Chapter VIII: Part 8

D. Appleton and Company publish as one of their Home Reading Books _The Story of Rob Roy_, by _Sir Walter Scott_, condensed for home and school reading by Edith D. Harris. The editor of the series, Dr. W. T. Harris, furnishes a preface, pointing out the essential qualities of Scott's works on which their fame rests, and analyzing the features of Scottish and English life of the age to which they relate and which give these stories of the border their interest and charm. In explanation of the plan and reason of the present condensation, he says that "it has been found possible to condense the Waverley novels by omitting all lengthy descriptions of scenery, historical disquisitions on the times, and a few passages of dialogue and monologue that do not contribute directly to the progress of the story, or throw light upon the character of the persons who enter upon the scene. It is believed that by this method the interest is preserved intact, and that after a year's interval the story in its unabridged form may be read with as lively an interest as the youth will feel in reading this version." Price, 60 cents.

A paper, _Indices Ponderaux de la Crane_ (Weight Indexes of the Brain), in the Bulletin of the Anthropological Society of Paris, comprises the results of a study of the weight and capacity of the brain, the weight of the mandible, and the cranio-mandibular and cranio-cerebral indices, etc., made upon sixty-four heads of animals by _George Grant McCurdy_, of New Haven, with the collaboration of M. _Nicolas Mohyliansky_.

The pamphlet embodying the _Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Session of the Association of American Anatomists_, held at Cornell University in December, 1897, contains a portrait and notice, with bibliography of the late Dr. Harrison Allen, the reports of the majority and the minority of the committee on anatomical nomenclature, and seventeen papers contributed by members of the association.

The _University Geological Survey of Kansas_ is conducted under the authority of the Board of Regents of the State University, and has issued already several large and elegant volumes recording the operations and results of its work. The fourth volume, now before us, embraces the paleontology of the Upper Cretaceous, and is by _Samuel W. Williston_, paleontologist. Kansas is famous for its fossils, no equal area in the United States, perhaps, presenting such varied and remarkable records of this kind. Yet, while the State has furnished much of interest to the sciences of geology and paleontology, the published accounts in these departments are confined to scattered and abstruse papers accessible only to the specialist. The present publication is an effort to put this knowledge, so far as the particular formation to which it relates is concerned, within the reach of students. Professor Williston has been engaged for twelve years in the study of the geology and paleontology of the State, having spent more than three years in field exploration, and has been eight years collecting material for his book, enjoying the advantage of access to the very important collection of the university. Much of the information is here published for the first time. The fossils of the western part of the State only are described in it, for the sole reason that more preparatory work has been done on them in the university in recent years; but other departments are in preparation and will appear in due course. The fossils described are birds, dinosaurs, crocodiles, mosasaurs, turtles, microscopic organizations, and invertebrates, all of the Upper Cretaceous.

In a paper on _The Relations of the People of the United States to the English and the Germans_, read before the Thursday Club of Chicago, Mr. _William Vocke_ undertakes a defense of the Germans against a supposition that they are hostile to the United States. This is right, if the Germans need defense, which we doubt; but to give his thesis the shape of an attack on England, as is done in the paper, is unnecessary.

The account of the investigations conducted by Dr. _D. N. Bergey_ under the supervision of Drs. J. S. Billings and S. Weir Mitchell, on the _Influence upon the Vital Resistance of Animals to the Micro-organisms of Disease, brought about by a Long Sojourn in Impure Atmosphere_, already referred to in the Monthly, is published under the Hodgkins Fund in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Contributions.

The _Report of the United States National Museum_ which we are called upon to notice is for the year 1895, and bears the signature of _G. Brown Goode_. It embraces accounts of the origin and development of the museum, its organization and scope, and its work in public education; reviews of the special topics in its operations for the year; synopses of the scientific work in various departments; the administrative reports; appendixes relating to accessions to the collections, lectures, meetings, etc.; and a number of special papers of great value and interest, including an account of the Kwakiutl Indians, by Franz Boas; The Graphic Art of the Eskimos, by W. J. Hoffman; The Geology and Natural History of Lower California, by G. P. Merrill; The Tongues of Birds, by F. A. Lucas; The Ontonagon Copper Bowlder in the United States Museum, by Charles Moore; The Antiquity of the Red Race in America, by Thomas Nilsen; and accounts of the Mineralogical Collections in the Museum, by Wirt Tassin, and of the Taxidermical Methods in the Leyden Museum, Holland, by Dr. Shufeldt.

_The Dawn of the Twentieth Century_ is a poem, described by the author, _Charles P. Whaley_, as his first sermon, dedicated to rationalism. He describes himself as having recovered from "a severe attack of orthodoxy," which deprived him for the time of the power of logical reason, and to have at last discerned a theology, "founded upon absolute, demonstrable scientific facts," which is to prevail in the next century. His poem presents his view of that theology.

In the September number of the Quarterly Review, _The New World_, an article by Prof. _Otto Pfleiderer_ on Evolution and Theology, defines the task of Ecclesiastical Protestantism after having abandoned the ethical ideals of mediæval Christianity, as being "for a still wider development, to strike off the dogmatic fetters of ecclesiastical criticism, and to clothe its religious principle in new forms of thought, which shall render for our age the same service that the Greek and Roman dogmas rendered for the earlier time." In an article on Social and Individual Evolution, Mr. _Henry Jones_ maintains that the social tendencies of the present day point to a limitation of individual independence and enterprise.

A contribution to the anthropology of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, _Facial Paintings of the Indians of Northern British Columbia_, by _Franz Boas_, forms the first part of Volume II of the Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History. The Jesup expedition has been organized under the patronage of Mr. Morris K. Jesup, president of the museum, and under the direction of that institution, to study what relations may exist or may have existed between the natives of the northwest coasts of America and the peoples of the neighboring Asiatic coasts. The general likeness, in the midst of their special minor diversities, of all the Indians of the American continent points to an ultimately common origin for them, while the differences indicate that this may not have been precisely identical in time and place, and seem to have required a very long time for their development and establishment. The purpose of the expedition is to collect all the information that can be obtained by its method of exploration contributing to this end. The present contribution embodies the fruits of a study of the arts, as applied to facial decoration, of the Thompson River Indians, the Chilcotin, the Bella Coola, the Kakiutl, and the Nootka. This art is almost exclusively based on animal motives, is highly conventionalized, and has the unique peculiarity of seeking to fit the whole figure of the animal to the surface on which it is applied; whence it presents some curious effects. In this effort to illustrate the principles of its conventionalism Dr. Boas has selected as the most difficult and complicated surface the human face, of which he gives in six plates eighty-eight figures of as many different styles of decoration.

FOOTNOTES:

[45] Elementary Zoölogy. By Frank E. Beddard. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 208. Price, 90 cents.

[46] An Introductory Logic. By James Edwin Creighton. New York: The Macmillan Company, pp. 392. $1.10.

[47] The Workers: an Experiment in Reality. The West. By Walter A. Wyckoff. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 878. $1.50.

[48] Manual of Determinative Mineralogy, with an Introduction on Blowpipe Analysis. By George J. Brush. Revised and enlarged, with entirely new tables for the identification of minerals. Fifteenth edition, first thousand. New York: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 312.

[49] A Manual of Chemical Analysis, Qualitative and Quantitative. By G. S. Newth. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., pp. 462. $1.75.

[50] Human Immortality. Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine. By William James. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., pp. 70. $1.

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Allen, Alfred H., and Leffmann, Henry. Commercial Organic Analysis. Third edition. Revised. Vol. II, Part I. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Sons & Co. Pp. 387. $3.50.

American, The, Kitchen Magazine. A Domestic Science Monthly, January, 1899. The Home Science Company, Boston, Mass. Monthly. 10 cents. $1 a year.

Bailey, L. H., Editor. The Principles of Agriculture. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 300. $1.25.

Bardeen, C. W. Commissioner Hume. A Story of the New York Schools. Syracuse, N. Y.: C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 210. $1.25.

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Campbell, D. H. Lectures on the Evolution of Plants. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 319. $1.25.

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Fragments of Science.

=Pre-Columbian Musical Instruments in America.=--In a recent article in the Popular Science Monthly (November, 1898), entitled Was Middle America Peopled from Asia? I insisted that if there had been any invasion, peaceful or otherwise, sufficient to have affected even in the slightest degree the arts, customs, and religious beliefs of middle America, then, associated with these influences, we should find traces of Asiatic utensils, implements, structures, such as sandals, weapons, pottery, wheels, plows, roofing tiles, etc.; in other words, just those objects most intimately associated with man. I especially considered the absence of stringed musical instruments and coincided with Dr. Otis T. Mason in the belief that there was no evidence of a pre-Columbian stringed musical device. This question has been variously discussed and the following references bear on the subject: A short note in the American Antiquarian for January, 1897, by Dr. D. G. Brinton, entitled Native American Stringed Musical Instruments. The author frankly admits, however, that the cases cited may all have been borrowed from the whites or negroes. Mr. M. H. Saville in the American Anthropologist for August, 1897, described A Primitive Maya Musical Instrument, though he makes no pronounced statement of its pre-Columbian origin. Dr. Mason, in the American Anthropologist for November, 1897, discusses the question under the title Geographical Distribution of the Musical Bow, and in this paper says, "I have come to the conclusion that stringed musical instruments were not known to any of the aborigines of the western hemisphere before Columbus." In my paper I insisted that "had this simple musical device been known anciently in this country, it would have spread so widely that its pre-Columbian use would have been beyond any contention." Mr. Saville finally, in the American Anthropologist for September, 1898, shows apparently the existence of a pre-Columbian stringed musical device in a paper entitled The Musical Bow in Ancient Mexico, and presents his proof in the form of a reproduction from an ancient Mexican codex of an orchestra of six performers. One of the figures, according to Mr. Saville's interpretation, is holding a musical bow in his left hand while with his right hand he is striking the cord with a forked stick. Claiming no skill in the interpretation of these quaint and concentrated Jack-of-heart figures, I readily yielded to the authority of Saville in this matter, and so acknowledged in a footnote in my paper which I was enabled to insert after the pages were made up. Within a few days I have received a letter from Mrs. Zelia Nuttall, the eminent American paleographist, to whom we are indebted for the most profound researches in connection with these ancient codices. In this letter Mrs. Nuttall refers to Sahagun's great manuscript, wherein she says: "The native musical instruments are repeatedly enumerated. The turtle's shell figures among them, _but there is no trace of a stringed musical instrument ever having been known or employed in ancient Mexico_." (The Italics are hers.) Mrs. Nuttall then says that the object held under the arm of the musician which has been recognized as a musical bow is undoubtedly a turtle's shell. In support of this view she sends me a tracing of the figure from the original manuscript which is now in Vienna, in which the entire object under the arm of the player as well as the forked stick is colored blue (Fig. 1). A photograph is also inclosed from another ancient Mexican manuscript in course of publication by Mrs. Nuttall. In this (Fig. 2) the player has the turtle's shell and is pounding on it with a pronged stick, horn, or branch, while in the other hand he holds a rattle and at the same time sings, the notes being graphically portrayed as they come from his mouth. It will be observed that it is the plastron or ventral surface that he is striking, as shown by the notches in its forward and hinder edges, though the plates are incorrectly drawn. In the figure given by Mr. Saville the player is holding the turtle's shell in precisely that position that would enable him to strike the plastron. Even in Mr. Saville's figure the marginal plates of the shell are plainly indicated. By holding the figure face downward the shell is thrown in a normal position with the back uppermost, and what was mistaken for the string of the instrument is the outline of the back of the turtle correctly delineated. With the above figures I give the outline of the left arm and body of a friend who posed for me while holding a large South American turtle under his arm. I have drawn the plates of the carapace to more clearly indicate the position of the turtle's shell. In the original codex, as before remarked, this portion is colored blue. In this attitude the flat plastron forms the drumhead, so to speak, the carapace acting as a resonator. I am sure that Mr. Saville will agree with me that Mrs. Nuttall's attribution is the correct one.

EDWARD S. MORSE.

=Rebreathed Air as a Poison.=--The following extracts are taken from an article by Dr. John Hartley, in the Lancet: "The fresh-air treatment of consumption" appears to be made up of three essential factors: (1) the discontinuance of the supply of bacilli from without; (2) the supply of an abundance of nutritive material to the tissues; and (3) the supply of an abundance of fresh air uncontaminated by the products of respiration. This seems to mean that the tissues, if not too enfeebled, may be trusted to deal with the bacilli already present if their metabolism is kept going at high pressure. Fresh air is now the "official" remedy in the treatment of tubercle. Why is it so ignored in the case of other diseases? Has the pneumonic or bronchitic no need of special ventilation because his microbe is of a different breed? The air was intended not only for phthisical patients or patients suffering from pneumonia but for _all_--diseased and healthy alike--and it is still the natural medium in which the poisonous products of tissue metabolism excreted by the lungs are further broken down and rendered harmless. Dr. A. Ransome has done great service not only by his onslaught on "air sewage" but also by his coinage of the term; for a thoroughly good opprobrious epithet resembles a good wall-poster in its power of arresting and enchaining the attention of the many. It was long ago pointed out that certain constituents of expired air are intensely powerful nerve poisons. These considerations should surely make us look on rebreathed air and sewer gas, not as mere carriers of accidental poisons, such as influenza and pneumonia and the like, but as _poisons per se_, and I wish to be allowed to record a few very imperfect observations made by myself during some years past chiefly on the subject of rebreathed air, with certain inferences which I think tend, however feebly and imperfectly, to show that the poisons we expire have _per se_ very definite effects on tissue metabolism and need not a mere perfunctory admixture with fresh air but very large and very continuous dilution before they are rendered innocuous--that is to say, innocuous to _all_; for while some persons appear to be almost immune, others seem intensely susceptible. The first observation I will allude to was made in the autumn of 1896, in cool weather. I had to take a long night journey by rail after a long and hard day's work. The train was full and the compartment I entered was close; so, as I was tired and fagged, I sat in the corridor by an open window, well rugged up, throughout the journey. The compartment was completely shut off from the corridor by a glass door and windows, through which I could freely inspect its occupants. Two remarkably fresh-complexioned, wholesome-looking young fellows got into the compartment at York. They formed a remarkable contrast to the pallid and fagged-looking travelers already there. The windows and ventilators were carefully closed, and the newcomers, with the rest, settled off to sleep and slept soundly for nearly four hours, with the exception of a few minutes' interval at Grantham. When aroused on nearing London they, like the other occupants of the compartment, were haggard and leaden-hued, their fresh color was entirely gone, and they looked and moved as if exhausted. I examined my own face in the lavatory mirror at the beginning and end of the journey and could see but little alteration in my color; if anything, it was rather improved by the end of the journey. The second case occurred early in 1897. I was asked to see a woman, aged about forty-eight years, who had been treated in a neighboring town for many weeks for bronchitis and asthma following influenza. She had relapsed about a week when I first saw her. She was then sitting up in bed; her face was leaden-colored, her skin was clammy and sweating, with a feeble, quick pulse, and the heart sounds were indistinguishable owing to wheezing; there was some crepitation at the bases. The temperature was about 101° F. The weather was cold, but after wrapping her up, with a hot bottle to her feet, the window was well opened. Her color improved in a few minutes and the sweating ceased soon after. But it and the blueness returned if the window was shut for any time. It was directed to be kept open night and day, and I could see from my house that this order was carried out. Although on one night the thermometer showed 14° F. of frost the chest was clear of noises and she was convalescent in eight days. If fresh air needs warming she ought to have died. Why do most men feel so tired after an afternoon's work in a crowded out-patient room? Why is a long journey in a full railway carriage, even with a comfortable seat, so exhausting to many people? Personally an hour or two in a full carriage with the windows shut will give me numbness in my feet and legs and knock me up for the day, while a railway journey in an empty carriage with open windows does not affect me at all. But most people will be willing to admit that any kind of crowd is tiring. It is to me difficult to resist the impression than an overdose of waste products, whether of one's own or other people's, must generally interfere with the metabolism of nerve tissue. Women as they grow older are apt to live much indoors. I believe the fat, flabby, paunchy woman, whether purple or pale, with feeble, irritable heart and "inadequate" kidneys, is usually the victim of rebreathed air. A "close" room will infallibly give me an abdominal distention and borborygmi within half an hour, and I am inclined to think the purity of the air breathed by the dyspeptic quite as important as his regimen or his teeth. It must, I think, sooner or later be recognized that many of the increasing ills which it has been the fashion to charge on the "hurry and brain fag" incidental to a high state of civilisation and a large population are in reality due to the greater contamination of the air we breathe by the waste products of that population, and that toxines excreted by the lungs will in time take high rank among these as both potent and insidious. If this should come to pass, the present ideas anent ventilation must be abandoned as utterly futile, and the need will be felt, not of letting a little air in, but of letting waste products out.

=The Utilization of Wave Power.=--The utilization of the energy which goes to waste in the movement of water, in waves, tides, and waterfalls, has been a much-studied problem during recent years. The only one of these three phenomena which has as yet been at all extensively commercially harnessed is the waterfall. There have, however, been a number of wave and tide motors constructed. The most recent and perhaps the most promising of these is the type invented by Mr. Morley Fletcher, of Westminster, England. He has made a special study of the problem of motion of the sea, and has already successfully constructed a hydraulic pump, an electric motor, and a self contained siren buoy in which the energy is obtained entirely from wave motion. The great possibilities in this direction for cheap and efficient power plants have not been appreciated by seacoast towns, but it is stated in Industries and Iron, from which we have taken the above particulars, that Mr. Fletcher is at present devoting his attention to devising schemes and designing apparatus for pumping sea water for shore purposes, ore washing, driving electric machinery for town lighting and power plants, buoys for marking harbors with beacons and fog horns, and the many other purposes to which such a constant and inexhaustible source of energy is applicable.

=Dispersal of Seeds.=--Having described in the Plant World some of the provisions of Nature for the dispersal of seeds, Prof. W. J. Beal adds that these various devices, besides serving to extend and multiply the species and promote its plantation on favorable soil, enable plants to flee from too great crowding of their own kind and from their plant rivals and parasites. "The adventurers among plants often meet with the best success, not because the seeds are larger or stronger or better, but because they find for a time more congenial surroundings. Our weeds, for instance, are carried for long distances by man and by him are planted in new ground that has been well prepared. Every horticulturist knows that apples grown in a new country, if suitable for apples, are fair and healthy, but the scab and codling moth and bitter rot and bark louse sooner or later arrive, each to begin its peculiar mode of warfare." So with peach trees and plums and their enemies. The surest way to grow a few cabbages, radishes, squashes, cucumbers, and potatoes is to plant them here and there in good soil at considerable distances from where any have heretofore been grown. "For a time enemies do not find them." Pear trees planted scatteringly are more likely to remain healthy than in orchards. "Perhaps one reason why plants have become extinct or nearly so is their lack of means of migration. As animals starve out in certain seasons when food is scarce, or more likely migrate to regions which can afford food, so plants desert worn-out land and seek fresh fields. As animals retreat to secluded and isolated spots to escape their enemies, so many plants accomplish the same thing by finding the best places with some of their seeds sown in many regions. Frequent rotations seem to be the rule for many plants when left to themselves in a state of nature. Confining to a permanent spot invites parasites and other enemies and a depleted soil, while health and vigor are secured by frequent migrations."

=Commensals.=--Curious associations are formed among animals for mutual aid in the struggle for existence. Some of them are societies of the same species, like those of ants and bees; colonies in which many individuals--as ascidians and bryozoa--join into a single mass and act as one; and associations of animals of different species constituting commensalism where both are benefited, or parasitism, when the advantage accrues to only one of the parties. The hermit crab and certain ascidians furnish very fine examples of commensalism. The hermit crab is known as an inhabitant of shells bereft of their proper owners. Some sea anemones also fasten themselves on shells, and seem to prefer those which have been adopted by hermit crabs. The association is shown by M. Henri Coupan, in _La Nature_, to be one of mutual benefit. The actinia defends the crab and its home against all intruders by means of its tentacles--veritable batteries of prickly stings; while the crab, with its long claws reaching out to catch whatever is good to eat, brings food within reach of the ascidian. Mr. Percival Wright, having taken the crab from a shell to which an ascidian had attached itself, found that the latter abandoned the shell in a short time. M. L. Faunt reversed the experiment, taking the ascidian away, when the crab deserted its quarters, found a shell with the ascidian on it, and occupied it very quickly. He further observed the maneuvers executed by the crab to secure the attachment of an ascidian to its shell. Sometimes a large ascidian will wholly cover a shell; or several smaller ones will spread themselves over the same shell so as to form a continuous envelope over it. The ascidians become so attached to their commensals as to seem unable to live without them, and even to die soon after being separated from them.

=Drift of Ocean Currents.=--Of sixteen hundred and seventy-five floats bearing requests to the finder to return them which Prince Albert of Monaco dropped into the Atlantic during three research cruises, with a view to learning something of the movements of surface currents, two hundred and twenty-six were returned to him up to the year 1892. By working the course which each of them had probably been following, the prince undertook to draw a definite map of the currents. As the elements employed were always numerous for each region, he thinks his results were near the truth in its general lines. The floats landed on almost all the shores of the North Atlantic, from the North Cape to the south of Morocco, along Central America, and on the islands of Canaries, Madeira, Azores, Antilles, Bermudas, Shetland, Hebrides, Orkneys, and Iceland. None appeared as far south as the Cape Verde Islands. The drifts seem to indicate an immense vortex, beginning toward the Antilles and Central America with the Gulf Stream and the equatorial current; passing the Banks of Newfoundland at a tangent, it turns to the east, approaches the European coasts, and runs southward from the English Channel to Gibraltar, after having sent a branch running along the coast of Ireland and the coast of Norway as far as the North Cape. It then returns to the west, encircling the Canaries. Its center oscillates somewhere to the southwest of the Azores. The author's observations enabled him also to establish a very good average for the speed at which these floats traveled in the different sections of the vortex, and for every twenty-four hours: Between the Azores, France, Portugal, and the Canaries, it was 5.18 miles; from the Canaries to the Antilles, the Bahamas, and as far as the Bermudas, 10.11 miles; from the Bermudas to the Azores, 6.42 miles. The mean speed for the North Atlantic was 4.48 miles. The figures are under rather than above the truth.

=Winds of the Sahara.=--Some interesting meteorological observations, made in the Sahara during eight excursions between 1883 and 1896, have been published by M. F. Foureau. The most frequent winds are those from the northwest and the southeast. Every evening the wind goes down with the sun, or goes to bed, as the Chaambe express it; except the northeast wind, which the Arabs call _el chitâne_, or the devil, because it blows all night. Another wind, called the _chihithi_, has been mentioned by all travelers, and is the subject of numerous legends. It is a warm wind from the southwest, charged with electricity, and often carrying fine sand and darkening the atmosphere. The compasses are much disturbed by it, because, it has been suggested, of a special condition produced upon thin glass covers by the friction caused by the rubbing of the fine wind-carried sand upon them; but it has been observed that the spare compasses show the same disturbed condition as soon as they are taken out of their boxes. The disturbance ceases when the glasses are moistened, and does not appear again till they have dried. Several hailstorms were noticed, the hailstones being usually about as large as peas, but larger in the heavier storms. M. Foureau, not having gone as far as the central heights, observed no snow in the Sahara, but was informed that snow falls in the winter on the tops of the _Tassili des Azdjer_, about five thousand feet above the sea. Similar observations have been made by other travelers, and falls of temperature to about 21° F. have been noticed. Very curious mirage phenomena were sometimes observed. Observations of fulgurites, or instances in which the sand had been vitrified by lightning strokes, were not infrequent.

=Evolution of Pleasure Gardens.=--A lesson in the evolution of pleasure resorts is suggested in a book by Mr. Warwick Wroth on the London pleasure gardens. The history of these places has in some cases a strong family resemblance. They usually began as tea gardens, with a bowling green, tea and coffee, hot loaves, and milk "fresh from the cow," as their chief attractions. If the business prospered, other amusements were added, such as music and dancing, with perhaps the exhibition of a giant or a fat woman. Equestrian performances were given in the more important gardens. The manager of one of them kept on the grounds a fine collection of rattlesnakes, one having nineteen rattles and "seven young ones." "Sixteen hundred visitors were present at another one day in August, 1744, to hear honest 'Jo Baker' beat a trevally on his side-drum as he did before the great Duke of Marlborough at the bloody battle of Malplaquet. It was not unusual, moreover, for the owner of a successful tavern to discover on his premises a mineral spring, of which a favorable analysis was easily obtained"--although the spring might be really a bad one. The Spa of Hampstead Wells enjoyed a delightfully pure and invigorating air on the open heath, and had a tavern with coffee rooms, a bowling green, raffling shops, and a chapel, which offered visitors an advantage possessed by no other gardens in London, as a clergyman was always in attendance, and a couple on presenting a license could be married at once on the payment of five shillings. Mr. Wroth suggests that the license was sometimes dispensed with, and the fee, moreover, was remitted if the wedded pair gave a dinner in the gardens.

=A Library of Astronomical Photographs.=--The appointment of Mrs. M. P. Fleming as curator of astronomical photographs in the Harvard Observatory is noteworthy because hers is the first woman's name to be placed along with the officers in the university catalogue. It is more so as a recognition of Mrs. Fleming's proved abilities in certain lines of astronomical work. The astrophotographic building is not used for the taking of photographs, but as a peculiar kind of library where the plates secured by the astronomers at Cambridge and Arequipa are preserved, arranged, and catalogued, as is done with books. The duties of the curator are like those of a librarian. But instead of books, of which many copies exist, each of the treasures in the photographic collection is unique and can not be duplicated. Prints of them on paper are of little scientific value, because no paper copy can repeat all the minute accuracy of the original negative on glass; and prints are not taken from them for scientific use, but only for illustration. If one is destroyed it can never be replaced; and it is impossible to predict what fact one of them may embody of the greatest importance to the labors of some future astronomer desiring to compare the aspect of his special object of research at his period and ours. Mrs. Fleming's name is frequently mentioned in the reports of the observatory, and she has distinguished herself in several lines of stellar investigation. She has about a dozen women assistants, some of whom are computors of long experience, and some are known by the discoveries they have made.

=Forest Planting on the Plains.=--Mr. Charles A. Keffer, in a report to the Forestry Division on Experimental Tree Planting in the Plains, defines the forestless region of America as including all the States between the Mississippi River north of the Ozark Mountains and eastern Texas and the Rocky Mountains, together with the plateau west of the Rocky Mountains. The possibilities of forest growth in this vast area are yet to be proved. Roughly speaking, any species that thrive in the adjacent wooded region can be grown in Iowa, the Red River Valley of Minnesota and North Dakota, the Sioux Valley of South Dakota and the eastern counties of Nebraska, and in the more southern States. We know that difficulties of cultivation increase as one goes westward, but we can not say where the western limit of successful tree culture is. We can not even define the limits of successful agriculture in the plains, for with increased facilities for irrigation splendid crops are now produced where only a few years ago it was thought desert conditions would forever prevail. It is admitted that forest planting, as a financial investment, will probably be profitable on the plains only in a limited degree. Favorable sites may enable the profitable raising of fence posts and other specialized tree crops, but the growing of timber on a commercial scale can hardly be expected.

=A Siamese Geological Theory.=--The east coast of Siam as far south as Champawn is characterized by wide bays, with detached masses of limestone set on steep-sided islands or high-peaked promontories with serrated ridges, the most conspicuous of which is Sam Roi Yawt, or the three hundred peaks. The relations of these various rock masses to one another, Mr. H. Warington Smyth observed, in an address to the Royal Geographical Society, have been long ago lucidly set forth by Siamese geologists, who are unanimously agreed on the subject. "It appears that one Mong Lai and his wife once inhabited the neighborhood (they were giants), and each promised their daughter in marriage, unknown to the other, to a different suitor. At last the day of the nuptials arrived, and Chao Lai and the Lord of Mieang Chin (China) both arrived to claim the bride. When the horrified father found how matters stood--having a regard for the value of a promise, which is not too common in the East--he cut his daughter in half, so that neither suitor should be disappointed. Chao Lai, in the meantime, on finding that he had a rival, committed suicide, and the peak of Chaolai is the remains of his body. The unfortunate bride is to be found in the islands off Sam Roi Yawt, the peaks of which are the remains of the gifts which were to be made to the holy man who was to solemnize the wedding; while Kaw Chang and Kaw King, on the east side of the gulf, are the elephant and buffalo cart in which the presents were brought."

="The Hell of War."=--The Cost of a National Crime and The Hell of War and its Penalties are the appropriate names which Edward Atkinson has given to two essays bearing upon the craze for expansion in which the nation has been abruptly plunged. In them an evil which has not yet received due attention, if any, is presented as sure to be inflicted upon us if the policy of militarism is persisted in. "How much increase of taxation," Mr. Atkinson asks, "are you willing to bear, and how many of your neighbors' sons are you ready to sacrifice by fever, malaria, and venereal disease, in order to extend the sovereignty of the United States over the West Indies and the Philippine Islands?" Another question is put to the missionary enthusiasts: "It may be well to ask all who are imbued with this missionary sympathy, How many young men of your own brotherhood are you willing to sacrifice for each convert? How many of your own sons will you expose to sure infection and degeneration in the conduct of your philanthropic purpose? Or will you satisfy your own conscience by consenting to the necessary conscription of other people's sons when it presently becomes impossible to maintain our armed forces in those islands without a draft?" Mr. Atkinson says that his attention has been called to this phase of the evil attendant upon military occupation in the course of his social studies. "The greatest and most unavoidable danger," he writes to the commander in chief of our armies, "to which these forces will be exposed will be neither fevers nor malaria; it will be venereal diseases in their worst and most malignant form."

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

A new and very ingenious method of space telegraphy is discussed at length in an article by Karl Zickler in the _Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift_. It depends on a phenomenon discovered by Hertz in 1887, viz., the influence of certain short wave-length light rays upon electrical discharges. The ultra-violet waves, which are obstructed by glass but transmitted by quartz, are the most effective. The source of light is an arc lamp. The light is passed through a lens of rock crystal to the receiver. The receiver is a glass vessel partially exhausted of air, one end of which consists of a truly parallel plate of rock crystal. In front of the receiver there is a condensing lens of rock crystal, and within the exhausted chamber are the two electrodes, one of which is an inclined disk and the other a small ball. The electrodes are connected with the secondary portion of an induction coil, and when the ultra-violet rays fall upon the inclined disk and are reflected to the ball, a discharge will be produced which may be read either with a telephone or a coherer. The signals are sent by alternately interposing a plate of glass in front of the rays issuing from the transmitter and removing it therefrom. Herr Zickler has made many experiments to verify his conclusions and appears to have demonstrated the feasibility of his idea in practice.

Mr. Dawson Williams has announced in Nature the discovery in many susceptible persons of a periodicity in the effects that follow a sting. The immediate result, he says, is a small flattened wheal, pale and surrounded by a zone of pink injection. This is attended by itching, but both wheal and itching are gone in less than an hour. About twenty-four hours later the part begins to itch again, and in a few minutes a hard, rounded, deep-red papule appears, and is quickly surrounded by an area of oedematous skin. The formication is intense, and in the affected area, while the ordinary sensations of touch are dulled, those of temperature and painful feelings are exaggerated. In two or three hours the itching diminishes and the oedema disappears, leaving a small, red papule, which itches but little. The phenomena recur, with diminished intensity, in the course of another twenty-four hours, and may return in this way, growing fainter all the time, in four or five daily repetitions. After these returns have ceased, a small, indolent papule may persist for weeks or months. This periodicity is not observed in all subjects, but most generally in those who suffer most.

Among the advantages of Linde's liquid-air process, Prof. J. A. Ewing, speaking at the English Society of Arts, claimed its giving a means of separating more or less completely the oxygen of the atmosphere from its associated nitrogen. After describing a process by which a liquid consisting largely of oxygen may be produced, the author said that the most interesting application of the liquid which had hitherto been tried on a commercial scale was to make an explosive by mixing it with carbon. When liquid air, enriched by the evaporation of a large part of the nitrogen, was mixed with powdered charcoal, it formed an explosive comparable in power to dynamite, and which, like dynamite, could be made to go off violently by using a detonator. The chief advantage of the explosive was its cheapness, the cost being only that of liquefying the air. Even the fact that after a short time the mixture ceased to be capable of exploding might be urged as a recommendation, for if a detonator hung fire, there was no danger of the charge going off accidentally some time after the explosion was due, nor was there any risk of its being purloined or used for criminal purposes.

NOTES.

According to the _Tribune de Genève_, twenty new hotels were opened in Switzerland in 1897, and twenty-five were enlarged, adding two thousand beds and making the whole number of beds about ninety thousand. The number of nights' lodgings furnished during the season is estimated at ten million. Supposing each guest to spend twelve francs a day, the total revenue from tourists would amount to one hundred and twenty million francs, or twenty four million dollars. Classifying the guests according to nationality, it is estimated that the Swiss constitute eighteen per cent of the whole, Germans thirty-four per cent, English sixteen per cent, French twelve per cent, Americans eight per cent, and those of other nations twelve per cent.

A list of women astronomers, compiled by Herman S. Davis from Ribiere's _Les Femmes dans la Science_, contains as contemporary workers in the science the names of seventeen American women who have taken part in astronomical computations or are teachers of astronomy, and twelve who are working in the application of photography to astronomy. Of the women in the later list, Miss Ida C. Martin, Miss Dr. Dorothea Klumpke (now in the Paris Observatory), and Mrs. M. P. Fleming have attained distinction for successful original researches.

The object of the Pure Food and Drug Congress, which met in Washington in March, 1898, with Joseph E. Blackburn, of Columbus, Ohio, as president, is declared in its resolutions to be to secure suitable national legislation to prevent the adulteration of food, drink, and drugs, to secure the enforcement of laws, and secure and promote uniformity of State legislation looking to that end; to create and maintain a high public sentiment on these subjects, to sustain public officers enforcing the laws respecting them; and to promote a more general intelligence concerning the injury to health and business interests resulting from food adulteration. In this work all are invited to join. The congress was in session four days, and several important papers were read to it.

The large Atlantic coastal plain beginning with southern New Jersey, Mr. John Gifford affirms, in The Forester, would soon be capable, if protected from reckless devastation, of producing almost limitless quantities of the valuable smooth-bark or short leaf pine. In Northampton and Accomac Counties, Virginia, lying in this plain, the forests are already properly cared for and propagated without the aid of forest laws. This is done by insuring their freedom from fire, which is attended to purely as a matter of present economy. The value of the woods in holding the loose sandy soil and as windbreaks is recognized, and the litter of the pine trees is a precious dressing for the sweet potato fields. This litter, of pine "chats," "needles," or "browse," is carefully raked off every year and spread on the fields, and there is nothing left in which fire can start.

The Lalande prize of the French Academy of Sciences has been conferred upon Prof. S. C. Chandler, of Cambridge, Mass., in recognition of "the splendor, the importance, and the variety" of his astronomical work; the Damoiseau prize upon Dr. George William Hill, of Washington, for his researches in mathematics and astronomy; and the Henry Wilde prize on Dr. Charles A. Schott, of Washington, for his researches in terrestrial magnetism.

Prof. J. Mark Baldwin, of Princeton, author of the books The Development of the Child and the Race, Handbook of Psychology, and The Story of the Mind, has been elected a member of the French Institute of Sociology.

Among the recent deaths of men associated with scientific pursuits we notice those of Charles Michel Brisse, professor at the Lycée Condorcet for twenty-five years, and professor at other French schools, author of papers on the displacement of figures and on the general theory of surfaces, and of other works in mathematics and mathematical physics, and a co-worker on the _Journal de Physique_, in his fifty-sixth year; Prof. H. Alleyn Nicholson, of the University of Aberdeen, author of books on zoölogy and geology; M. F. Gay, of the University of Montpellier, a student of the green algæ, aged forty years; Dr. Dumontpallier, of Paris, author of contributions to the pathology of the nervous system, aged seventy-four years; Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Pringle, of the British Army, author of papers on the hygiene and diseases of India; Pastor Christian Kaurin, of Norway, a student of Scandinavian mosses, aged sixty-six years; T. Carnel, professor of botany and director of the Botanic Garden, Florence; the Rev. Bartholomew Price, author of several elaborate works in mathematics, and secretary of the Oxford University Press, in his eighty-first year; Dr. Constantine Vousakis, professor of physiology in the University of Athens; William Dames, professor of geology and paleontology in the University of Berlin, and subeditor of the _Paläontologische Abhandlungen_, in his fifty-second year; and Dr. Gottlieb Gluge, emeritus professor of physiology and anatomy in the University of Berlin and author of an atlas of pathological anatomy, aged eighty-six years.

Transcriber's Notes:

Words surrounded by _ are italicized.

Words surrounded by = are bold.

Obvious printer's errors have been repaired, other inconsistent spellings have been kept, including inconsistent use of hyphen (e.g. "newcomers" and "new-comers").

Illustrations were relocated to correspond to their references in the text.

Caption "Photograph of a _Thelyphonus_" added to the captionless image on p. 608.