[On all questions relating to the Poles we reserve our opinion till the return of Dr. Hayes’s expedition.  But we think they have little to hope from any future attempt at revolution, especially with such insufficient weapons as their axes, which, though they keep up a constant stir about them, have been long superseded by the improvements of modern military science.  We think our correspondent hasty in admitting that “each object has a particular reflecting surface of its own.”  A little inquiry among his neighbors would have satisfied him that the human brain seldom possesses anything of the kind.]

“But these specimens must suffice as indications of the general character of this attempt at popularizing science.  To do this without misleading and confounding the general reader is a task which claims the largest and most exact knowledge, and the greatest perspicuity of statement, no less than a flowing style and felicitous illustration.  It is a task in which true success, though apparently frequent, is in reality extremely rare.”

“P.S.  I had written thus far, when the fire suddenly penetrating, I suppose, to the nervous system of the poodle, he ran off, leaving me in total darkness and with no hope that his tail (like too many in the ‘Atlantic’) would be continued.  By the brief candle of a match I manage to add this, and to subscribe myself

“Yours ever.”

* * * * *

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