=Inconsistent Philozoists.=--In his address at the opening of the physiological and pathological laboratories at Belfast, Ireland, Lord Lister took occasion to give some illustrations, drawn from practice, of the value of pathological research. "There are people," he said, "who do not object to eating a mutton chop--people who do not even object to shooting a pheasant with a considerable chance that it may be only wounded and may have to die after lingering in pain, unable to obtain its proper nutriment--and yet who consider it something monstrous to introduce under the skin of a guinea-pig a little inoculation of some microbe to ascertain its action. These seem to me to be most inconsistent views. If these experiments upon the lower animals were made for the mere sport of the thing, they would be indeed to be deprecated and decried; but if they are made with the wholly noble object of not only increasing human knowledge, but also of diminishing human suffering, then I hold that such investigations are deserving of all praise. Those little know who lightly speak on these matters how much self-denial is required in the prosecution of such researches when they are conducted, as indeed they always are, as far as I am aware, with the object of establishing new truth."
=The Ruins of Xkichmook, Yucatan.=--The group of ruins in Yucatan called Xkichmook was discovered by Mr. Edward H. Thompson in 1888, when he read a paper before the American Antiquarian Society embodying his first impressions of it. He has since made studies of it extending over a period of seven years. The group is about one hundred and forty miles south of Merida and forty or fifty miles east of Campeche, situated in a narrow valley between a series of rocky hills, and has to be approached by precipitous paths over the hillsides, and thence down the beds of dry _arroyos_ whose yearly freshets wash away all vegetation. Ten buildings, including one called the Palace, and two mounds were explored, and some miscellaneous excavations were made--all of which are described in the author's paper (Field Columbian Museum), with figures of the buildings and objects. Pottery and flaked stone implements were plentiful, but polished implements and specimens of sculpture were exceedingly rare. The flat under surfaces of the ceiling stones of the vaulted chambers seem to have contained very elaborate designs; in another chamber portions of a painting were still partly preserved; in another, curious drawings or glyphs in strong black lines once existed; in another was a painted human figure, of which only the flowing headdress, a portion of the face, and certain devices issuing from the mouth and probably indicating speech, now remain. The mysterious red hand was found painted in various places, and in one a human hand in blue pigment was found, the impression of which was so fresh and perfect in places that even the minute lines of the skin were visible. In ten years of investigation among the ruins of Yucatan and Campeche not as many specimens of worked obsidian were found as could be picked up in half an hour among certain Mexican ruins; but traces of ancient fabrication of flint implements were more plentiful than anywhere else.