s, this year held at Melbourne, Australia, has just
been published. I find in it mention of the following, among other, late
advances in science.

Proof seems to be accumulating that the suggestion made by Lockyer in
1879, that all the supposed chemical elements are really modifications
of the same substance, and that soon after made by others, that this
common substance is only _condensed universal ether_, the medium of
luminous, electrical, and other vibrations, is going to be accepted as
correct. The opinion that the _panaether_, as it is best called, is _not
atomic_ in its constitution, while all the combinable elements are so,
is also gaining ground.

More exact knowledge being now had of the relations existing among the
different so-called elements, it has become possible to work out the
atomic theory, so far as to prove that the law of chemical attraction is
identical with that of gravitation; namely, that its force is directly
in proportion to the number and mass of the atoms, and inversely as the
squares of their distances: _atomic distances_ being, by extremely
abstruse calculations, approximately estimated. The long wished for full
explanation of the relations between frictional electricity, voltaism,
magnetism, heat, and light, seems likely soon to be obtained; and,
consequently, also the exact physical relations of the vital or
formative force of animals and plants.

It is quite well understood that, as Newton himself anticipated, the law
of gravitation was but a step, though a very great and important one, in
the generalization of cosmic changes and forces. We seem to be on the
eve of another advance, needing only the completion of some difficult
mathematical and physical analyses,--in which all so-called attractions
and repulsions whatever will be resolved into results or phenomena of
motion; ethereal, atomic, molecular, and massive motions; whose mutual
reactions and momenta make the infinite complexity of the universe.
Towards such a conclusion, serviceable contributions were made many
years since, by three American cosmologists, Norton, Pliny Chase, and
Kirkwood.

The 320th asteroid was discovered at Pike's Peak observatory, during
last summer. I may jot down here too, the record of the first
observation of a new telescopic comet, last month, by a senior student
of Bryn Mawr College for Women.

Australia, according to the address mentioned, has at last furnished to
palaeontologists the real _miss