Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/523

Rh temperate latitude, is ever covered with a mantle of snow. And yet during twenty centuries no historian, no traveler, no savant, no poet, names it, or so much as alludes to it. As the sun describes his daily track, that peak throws its shadow upon at least three countries possessing different languages, but still it was profoundly ignored." The same author informs us of a map of the region round about Mont Blanc, published in the second half of the sixteenth century, but which gives no hint as to the existence of the mountain, which, nevertheless, is visible from all sides at distances of sixty leagues.

Earthquakes in Japan.—It is a well known fact that the number of earthquakes in any given region liable to such disturbances is greatest in that part of the month when the moon cooperates the most effectively with the sun in producing an attraction upon the earth.

Out of forty-eight earthquakes, observed in the years 1875 and 1876, I find that thirty-seven occurred on one of the five days immediately preceding, or on one of the five days immediately following, full moon: in other words, that in a period of twenty-eight days there were only eleven earthquakes falling within a limit of seventeen days, while on the remaining eleven there occurred thirty-seven—a disproportion too great not to be taken into account.

I may add that, thus far, the shocks observed in 1877 are even more noticeably in accordance with the above facts.

An Agricultural Detective Agency.—We have received the "Bulletin" for October of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station at New Haven, containing analyses of thirty-one specimens of fertilizers. This "station" is prepared to test all kinds of fertilizers, seeds, cattle-foods, etc., free of charge, for the use and advantage of citizens of Connecticut. The establishment, therefore, is clearly one of great public utility, and deserving of generous support. Farmers are too often the victims of charlatans, who palm off upon them their worthless fertilizers, insect-destroyers, seeds, etc., at prices enormously in excess of their real value. This agricultural station will in time put a stop to such fraud in Connecticut. As an instance of the sort of work to be expected from the very competent chemists who make the analyses, we may cite the first table given in the present circular. Here, two kinds of fertilizing compositions are analyzed, and shown to possess about the same value as harbor-mud, but the purchaser was made to pay a very high price, indeed, for this mud, when dubbed "composition for vegetables," or "composition for grass."

A New Species of Monkey.—There are now in the Alexandra Palace, London, six live specimens of a monkey new to science, the Macacus geluda, a native of the mountains of Abyssinia, where it lives at an elevation of from 7,000 to 8,500 feet above the sea-level. One of these monkeys is an adult male. It is hairy over the whole of the body, with the exception of a pink patch free from hair on the chest, and a space around the throat of the same color. When the animal becomes angry or excited, these pink patches turn bright-red. The nostrils are high up from the upper jaw, and the upper lip is so mobile that it is often turned up so as to show the whole of the upper teeth and gums. The tail is long and thick, and ends in a tuft resembling somewhat a lion's tail. The color of the hair is brown, except around the breast, where it is gray. The bare part of the chest shows two male indications of teats. The female has not such long hair as the male, and on the bare spot in front are two well-developed teats. The young monkey takes one in each hand, and sucks from both at once. While these animals have rejected all fruits, they have eaten Indian-corn and grass, taking the grass, pulling it apart, and making it into little balls. In their native habitat, these monkeys sleep in caves, and in London they sleep in a large box, the old male remaining on guard near the entrance.

Invention of the Torpedo.—Perhaps the earliest of all torpedoes was that invented by David Bushnell, of Connecticut, a little over one hundred years ago. Bushnell's idea was, to fix a small powder-magazine to the bottom of a vessel, and to explode it by a