.760 123.420 111.415 105.075 2.000 62.015 11 2.450 111.900 62.210 2.50582.440 131.795 95.500 21 2.705 2.540 92.185 133.855 245.000 143.475 6.255 14 2.710 124.225 26 1.900 55.115 91.490 11 2.0264 8. 9.960 3.655 71.1564 9.1 133.415 107.140 22 3.7214 12.8 74.800 81.935 9 2,4771 8.2 54.595 105.440 12 3.2828 11.1 81.450 12.425 12 2.987111.7 62.960 53.400 75.008 10 3.4940 11.4 October 2.575 105.320 19 .615 14.685 73.955 145.470 165.795 10 4.0307 11. Novem July. August Septem-3 ber ber Decem-2 ber. 4.695 te 3.105 102.140 73.685 104.585 113.505 12 4.525 11 4.0342 11. 2.62011 1.790 94.680 246.030 94.775 12.995 61.005 9 3.0850 11.4 |