place, he presses the lever down, bringing the paper in contact with the plate, forces the India-rubber-tipped tampon upon the character with such force as to obtain a relief impression of it on the paper. This done, he repeats the operation for his next character, and so on till his writing is done. This machine has the further advantage that the writer can revise his work by going over it with his fingers, and, if he finds that he has anywhere stamped the wrong character, he can bring the proper character under the tampon, insert the paper again at the spot where the wrong character appears, and, by a single application of the tampon, obtain an impression of the right character, and, with the same movement, obliterate the wrong one.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from La Nature.
Fig. 8.
[We add an engraving (Fig. 8) of the writing-machine devised by Prof. E. L. Youmans, the late editor of the "Monthly," during his blindness, which he used with much satisfaction till he recovered his eyesight. The sheet of paper is held in a slit in the roller, upon which it is rolled as it is written upon, a line at a time, leaving a blank for the next line, the proper spacing of which is determined by a ratchet. The pencil is kept in a straight course by means of the bar which is shown beneath the writing. The slide seen near the middle of the bar is used to mark the place where the writer leaves off—as at the end of a sentence.—Editor.]
Prof. Judd claims for paleontology the right to be recognized as a distinct branch of science, because it deals with a class of objects and with objects in conditions with which biological methods alone can not cope. Its objects, besides being largely fragmentary, are in a mineralized condition, for which a peculiar knowledge and skill in petrology are required; it has, in the case of each deposit, to study the conditions under which the materials were laid down; and it has to determine the succession of processes to which the materials have been subjected through the ages since their original accumulation. Processes and knowledge are required in the solution of these problems which are afforded by no other single branch of science.
