er.

mainly fall on the wealthier classes, but | been at more than one per cent discount would give them the satisfaction of paying in Paris, and that only for a few weeks: indirectly, for it would, of course, be in- in Belgium they actually reached a small cluded amongst the excise duties, and premium. They have long been at par would involve no visit from the tax-gather- again, though there is no probability of an The consumption of stuffs in France immediate resumption of specie payments (cotton, wool, silk, and linen) reaches by the Bank. This fact is an argument about £120,000,000 a-year, so that an im- in itself, and, even if it stood alone, would post of 10 per cent thereon would produce almost suffice to justify the feeling that more than the sum required. The other France will recover rapidly. But when articles employed in dress-leather, felt, we remember that it has taken place straw, &c. afford a margin for additional simultaneou ly with a total suspension of taxation, if it were thought desirable to all commercial payments, and with a fall put a lower rate on tissues. The pro- of 30 per cent in the price of Rentes (74 posed increase of the wine and spirit du- to 52), its value becomes infinitely inties, which stands in M. Pouyer Quertier's creased. On 13th August the Chamber plan at about £3,500,000, might certainly passed a Bill delaying for one month the be carried considerably further. Many payment of all outstanding acceptances: objects of luxury-carriages, servants, the delay has been successively extended pianos, jewels, and other articles of daily use, such as books, candles, furniture in all its forms - are untaxed, and would offer a large field for examination, so that, without touching bread, meat, coal, or iron, which four categories of home production the Finance Minister rightly declares to be sacred, there is room enough to turn round and to select a scheme which, without adopting either protection or income-tax, will make up the required all between 15th July 1870 and 1st June revenue. The difficulty of choice does not lie in the dearth of matter; it springs mainly from the strong prejudices which exist in both sides, and which render mutual concessions almost impossible. The end will probably be thet neither party will carry its object; that both customs duties and income-tax will be abandoned; and that some totally different source of revenue will be selected from the list which has just been given.

But if there is difference of opinion as to the selection of the means to be employed, there is, happily complete unanimity as to the power of France to support the new charges, whatever be their form, which will be imposed upon it: not a doubt, not a hesitation exists on that part of the subject; and when we have glanced at the reasons invoked in explanation of this confilence, we shall recognize how legitimate and well based it is. Those reasons are of two sorts: some of these result from the singularly healthy signs which were furnished by French securities during the war, others from an examination of the inherent condition of trade and produc

tion.

The forced currency of bank notes was adopted in August 1870, and, notwithstanding the series of disasters which have occurred since, those notes have never

down to March for the provinces, and to this moment for Paris; the Bank held a very large amount of those acceptances, which it had taken, as usual, under discount: its current receipts were therefore correspondingly diminished, while its advances to the State were carried to more than £50,000,000; yet, in the face of all this, its notes retained their value, and its shares only fell 5 per cent in

1871. The shares of other institutions came down enormously; even those of the Credit Foncier fell 30 per cent, while the stock of many strong financial companies lost 50 or 60 per cent; but Bank shares moved only in the trifling proportion indicated, and have since risen to a higher price than they reached before the war began.

So far as a National Bank can be taken to represent the credit of a country, so far as public confidence in that Bank can be taken as the measure of its power and influence, it must be owned that the Bank of France has come out wonderfully from this trial, and that the strength which it has shown and the skill with which it has been managed argue well indeed for the interests over which it presides. But the Bank is not the only great corporation which supplies evidence of the monetary force of France; the Railway Companies, which, from their special organization, may almost be regarded as national institutions, have shown almost equal vitality. With the exception of the southern lines, all traffic on them has been virtually stopped during a period of six months, while damage of every kind has been simultaneously inflicted on their works and stock; yet their shares never fell more than about 25 per cent in the worst cases,

while their debentures only lost about 18 miles. The gross receipts produced by per cent, the greater part of which in both this traffic amounted to £27,000,000, givclasses of securities, has been recovered ing an average of £2550 per mile per analready. This resistance to the depress- num. The production of coal rose from ing effects of invasion and disaster, is 5,900,000 tons in 1853, to 13,100,000 tons one of the features of the history of the in 1869; and that of iron from 660,000 war; it has remained generally unnoticed, tons to 1,350,000 tons in the same pebecause the great facts of the campaign riod. The manufacture of beet-root su struck public attention with so much in- gar, which was only 26,000 tons in 1811, tensity that economical questions were reached 204,000 tons in 1869. The bills lost sight of in the smoke of battle; but discounted at the Bank of France reprenow that the smoke has cleared away, the sented £73,000,000 in 1852, and £267,000,time has come to put them forward. We 000 in 1869. The progress has been the may fairly argue that if the crushing same in almost every branch of trade; events of the last twelve months have had, and the closer we look at the details of. relatively, so little effect on the position of each branch, the more clearly do we see the Bank and the Railways, which are the that the progress has been real, solid, and two most manifest expressions of the sound, and that it shows no mark of fictimoney dealings and the interior trade of tious success. Furthermore, the signs of the country, the damage caused by those national prosperity are not limited to events cannot have been either deep or these augmentations, great as they are, in extens ve. This opinion is confirmed by the quantities of business done. The exthe rapidity with which the traces of war tension of foreign trade in new articles, have been effaced, and by the evident especially in iron-work, railway stock, and abundance of the supply of money for all textile manufactures, supplies evidence of the necessities of trade. The subscrip- equal value. Until 1855 France had no tions for the loan partook somewhat of a share in the supply of metallic products speculative character, and consequently to other countries. That trade was mooffered a less certain proof of a really nopolized by England and Belgium; but sound condition than that which is fur- during the last fifteen years, rails, iron nished by the energetic revival of indus- bridges, railway carriages, and fixed plant, try and commerce. In every direction business is resuming its former activity; and unless it should be checked again by political complications or by unwise fiscal regulations, we may expect soon to see France laying by £100,000,000 a-year, as she did during the prosperous years of the Empire.

If from these actual and special evidences we turn towards the general prospects of France as indicated by its rate of progress during the last quarter of a century, we find equal ground for expecting that she can easily carry the burden which the war has imposed upon her. Her foreign trade (imports and exports together) has risen from an annual average of £54,000,000 for the ten years ending with 1836, to $251,000,000 for the same period ending with 1836. The yearly balance of value of her exports over her imports rose in the same thirty years from £1,240,000, to £12,280.000. On 31st December 1869 she had 10.575 miles of railway open, all constructed since 1810; while 3671 miles of new lines were being made. The development of her home traffic is proved by the facts that, in 1869, the railways carried 105,017,972 passengers over an average distance of 23 miles, and 42,078,413 tons of goods over an average distance of 94

have been sent all over Europe by French makers; locomotives from the Creusot Works have been sold in England itself, and the wire covering of the Atlantic Cable of 1867 was supplied from the Jura. That France should be able to compete successfully with England in iron seems scarcely credible, but it is so; the fact is explainable by the relative cheapness of labour in France, and by the admirable management which it brings to bear: coal and ore cost far less in England, but the difference in the price of raw material diminishes with the degree of work employed to convert it into a manufactured article, and France can turn out a locomotive at the same price as England, though the matter which composes it costs nearly twenty-five per cent more in one case than in the other. The same results may some day be attained in other trades, even in cotton perhaps; for France is already able to sell muslins and other similar fabrics in central Europe, notwithstanding the rivalry of the cheap Swiss makers. The rapid extension which has taken place in the export of French agricultural products deserves to be specially alluded to, for but few persons probably are aware of its importance. The value of the wine shipped has risen from an an

in addition to her commercial aptitude, she | which would assuredly afflict most other possesses a special elasticity of character races at such a moment. We may look and temper which serves her admirably on without anxiety at our neighbour's connow, for it supplies her with confident valescence, and may feel certain that the hope in her trial and humiliation, and pre- moment of completely restored health is vents her suffering from the despondency not far off.

From the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Sci- | lated nerve-fibres. It forms an extremely delience " for July. cate network, like the second layer, but its THE MOUSE'S EAR AS AN ORGAN OF SENSA-finest branches may terminate in two ways. TION. Dr. Schübl, of Prague, who lately pub- Some of them, each containing two to four medlished a remarkable paper on the wing of the ullated fibres, run directly to the hair follicles, bat, has made similar researches on the ear of and form a nervous ring round the shaft of the the white mouse, with very interesting and sur- hair, terminating below the follicle in a nervous prising results (in "Schultze's Archiv,' " vol. knot. Others, again, consisting of not more vii. p. 260.) The first thing which struck Dr. than two medullated fibres, bend towards the Schöbl was the immense and "fabulous" rich- surface where the fibres lose their double outness of the ear in nerves. Even the bat's wing line, and form, immediately under the Malpighis but poorly supplied in comparison. The ian layer of the skin, a fine terminal network outer ear was carefully divided horizontally of pale fibres, which is the fourth and ultimate through the middle of the cartilage into two stratum of nervous structures. The terminal lamina, each of which was found to be equally" knots" or corpuscles, and the nervous rings, supplied with nerves, and was then examined are inseparably connected with hairs and their by removing the epidermis and the Malpighian layer of the skin. In each of these lamina were discovered three distinct strata of nerves, which are thus described: The first or lowest stratum lies immediately upon the cartilage; it consists of the largest trunks which enter the ear, 5 to 7 in number, and their next branches, varying from 074 mm. to 028 mm, in diameter. The mode of division of these trunks is mainly dichotomous, but they are connected by several different kinds of anastomoses; as, for instance, by decussation of two adjacent trunks, by transverse or oblique connecting branches, by plexuses, by loops, &c.; while branches also perforate the cartilage, and bring the nerves of the two halves of the ear into connection. The general distribution agrees with that of the larger blood-vessels. The second stratum lies immediately over the first, and is connected with it by a multitude of small branches, and by a fine marginal plexus at the outer border of the ear which may be regarded as common to both. The diameter of its nerves is from 0185 mm. to 0098 mm.; it lies immediately under the capillary vascular network of the skin, and has a generally reticulated arrangement, forming plexuses of very various shapes. The third stratum of nerves, developed out of the very finest twigs of the second, lies at the level of the capillary network; it is composed of branches -0098 mm. to 0037 mm. in thickness, which nean animals. (like those of the other strata) contain medul

sebaceous glands, so that through the whole of the external ear no hair can be found without this nervous apparatus, and vice versa. The connection of the hair follicle with the nerve termination is as follows:- Under the bulk of the hair in each follicle is a more or less conical prolongation, composed of distinct nucleated cells, which run vertically downwards, and is enclosed within the limiting membrane of the follicle. The nervous twig which, as has been said, runs to each hair follicle from the third stratum of nerves, makes several turns round the shaft of the hair, and from the ring thus formed two to four nerve-fibres run vertically downwards to the prolongation of the follicle, immediately beneath which they form a knot. These knots are almost always spherical, sometimes oval, and about 015mm. in diameter. In each square millimetre of the marginal part of the ear there are about 90 such bodies, and near the base perhaps 20, so that the average number may be 30. Calculating from the average size of the ear of a common mouse, it is then found that there are on the average 3,000 nerve terminations on each of its surfaces, making 6,000 on each ear, or 12,000 altogether. The function of this elaborate arrangement would seem to be, like that in the wing of the bat, to supply by means of a very refined sense of touch, the want of vision to these subterra

From The Cornhill Magazine.
CONSULE JULIO:

AN EPISOde under THE COMMUNE DE PARIS.

a one to be lost, and all the aristocratie young heads of "Bonaparte" blossomed out with simili-panamas, bought with hoarded pocket-money, and indulged in SOME ten years ago, when people asked criticisms on the badness of this headMonsieur Torreau, of the Rue Quincam- dress, in the hearing of young Jules, and poix, Paris, what he thought of doing with the kind intention of making him foam with his son Jules, who was then a lanky at the mouth. But it must be recorded youth, with trowsers too short for him, M. than young Jules revenged himself with Torreau used to answer, in a tone of voice spirit. When the thing had gone far and with a toss of the head such as could enough he flattened his fist on the nose of only have come from a retired hatter who a senator's son so vigorously as to keep that had got dix milles livres de rente," that young gentleman for two-and-twenty days Jules was destined to become a Govern- on the sick-list; with his boot he drove the ment functionary. And you should have heir of an Envoy Extraordinary and Minisheard the stress he laid upon that word ter Plenipotentiary rolling amidst a heap FUNCTIONARY! Young Jules insensibly of plates; and armed with a simili-panama, loomed upon the imagination of the listen-he collared the rising hope of a Councillor er attired in golden swallow-tails, with a of State, and made a furious, though red ribbon round his throat, a touch of happily ineffectual, attempt to force the lumbago, a pair of spectacles over his obnoxious covering down his throat. Afeyes, and a roll of administrative parch-ter which, having established his physical ment under his arm. I think it was a supremacy, he exclaimed, with his teeth secret chagrin to both the worthy people, set," And now I'll tell you what the son M. and Mdme. Torreau, that their son of a hatter can do; and from that day was such a long time getting bald. They forth won all the school-prizes. all withlooked with tender impatience to the day out exception. At the annual solemnities, when his head, denuded of its hirsute for- when the rewards were distributed beest, should shine like a new-laid egg, when fore a concourse of friends and distinhis girth should round itself into the deco-guished visitors, it was invariably young rous shapeliness of a pumpkin, and when Torreau's name that headed the roll; he should reap his visage every morning, and in the last year of his academic career, leaving nought but moustache and "impe- when he took part in the Concours rial" to denote that he was a man in au- Général, which is a competition of all the thority, holding Bonapartist convictions, public schools in Paris, he carried the and enjoying a salary out of the public "Prize of Honour," that for Latin Estaxes. Alas! best of parent, what would say, and enjoyed the triumph of being you have said had it been predicted to cheered to the echo by his old antagonists, you that your offspring, Jules, would who, proud of the lustre he was shedding climb the steeps of power with a poll as on their school, shouted rapturously, shaggy as the uncombed mane of a lion," Vive Torreau!" and set up a hurricane a beard flaming out to a foot's length of applause as, flushed and nervous amidst on either side of his countenance, and a vast assembly of spectators risen to the word "Republican" indelibly stamped their feet to do him honour, he descended on every part of his person and apparel from the dais where he had received his -on his finger-nails, on the ragged cuffs crown of gilt laurel leaves and his two and greasy collar of his coat, on the furi-thousand francs' worth of books from the ous-looking brim of his wideawake hat? Minister of Public Instruction. Ah me!.... But let us not anticipate. Young Jules was a good lad, and would have made a blameless hatter; but his father, with a restless eye to his future greatness, had sent him early to the Lycée Bonaparte, which was a mistake, for the Lycée Bonaparte in the Chaussée d' Antin was the most official and aristocratic of all the public schools; and when it became known there that young Jules was the son of "TORREAU, inventor of the Simili-Panama, warranted to stand all weath

ers.

Price fifty sous. Beware of spurious imitations," the joke was thought too good

I promise you that was a fine day for the Torreau connection. The excellent Madame Torreau wept a pocket-handkerchief-full of tears; the face of Torreau senior looked like a freshly-cooked lobster; and pretty Malle. Victorine Torreau, known in the Quartier Quincampoix as the future possessor of "cent mille livres de dot, was as pink with pleasure and as moist about the eyes as though she had been suffered to marry poor Celestin Joubarbe, her father's ex-apprentice, who had dared to aspire to her hand, and been ignominiously forbidden the house in con