The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-14 00:00:00

HORRIBLE CHILD MURDER.—Yesterday morn•

ing, at 8 o'clock, a charwoman employed in clean
ing out the first class ladies' waiting room on the departure
platform of the Great Western Railway Station, Padding-
ton, found under a sofa the dead body of a fine female child
in long ',clothes, and tied up in an apron, the string of
which was twisted tightly round the child's neck. Informa-
tion was at once given to Mr Durdle, chief inspector of the
railway company's police, who ordered the body to be taken
to the Paddington police station, when it was examined by
Mr J. S, Beale, surgeon, of Porter's-road, Paddington,
who said the child was about seven days old, had been
remarkably healthy, and had ,been dead about three
hours. At the time the babe was found there was a
lady in an adjoining first class ladies' waiting room, who
on being interrogated by Mr Durdle, stated that she had
come.to the station to see a lady off by the 6 a.m. train, and
that she had been resting herself since that time. The
lady gave her name and address, and Mr Durdle finding
them to be correct ho allowed her to go at large. The
matter is now in the hands of Inspector Everton and Ser-
geant Hawtree, of the D division.
LIMITS OF HUMAN POWER.--It is, on the one
hand, rash and unphilosophical to attempt to set
limits to the ultimate power of man over inorganic nature,
and it is unprofitable, on the other, to speculate on what
may bo accomplished by tho discovery of now unknown and
unimagined natural forces, or even by the invention of new
arts and new processes. But since we have seen aerosta-
tion, the motive power of elastic vapours, the wonders of
modern telegraphy, the destructive explosiveness of gun-
po ,vder, and oven of a substance so harmless, unresisting,
and inert as cotton, nothing in the way of mechanical
achievement seems impossible, and it is hard to restrain
the imagination from wandering forward a couple of gene-
rations to an epoch when our descendants shall have ad-
vanced as far beyond us in physical conquest, as we have
marched beyond the tropics erected by our grandfathers.
I must therefore be understood to mean only, that no
agencies now known to man and directed by him seem
adequate to the reducing of great Alpine precipices to
such slopes as would enable them to support a veget-
able clothing, or to the covering of large extents of de-
nuded rock with earth, and planting upon them a forest
growth. But among the mysteries which science is yet
to reveal, there may be still undiscovered methods of
accomplishing even grander wonders than these. Mecha-
nical philosophers have suggested the possibility of accu-
mulating and treasuring up for human use some of the
greater natural forces, which the action of the elements
puts forth with such astonishing energy. Cculd we gather
and bind, and make subservient to our control, the power
which a West Indian hurricane exerts through a small
area in one continuous blast, or the momentum expended
by the waves, in a tempestuous winter, upon the break-
water of Cherbourg, or the lifting power of the tide, for a
month, at the head of the Bay of Fundy, or the pressure
of a square mile of sea water at the depth of 5,000 fathoms,
or a moment of the might of an earthquake or a volcano,
our age—which moves no mountains and casts them into
the sea by faith alone—might hope to scarp the rugged
walls of the Alps and Pyrenees and Mount Taurus, robe
them once more in a vegetation as rich as that of their pris-
tine woods, and turn their wasting torrents into refreshing
streams. —Man and Nature, by G. P. Marsh.
The number of visitors at the Patent Museum
South Kensington, for the week ending Sept. 10, was
2,322; total number since the opening of the museum free
daily (12th May, 1888), 849,010.