DOI issue:
October 1, 1864
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16874#0146
October 1, 1864.]
PUNCH OR THE LONDON CHARIVART.
139
THE ROYAL BRITISH ASSOCIATION
UNDER HYDROTHERMAL INFLUENCE.
When we listened the other day to Sir Charles Lyell discussing
the mysteries of geology and the hydrothermal blessings of Bath, we
paused on one pregnant period, and we have paused on it ever since.
“ The inhabitants of sea and land,” said the distinguished President of
the Association, “ before and after the grand development of ice and
•snow, were nearly the same.” What, said, we, meditatively, is the
grand development of ice and snow but our friend, Dr. Grusselback’s
development ? Here are the simple terms in which that great savant’s
discovery is made known to the world, and the world in general, and
no doubt several of the stars, will sympathise with us in our disappoint-
ment that it was not brought before the Association in a more formal
manner.
“ It has been stated that Dr. Grusselback, of the University of Upsala, lately
restored to activity a snake, which had been frozen to torpidity for ten years. . It is
also reported that he proposed to the Swedish Government to experiment on criminals.
He proposes to reduce the individual to complete torpor by the gradual application
of cold, and to resuscitate him after a year or two.”
It was no doubt very pleasant for the good people of Bath to
hear so learned a Theban descanting on hydrothermal influence in the
geological change, seeing that Bath owes to the same influence its
celebrity, and the people their prosperity. But where was Dr. Gbus-
selback ? The interests of science and the propriety of the case
required that he should be brought into the theatre in a box of ice
preserved by his own process, and that he should be vivified by the
President with hydrothermal applications till he stood up before the
meeting, an evidence that he was like “other creatures” before and
after this grand development of ice and snow.
But the Doctor came not, and we are left to speculate on the histo-
rical, pre-historical, and for that matter, post-historical evidence of the
practicability of this new development of ice being as grand as the old,
and that as ice was once, according to Sir Charles Lyell, remarkably
useful in “ the transportation of huge erratics,” it may be so still in
making their transportation unnecessary in time to come, and thus
meeting the difficulty of secondary punishments.
We are all properly informed of the extraordinary phenomena which
followed a great frost in the Arctic Regions, to which a ship that sailed
from Wapping was subjected some three hundred years ago. (Vide Sir
John Mandeville’s Travels and Sir Richard Steele in the Spectator.)
The crew had to break their rum with a hatchet, and dig their water
with a spade, and the words as they spake fell to pieces on the deck.
Gradually there was a universal silence; they tried to sing but could
not; they tried to shout, but it was dumb show; they made their
mouths to whistle, but their lips blew out no sound ; a musician among
them attempted to play his flute, but the flute was voiceless:—
“ ’Twas so cold they could not keep the log,
They scarcely knew they had toes on,
And the very skipper’s voice was frozen
For all his grog.”
But all of a sudden there came a thaw, and the air was straightway
filled with voices. Every man heard himself talking at a distance, the
skipper’s voice was heard shouting out orders away to leeward; the
boatswain was awoke by hearing himself swearing his customary oaths,
while in his hammock below. Several songs were heard sung at once
by unseen singers, and the cook’s flute on the galley shelf (after several
stray notes by way of overture) played a tune or two of its own accord.
It was not till after some reflection that, the crew saw through this
mystery, and concluded as a matter of course that the sounds which now
fell from the rigging, and rose from the sea and the cabin companion
way, and the ship’s hold, were the frozen-up shouts, songs, oaths, tunes,
and attempts at conversation let loose by the thaw.
This was one example of the “ grand development of the ice and
snow.” Another which we have read of was the discovery of the bodies
of a, number of people who had been frozen up in an Alpine Pass for a
period of some eighteen years. Some of them were subjected to Sir
Charles Lyell’s “ hydrothermal influence,” and were likely to be
brought to life when the director of the experiment discovered the body
of an uncle whose estate he had inherited, and consequently gave up
the experiment as a bad job. Indeed the hydrothermal system, which
has had so much to do in the internal affairs of the earth, and which has,
according to Sir Charles, transformed bits of Roman bricks into opals
in the ancient aqueduct at Piombieres. is a most important domestic as
weli as geological agent. It melts rocks and it moulds husbands. We
all know what it is to be kept in hot water, if not from our own expe-
rience, at least from that of others ; we can accordingly appreciate what
it has done, and is doing, and will do; we can trust to it as the great
agent for counteracting, in due time, the antiphlogistic treatment pro-
posed by Dr. Grusselback A great opportunity for proving the
effects of both was lost, when in 1843 Middendorf, digging for odds
and ends among Siberian ice, came upon the complete carcase of a
mammoth, which had been preserved in a frozen mass for perhaps ten
thousand years. Here was nature anticipating the Upsala Professor.
Had that savant been present with his experimental snake in his pocket,
he would have resuscitated the ten-thousand-year-old mammoth by
hydrothermal influence.
No wonder then we missed this gentleman at the Bath meetings ; we
looked through all the sections, but found him not. He has reanimated
a snake after keeping it in a frozen state for eleven years ; but as for
the resuscitation of the ten-thousand-year-old mammoth, he wishes to
be allowed to carry out his experiment in corpore vili on the persons of
public malefactors. A most laudable design, who shall deny it ? The
proposal is novel, economical and humane: it is especially worth the
consideration of the British Government in these days when secondary
punishments are our great difficulty, and there is a great objection to
hanging. What are we to do with our criminals? says everybody.
Australia won’t take them, the gaols are full, and tickets-of-leave are
so many garotte licences. Freeze them up, of course! It will save
gaols and gaolers, meat, light, clothing, and heaven knows what,
amounting to a million sterling per annum. It will save the Home
Office an immensity of trouble, and perhaps alter the last office of the
law. What say you, Sir George? Shall we box them up in an ice-
house like Scotch salmon? and after the expiring of the sentence, say
of ten years’ freezing, they might be subjected to the “ hydrothermal ”
treatment of a hot hath, and brought to their senses.
But scientific truths admit no limitation of their principles ; once get
hold of one, and there is no saying where it may carry you. So let us
see how far “ the grand ice and snow development ” may be carried.
There are great men who are before their age.. Why not freeze them
up too, and keep them like King Arthur, in the Isle of Avillon, till
another generation comes abreast of them ? Then subject them gently
to the “ hydrothermal influence.” It is not to be supposed that time
would count against them in their allotted years with the whole clock-
work of the animal economy at a dead stop. Why should we not take
Mr. Gladstone, and freeze him up till another generation be fit for
democratic reform and philosophical finance ? Shall we lay Mr. Dis-
raeli out in icy state in some natural Valhalla, to sleep in frost and
snow till the Asian Mystery approach a solution? It would relieve the
Opposition of a difficulty, and the Ministry of the too frequent use of the
Member for Bucks’ “ hydrothermal ” fomentations. Mr. Bright might
be stored away till the beginning of the century, and rise with great
eclat with his Reform Bill in his hand, in time for the first Birmingham
election in the year of Grace two thousand.
The hydrothermal Mr. Roebuck, what should we do with him ?
Freeze him up ten months out of any twelve, and keep him from all
Cutlers’ Feasts hereafter, to keep him from cutting himself. There is
the French Emperor: just now he has got everything quiet, might he
not dedicate himself to the future of France, and allow himself to be
frozen up till a time of emergency and danger ? His loving subjects
would no doubt keep his Majesty with great care in an imperial ice-box
till his counsel was wanted, like the mystic books of the wizard,
Michael Scott, in his tomb in the Abbey of our Lady of Lannercost.
As vanity is to its owner the mother of imaginary greatness. King
William, of Prussia, might be persuaded to submit to the postpone-
ment of his residuary years under the freezing system; no doubt it would
be sine die: he might be accordingly ticketed to be “ left till called
for,” and if ever he were again, it would probably be to brush the boots
of a French master. As for his generals, Von Wrangel and Prince
Charles Frederick, as they are useless in peace, and in war could
only achieve tinfoil laurels under Austrian protection, let them be
frozen up like Dr. Grusselback’s viper against the day of dirty 'work,
when a small foe and an ignoble cause demand such heroes.
THE MUSICAL FARMER.
In his Speech at Aylesbury, Mr. Disraeli said,
“ The Farmer may, in one respect, be compared to a Public Singer.”
Well, yes, there is no denying that the Farmer does “ sing out ” when-
ever he can get a chance. But there is another reason why the Farmer
is like a Public Singer. He should do his best with his
while the sun shines.
Narrow-Minded Old Thing !
“ And what’s to be the end of this wicked wasteful American war ? ”
asked Mrs. Grundy. “ The Union, grandma,” said Isaac. “ That
I believe, my dear,” said his grandmother; “ but when [ was young,
they called it the Workhouse. But it’s the same thing, my dear, the
same thing.” Mrs. Grundy is an unenlightened old woman, and ought
to be ashamed of herself.
“ The Duke’s (Sutherland) Motto.”—“ Ignis Via.” Fire a-way ///
PUNCH OR THE LONDON CHARIVART.
139
THE ROYAL BRITISH ASSOCIATION
UNDER HYDROTHERMAL INFLUENCE.
When we listened the other day to Sir Charles Lyell discussing
the mysteries of geology and the hydrothermal blessings of Bath, we
paused on one pregnant period, and we have paused on it ever since.
“ The inhabitants of sea and land,” said the distinguished President of
the Association, “ before and after the grand development of ice and
•snow, were nearly the same.” What, said, we, meditatively, is the
grand development of ice and snow but our friend, Dr. Grusselback’s
development ? Here are the simple terms in which that great savant’s
discovery is made known to the world, and the world in general, and
no doubt several of the stars, will sympathise with us in our disappoint-
ment that it was not brought before the Association in a more formal
manner.
“ It has been stated that Dr. Grusselback, of the University of Upsala, lately
restored to activity a snake, which had been frozen to torpidity for ten years. . It is
also reported that he proposed to the Swedish Government to experiment on criminals.
He proposes to reduce the individual to complete torpor by the gradual application
of cold, and to resuscitate him after a year or two.”
It was no doubt very pleasant for the good people of Bath to
hear so learned a Theban descanting on hydrothermal influence in the
geological change, seeing that Bath owes to the same influence its
celebrity, and the people their prosperity. But where was Dr. Gbus-
selback ? The interests of science and the propriety of the case
required that he should be brought into the theatre in a box of ice
preserved by his own process, and that he should be vivified by the
President with hydrothermal applications till he stood up before the
meeting, an evidence that he was like “other creatures” before and
after this grand development of ice and snow.
But the Doctor came not, and we are left to speculate on the histo-
rical, pre-historical, and for that matter, post-historical evidence of the
practicability of this new development of ice being as grand as the old,
and that as ice was once, according to Sir Charles Lyell, remarkably
useful in “ the transportation of huge erratics,” it may be so still in
making their transportation unnecessary in time to come, and thus
meeting the difficulty of secondary punishments.
We are all properly informed of the extraordinary phenomena which
followed a great frost in the Arctic Regions, to which a ship that sailed
from Wapping was subjected some three hundred years ago. (Vide Sir
John Mandeville’s Travels and Sir Richard Steele in the Spectator.)
The crew had to break their rum with a hatchet, and dig their water
with a spade, and the words as they spake fell to pieces on the deck.
Gradually there was a universal silence; they tried to sing but could
not; they tried to shout, but it was dumb show; they made their
mouths to whistle, but their lips blew out no sound ; a musician among
them attempted to play his flute, but the flute was voiceless:—
“ ’Twas so cold they could not keep the log,
They scarcely knew they had toes on,
And the very skipper’s voice was frozen
For all his grog.”
But all of a sudden there came a thaw, and the air was straightway
filled with voices. Every man heard himself talking at a distance, the
skipper’s voice was heard shouting out orders away to leeward; the
boatswain was awoke by hearing himself swearing his customary oaths,
while in his hammock below. Several songs were heard sung at once
by unseen singers, and the cook’s flute on the galley shelf (after several
stray notes by way of overture) played a tune or two of its own accord.
It was not till after some reflection that, the crew saw through this
mystery, and concluded as a matter of course that the sounds which now
fell from the rigging, and rose from the sea and the cabin companion
way, and the ship’s hold, were the frozen-up shouts, songs, oaths, tunes,
and attempts at conversation let loose by the thaw.
This was one example of the “ grand development of the ice and
snow.” Another which we have read of was the discovery of the bodies
of a, number of people who had been frozen up in an Alpine Pass for a
period of some eighteen years. Some of them were subjected to Sir
Charles Lyell’s “ hydrothermal influence,” and were likely to be
brought to life when the director of the experiment discovered the body
of an uncle whose estate he had inherited, and consequently gave up
the experiment as a bad job. Indeed the hydrothermal system, which
has had so much to do in the internal affairs of the earth, and which has,
according to Sir Charles, transformed bits of Roman bricks into opals
in the ancient aqueduct at Piombieres. is a most important domestic as
weli as geological agent. It melts rocks and it moulds husbands. We
all know what it is to be kept in hot water, if not from our own expe-
rience, at least from that of others ; we can accordingly appreciate what
it has done, and is doing, and will do; we can trust to it as the great
agent for counteracting, in due time, the antiphlogistic treatment pro-
posed by Dr. Grusselback A great opportunity for proving the
effects of both was lost, when in 1843 Middendorf, digging for odds
and ends among Siberian ice, came upon the complete carcase of a
mammoth, which had been preserved in a frozen mass for perhaps ten
thousand years. Here was nature anticipating the Upsala Professor.
Had that savant been present with his experimental snake in his pocket,
he would have resuscitated the ten-thousand-year-old mammoth by
hydrothermal influence.
No wonder then we missed this gentleman at the Bath meetings ; we
looked through all the sections, but found him not. He has reanimated
a snake after keeping it in a frozen state for eleven years ; but as for
the resuscitation of the ten-thousand-year-old mammoth, he wishes to
be allowed to carry out his experiment in corpore vili on the persons of
public malefactors. A most laudable design, who shall deny it ? The
proposal is novel, economical and humane: it is especially worth the
consideration of the British Government in these days when secondary
punishments are our great difficulty, and there is a great objection to
hanging. What are we to do with our criminals? says everybody.
Australia won’t take them, the gaols are full, and tickets-of-leave are
so many garotte licences. Freeze them up, of course! It will save
gaols and gaolers, meat, light, clothing, and heaven knows what,
amounting to a million sterling per annum. It will save the Home
Office an immensity of trouble, and perhaps alter the last office of the
law. What say you, Sir George? Shall we box them up in an ice-
house like Scotch salmon? and after the expiring of the sentence, say
of ten years’ freezing, they might be subjected to the “ hydrothermal ”
treatment of a hot hath, and brought to their senses.
But scientific truths admit no limitation of their principles ; once get
hold of one, and there is no saying where it may carry you. So let us
see how far “ the grand ice and snow development ” may be carried.
There are great men who are before their age.. Why not freeze them
up too, and keep them like King Arthur, in the Isle of Avillon, till
another generation comes abreast of them ? Then subject them gently
to the “ hydrothermal influence.” It is not to be supposed that time
would count against them in their allotted years with the whole clock-
work of the animal economy at a dead stop. Why should we not take
Mr. Gladstone, and freeze him up till another generation be fit for
democratic reform and philosophical finance ? Shall we lay Mr. Dis-
raeli out in icy state in some natural Valhalla, to sleep in frost and
snow till the Asian Mystery approach a solution? It would relieve the
Opposition of a difficulty, and the Ministry of the too frequent use of the
Member for Bucks’ “ hydrothermal ” fomentations. Mr. Bright might
be stored away till the beginning of the century, and rise with great
eclat with his Reform Bill in his hand, in time for the first Birmingham
election in the year of Grace two thousand.
The hydrothermal Mr. Roebuck, what should we do with him ?
Freeze him up ten months out of any twelve, and keep him from all
Cutlers’ Feasts hereafter, to keep him from cutting himself. There is
the French Emperor: just now he has got everything quiet, might he
not dedicate himself to the future of France, and allow himself to be
frozen up till a time of emergency and danger ? His loving subjects
would no doubt keep his Majesty with great care in an imperial ice-box
till his counsel was wanted, like the mystic books of the wizard,
Michael Scott, in his tomb in the Abbey of our Lady of Lannercost.
As vanity is to its owner the mother of imaginary greatness. King
William, of Prussia, might be persuaded to submit to the postpone-
ment of his residuary years under the freezing system; no doubt it would
be sine die: he might be accordingly ticketed to be “ left till called
for,” and if ever he were again, it would probably be to brush the boots
of a French master. As for his generals, Von Wrangel and Prince
Charles Frederick, as they are useless in peace, and in war could
only achieve tinfoil laurels under Austrian protection, let them be
frozen up like Dr. Grusselback’s viper against the day of dirty 'work,
when a small foe and an ignoble cause demand such heroes.
THE MUSICAL FARMER.
In his Speech at Aylesbury, Mr. Disraeli said,
“ The Farmer may, in one respect, be compared to a Public Singer.”
Well, yes, there is no denying that the Farmer does “ sing out ” when-
ever he can get a chance. But there is another reason why the Farmer
is like a Public Singer. He should do his best with his
while the sun shines.
Narrow-Minded Old Thing !
“ And what’s to be the end of this wicked wasteful American war ? ”
asked Mrs. Grundy. “ The Union, grandma,” said Isaac. “ That
I believe, my dear,” said his grandmother; “ but when [ was young,
they called it the Workhouse. But it’s the same thing, my dear, the
same thing.” Mrs. Grundy is an unenlightened old woman, and ought
to be ashamed of herself.
“ The Duke’s (Sutherland) Motto.”—“ Ignis Via.” Fire a-way ///