Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/518

512 between 1666 and 1867, that Kaiser, of Leyden, had a year or two before undertaken the same task. My result differed from his by one-tenth of a second, which was a serious matter! For when, as in this case, nearly ninety thousand rotations of the planet were taken into account, one-tenth of a second for each gave nearly nine thousand seconds, or two and a half hours, for the actual difference in the two centuries. It appeared, however, that Kaiser had counted two days too many in the interval, having probably counted the years 1700 and 1800 as leap years, and the consequent correction (the difference between two of our days and two Martian days) brought our calculations nearly into agreement. I had called the rotation period twenty-four hours, thirty-seven minutes, twenty-two seconds and seventy-three hundredths, whereas his value gave sixty-two hundredths, and when corrected sixty-nine hundredths. After the reexamination to which I had had to subject the entire question, I felt satisfied that the hundredths could not yet be trusted. But the value twenty-four hours, thirty-seven minutes, twenty-two seconds and seven-tenths is not, I venture to assert, in error by so much as one-twentieth part of a second. Thus one planet at least has been timed and rated; and should our earth, as astronomers opine, be slowly losing its rotation-spin owing to the retarding action of the tidal wave, or from whatever cause, we have in the tideless Mars a celestial timepiece, which a few hundreds of years hence may afford direct external evidence of that process of change.

 

  interesting observations on the habits of the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands by Surgeon-Major Hodder appear in the appendix to the report of the Army Medical Department for 1875, just issued. The account given of these people, though not on the whole unfavorable, does not leave the impression that they form a pleasant society, or that the islands are a desirable place of residence. With the exception of a considerable variety of birds, there is a great deficiency of animal life — wild pigs and cats are nearly all that are known or believed to exist. Insects, lizards, and snakes are, however, common. The aborigines are not cannibals, as reported, and indignantly deny the imputation, nor are they, as has been stated, deformed and hideous, though not exactly prepossessing in appearance. In height they vary from 4 ft. 9 in. to 5 ft. 1 in.; they are extremely black, more so than the African negro, and some of them have "a dull, leaden hue like that of a black-leaded stove." They are fond of dancing, have a strong sense of the ridiculous, are exceedingly passionate, and easily aroused by trifles, when their appearance becomes diabolical. The men wear no clothing, and the women very little. They cover their bodies with red earth, and as ornaments wear strings of their ancestors' bones round their necks, or a skull slung in a basket over their shoulders. They are tattooed all over their bodies, their heads are shaven, with the exception of a narrow streak from the crown to the nape of the neck. They rarely have eyebrows, beard, moustache, whiskers, or eyelashes, and are very fond of liquor and smoking. They are short-lived and not healthy, not many passing forty years of age. Their language consists of few words, and these sound harsh and explosive, and are principally monosyllables. Their chief amusement, and indeed nearly their only one, is dancing, a monotonous song, and the music of a rough skin drum, which they play by stamping on it with their feet. Their method of courtship and marriage has the merit of simplicity. The youth who is a candidate eats a certain kind of ray-fish, which gives him the appellation of goo-mo, or "bachelor desirous of marrying." The girls who are marriageable wear a certain kind of flower. The ceremony consists in the pair about to be married sitting down apart from the others and staring at one another in silence. Towards evening the girl's father or guardian joins the hands of the pair; they then retire and live alone in the jungle for some days. The islanders make nothing but canoes, bows, arrows, spears, and nets, and these are necessary to supply them with their daily food. On the first establishment of the penal settlement in the Andamans their favorite occupation was murdering the convicts and taking their irons for arrow-heads; but they gradually gave up this objectionable practice, and now within a radius of ten or fifteen miles from the settlement stragglers are as a rule safe from attack, though beyond this radius Europeans, except in sufficient numbers and with arms for protection, would probably be roughly handled. Of late years "homes" have been established for the Andamanese consisting of large bamboo sheds, in which those who come in from the jungle put up, coming and going at will. They seem, however, to prefer the jungle, and the attempts made to cultivate their acquaintance do not appear to have, been crowned with success. 