wealth is more likely to be transmitted to its owner's heirs
than broken up for public benefactions. And so, in fine, we may trace a
part of our national celebrity for public bequests to the lack of
primogenital laws and of any social system of retaining the bulk of
family wealth in a line of eldest sons.

We are sometimes unjust toward men of prodigious wealth who disappoint
public expectation by bequeathing nothing for public purposes. The
American who keeps fifty millions intact in his family only does what
is customary in other lands, and what may be done without reproach. If
he break no law, a man may do what he will with his own--although, to
be sure, so may his countrymen talk as they will of what he does; and
they will hardly lump in a common eulogy the public benefactors and
those who devise none of their prodigious wealth to the public weal.
For these latter the one or two of their fellow men who have become
millionaires by their wills may properly raise memorial churches, and
stained windows, and chimes of bells; but such wills have earned no
paeans of public gratitude.

PHILIP QUILIBET.

SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

PHOTOGRAPHING FROM THE RETINA.

ONE of the first fruits of the daguerreotypic art was the suggestion
that unknown murderers could be detected by photographing the last
image left on the retina of the murdered person's eye. The idea
that this could be done seems to have taken strong hold of many
imaginations, and we believe this suggestion is repeated to the police
authorities of New York on the occurrence of every noticeable and
mysterious murder. That such a detective task will ever be accomplished
by photography is extremely doubtful, on account of the length of time
that usually passes before the discovery of a murder. But science has
now advanced so far that the image on the retina _has been fixed and
photographed_. This has been done by Prof. Kuehne of Heidelberg, but not
with human subjects, as decapitation is one necessary part of the
process. Prof. Kuehne placed a rabbit four and a half feet from a closed
window, in the shutter of which was an opening twelve inches square.
The animal's head was first covered by a black cloth for five minutes
and then exposed for three minutes. The head was then instantly cut
off, and one eye taken out in a room illuminated by yellow light. The
eyeball was opened and instantly plunged into a five per cent. solution
of alum. This occupied tw