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CARNIVAL

CARNOT

policy since the above was written has not changed. A standing offer of a free library is open to any town in the United State or Great Britain, provided that the town will guarantee a certain annual sum, usually 10 per cent, of the amount donated, in support of the library. New York City alone has received over $5,000,000 for such libraries. In Pittsburg the library is rather overshadowed by the allied institutions for instruction, which make up the Carnegie Institute. About $10,-000,000 is the amount of Carnegie's contribution to this. St. Louis has received $i ,000,000, Detroit $750,000. But it is impossible to mention all the libraries that have been established by Carnegie in this country and Great Britain. His estimate of the value of libraries, quoted above, is emphasized by the fact that so large a proportion of his gifts have gone to helping them.

A significant remark of Mr. Carnegie, in this connection, is that when he was a boy he was so busy reading the books that interested him that he had no time for the wasteful and injurious habits acquired by idle boys.

Car'nival, a festival which originally began on the day after the feast of Epiphany and lasted till midnight on Shrove Tuesday; that is, from January 6 till Lent. In later times it was limited to from three to eight days before Ash Wednesday. The forms and customs of the carnival come from the old heathen festivals of the springtime. Banquets of rich meats and drinking bouts were its chief attractions during the middle ages. The chief days had distinct names, as fat or greasy Sunday, blue Monday, etc. In Germany the carnival is celebrated in the cities of the Rhine provinces and is also being revived in the north. The celebration is usually confined to the wearing of masks, to processions in costume and masked balls. In the south of France and throughout Italy, especially in the cities, it is still a popular festival. Venice used to be noted for the splendor of its carnivals; that of Rome was long the most noted yearly revel in the southern cities of Europe. Here races of riderless horses along the crowded Corso, .the throwing of flowers and plaster confections from the windows and balconies on the people in the carriages and cars in the streets and a return fire from below were among the chief features and frolics of the celebration. In recent years the Roman carnival has practically ceased.

Carniv'orous Plants, certain seed-plants which have developed the habit of capturing insects and using them for food. They live usually in swampy regions, and are able to capture insects in various ways, and then digest them and absorb the nutritious substances. The commoner forms are as follows: The pitcher plants, belonging to the genus Sarracenia, are common in swampy ground both north and south. The leaves are shaped like slender hollow cones and rise in tufts from the ground, the cone containing water, and its mouth being more or less overarched by a hood. A sweetish substance is secreted about the rim, and attracts the insects, which fall into the cone and are drowned. Such pitchers are often found more or less filled with the decaying remains of captured insects. In California a huge pitcher plant, Darlingtonia by name, has leaves sometimes three feet high. The best known tropical forms belong to the genus Nepenthes and its allies, in which the urns swing from the tendrils developed at the ends of the leaves. Various forms of Nepenthes are common in greenhouses. Another group of carnivorous plants is the group of sundews, belonging to the genus Drosera. They also grow in swampy ground and have rosettes of basal leaves, which are beset by sensitive glandular hairs. Small insects coming in contact with a sticky gland are held fast, and the leaf closes over the struggling victim and digests it. Perhaps the most remarkable carnivorous plant is Dionæa or Venus' fly-trap, which is found only in sandy savannas near Wilmington, N. C. The leaf blade is constructed like a steel trap, and the two halves snap together whenever any of the bristles are touched by an insect. In this way the insect is caught and gradually digested.

Carnot (kar'no'}, Marie Francois Sadi, a French statesman, was born at Limoges, in 1837. Entering politics, he became a leader of the strict republicans. He was elected a member of the national assembly and later of the chamber of deputies, and was minister of public works and finance. >In 1887 he became president of France. He was assassinated a t Lyons, June 24, 1894.

Carnot (kar'no'}, Nicolas Leonard Sadi, a distinguished French engineer and physicist, born at Paris, June i, 1796; died Aug. 24, 1832. In his memoir on the Motive Power of Heat he investigated the problem of using heat to do work in an en-

fine, and he first showed under what con-itions the heat may be most economically used. This result, which is embodied in a law known   as   Carnot's   Theorem,   is   one of the foundation-stones of  the science of

M. FRANCOIS SADI CARNOT