Our Narrow Limits and Future Tasks.—As the Journal goes to press I realize vividly how utterly inadequate a dollar monthly is for the expression of the new philosophy, even in the most condensed form, and for the periscope of progress that it should contain. A large amount of desirable matter is necessarily excluded. Nevertheless a modest beginning is prudent; for the vitality of a young journal, whether daily, weekly, or monthly, is as delicate as that of an infant. It is to be hoped that the friends of progress will secure patronage enough to the Journal this year to justify its enlargement in 1888. Meantime the minister whose circuit embraces many stations cannot visit them all each week. In like manner the Journal of Man has too large a circuit to approach each of its themes every month. The science of man being the highest and most comprehensive of themes, occupies the chief position in the first number. Hereafter we must consider in succession such themes as

1. Psychometry and its revelations; Spiritual science and philosophy.
2. Medical progress and reform; Hygiene and temperance.
3. Educational principles and progress; Progress in science and invention.
4. The truth in Religion; the prevention of War.
5. Land and Labor questions; the extinction of Monopolies.
6. Woman’s rights and progress; the condition of the World.

And a score of other important themes. It may be two years before they can all be reached. Those who preserve their Journals will in time have a small library, embodying the knowledge that progressive minds would cherish.

Palmistry.—Mr. E. Heron-Allen, a very intelligent gentleman from England, with a fashionable prestige, has been interesting the fashionables of New York and Boston in palmistry, or, as he calls it, cheirosophy, with considerable profit to himself. The human constitution is so unitary in itself that every portion reveals much of the whole. Physicians learn a great deal from the globules of the blood, others draw many inferences from the excretions. The amount of study given to the hand renders it probable that palmistry may have considerable value as a physiognomic science. As it comes now in a fashionable style it may flourish, but of course it was only a vulgar imposture when practiced by gypsies. Circumstances alter cases.

Suicide.—Eight months of the present year show 150 suicides in the German army. Suicides will be greatly diminished when nations disband their armies.

Theosophist Reviews.—The Theosophist, published at Madras, India, may be considered the leading organ of Oriental Theosophy; the Path, published at New York, bids fair as the American representative of the Theosophic School; and Lady Caithness, Duchesse de Pomar, has started at Paris a review devoted to theosophy and occult science.

Apparitions of the Dead.—Prof. Barrett of the English Psychical Research Society, states that: “It has been demonstrated almost as certainly as has been the law of gravitation, that scores of cases have occurred where some persons in one town, have, at a certain hour or minute, seen the figure of a friend flit across the room, and have afterwards discovered that at that very hour and minute the friend breathed his last in a distant town, or, may be, in a foreign country. Now these cases are inexplicable by any formula of science, yet that they have happened is scientifically proved.”

Notwithstanding the good intentions of some of the members of that society, its general conduct has been so unfair in its investigations that Stainton Moses, the vice-president, has felt it to be his duty to resign and withdraw. The truth is, the pioneers in philosophy can expect no cordial co-operation and no real justice from their oldtime opponents. The American Psychic Research Society is far behind the English.

Human Responsibility.—A girl was taken before the Paris tribunal charged with stealing a blanket. She pleaded that she was under the influence of another person and could not help herself. In prison it was found that she was in a hypnotized condition, and acted readily under the commands of others, doing anything that was told her. She was examined by a commission of Chacrot, Brouardel, and Mollett, who reported that this condition came from the use of morphia, suffering, and hunger; that these suggestions from others, acting on an unstable nervous organism, greatly deranged by morphia and other causes, rendered her irresponsible for her acts. She was acquitted.

Human Tails.—M. Eliseff presented to the French Anthropological Society a woman with a caudal appendage covered with hair. This anomaly was present in several of the maternal ancestors of the woman.

Men who Live in Trees.—Dr. Louis Wolf, who made the sensational discovery a while ago that the Sankuru River afforded a more direct and more easily navigated route to Central Africa than the Congo, made another discovery in the course of the same journey which was quite as remarkable if not so important. On the banks of the Lomami River, far toward the centre of the continent, he says he found whole villages that were built in the trees. The natives, partly to protect themselves from the river when in flood, and partly to make it more difficult for their enemies to surprise them, build their huts on the limbs of the trees where the thick foliage almost completely hides the structures from view. The inmates possess almost the agility of monkeys, and they climb up or descend from their little houses with astonishing ease. It is believed they are the only Africans yet known who live in trees.

In Borneo some of the natives are said to live in trees, and Mr. Chalmers, in his book on New Guinea, tells of a number of tree houses that he visited on that island. These huts, which are built near the tops of very high trees, are used for look-out purposes, or as a place of refuge for women and children in case of attack. They are perfect little huts with sloping roofs and platforms in front, to which extends the long ladder, by means of which the natives reach the huts. Mr. Gill describes one of these houses which was used as a residence. He says it was well built, but that it rocked uncomfortably in the wind.

Protyle. The address of Professor William Crookes before the British Association, upon the “Genesis of the Elements,” is one of the most important contributions to chemical philosophy that has been published for a long time. Reasoning from the recently discovered law of periodicity among the elements, he discusses the possibility of their being formed from the cooling of one primitive form of matter, which he calls protyle. While he admits that we have no direct evidence that the elements are different manifestations of the same form of matter, yet he thinks that the observed phenomena of chemistry and physics point very strongly to such a conclusion, and agrees with Faraday, that, “to decompose the metals, then to reform them, to change them from one to another, and to realize the once absurd notion of transmutation, are the problems now given to the chemist for solution.” We consider Professor Crookes to be one of the most eminent scientists now living, and any views he may advance are entitled to serious consideration.—Popular Science News.

The Keeley Motor, at Philadelphia, which has long been regarded as a visionary or deceptive enterprise, is coming out now with the endorsement of engineers who have witnessed its operation and say that it develops a new power which cannot be accounted for by any of the known laws of dynamics. It may, however, be a long time before the proper machinery can be invented and constructed for bringing this power into use.