Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/131

Rh been covered with buildings of every size, the two largest being 300 by 6,000 feet, and about 300 feet apart. They are built of small blocks of sandstone, laid in adobe mud, the outside walls being four feet and the inside walls from a foot and a half to three feet thick. In the lower story are found port-holes a foot square. There are rooms now left, and walls for about four stories high are still standing. About the second story, on the west side, there was once a balcony along the length of the building. No signs of a door are visible in the outer walls, and the ingress must have been from the top, in the inside there being passages from room to room. Most of them are small, from eight by ten to twelve by fourteen feet, the doors being two by four feet. The arches over the doors and portholes are made of small cedar poles two inches wide, placed across, on which the masonry is placed. The sleepers supporting the floors are of cedar, about eight inches thick, and from twenty to fifty feet long, and about three feet apart. A layer of small round poles was placed across the sleepers, then a layer of thinly-split cedar sticks, then about three inches of earth, then a layer of cedar-bark, then another layer of dirt, then a carpet of some kind of coarse grass. The rooms that have been protected from exposure are whitewashed, and the walls are ornamented with drawings and writings. In one of these rooms the impression of a hand dipped in whitewash, on a joist, is as plain as if it had been done only yesterday. In another room there are drawings of tarantulas, centipedes, horses, and men.

"In some of the rooms have been found human bones, bones of sheep, corn-cobs, goods, raw-hides, and all colors and varieties of pottery-ware. These two large buildings are exactly the same in every respect. Portions of the buildings plainly show that they were destroyed by fire, the timbers being burned off and the roofs caved in, leaving the lower rooms entirely protected. The rock that these buildings were built of must have been brought a long way, as nothing to compare with it can be found within a radius of twenty miles. All the timber used is cedar, and has been brought at least twenty-five miles. Old ditches and roads are to be seen in every direction. The Navajo Indians say, in regard to these ruins, that their forefathers came there five old men's ages ago (500 years), and that these ruin-were here and the same then as now, and there is no record whatever of their origin."

Political Economy in Law-Schools.—M. Waddington, the French Minister of Public Instruction, has issued a decree making the study of political economy one of the subjects of examination for the degree of licentiate in all the schools of law. The innovation does not seem to give unmixed satisfaction to the French lawyers, who have at all times treated this science with contempt. The basis of the teaching of law, says their organ, is the text of the law; political economy is no branch of the law—it has no texts—it is not positive science—and is at most a conjectural art, or kind of literature, less amusing than others; and to require that men desiring to become magistrates and advocates should pass an examination in the theories of Malthus, Adam Smith, and Say, is absurd. The claims of economic science will, of course, find plenty of defenders; and indeed it would appear, in view of the complications and contentions which have arisen from the pending negotiation of a commercial treaty between France and England, that it might be well to have a knowledge of economic principles made imperative somewhere.

A New Remedy for Wakefulness.—To those whose brains will not subside when the time for rest has arrived, Dr. John L. Cook, of Henderson, Kentucky, proposes a very simple method of securing prompt and refreshing sleep without the aid of drugs. When the mind is active, the circulation in the brain is correspondingly active; we breathe more frequently, and the movements of the heart are more rapid and vigorous. On the other hand, when the mind is at rest, as in healthy sleep, the circulation in the brain is notably diminished, the heart-beats are less rapid and forcible, and the breathing is perceptibly slower. In the wakeful state the mind, as a rule, is intensely occupied, whence we may infer an increased amount of blood in the brain. Dr. Cook's suggestion is to withdraw a portion of this from the head, or lower the