Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/149

 over the foregoing; this superiority the author calls in question. Even as regards knowledge and power, the advance which some claim as a characteristic of humanity is effected by exceptional individuals who arise in certain races under favorable circumstances only, and is quite compatible with long intervals of immobility and even of decline. Besides, it is not proved that the lower animals are literally incapable of progress. To enforce this point the author quotes certain interesting observations made by the writer of a work entitled "Flowers and their Unbidden Guests," who had for months been in the habit of sprinkling powdered sugar on the sill of his window, for a train of ants which passed in constant procession from the garden to the window. "One day he took it into his head to put the powdered sugar into a vessel, which he fastened with a string to the transom of the window, and, in order that his long-petted insects might have information of the supply suspended above, a number of the same set of ants were placed with the sugar in the vessel. These busy creatures forthwith seized on the particles of sugar, and, soon discovering the only way open to them, viz., up the string, over the transom, and down the window-frame, rejoined their fellows on the sill, whence they could resume the old route down the wall into the garden. Before long the route over the new track from the sill to the sugar by the window-frame, transom, and string, was completely established, and so passed a day or two without anything new. Then one morning it was noticed that the ants were stopping at their old place, the window-sill, and again getting sugar there. Not a single individual any longer traversed the path that led thence to the sugar above. This was not because the store above had been exhausted, but because some dozen little fellows were working away vigorously and incessantly up aloft in the vessel, dragging the sugar-crumbs to its edge, and throwing them down to their comrades on the sill."

The Earthquake of November 18, 1878.—Of the earthquake of November 18, 1878, Professor Nipher, of the University of St. Louis, says that it was felt over an area of fully 150,000 square miles, the region disturbed forming an ellipse, with its major axis reaching from Leavenworth to Tuscaloosa, a distance of over 600 miles. The minor axis extended from near Clarksville, Arkansas, to a point midway between Cairo and St. Louis, a distance of 300 miles. The region of greatest disturbance was along the Mississippi from Cairo to Memphis. Here the shocks were universally felt; the walls of buildings could be seen to move, and strong frame houses creaked as when every joint is strained by a strong wind. At Ironton, Missouri, the shock was so severe as to alarm some of the occupants of brick houses. Along the Missouri from Glasgow to Lexington the shock was also severe, awakening many families, who thought a heavy wind-storm was in progress. The shock appears to have been felt first at Glasgow at 11 h. 23 m. (St. Louis time). The shock traveled rapidly along the axis of the ellipse, reaching Cairo at 11 h. 48 m., and Memphis at 11 h. 50 m. At Little Rock it was distinctly felt, although not observed at Clarksville, which is thirty miles farther up the river.

Physiological Effects of Arsenic.—The physiological effects of arsenic have lately been studied anew by Gies, who administered minute doses of the poison daily for four months to pigs, rabbits, and fowls. The daily dose for a rabbit was 0·0005 to 0·0007 of a gramme, for a pig 0·005 to 0·05, and for a fowl 0·001 to 0·008. In all these animals the weight of the body increased, and the subcutaneous fat was augmented. In young growing animals the bones developed considerably, both in length and in girth, and they presented the peculiarity that, wherever in the normal state spongy tissue exists, it was superseded by compact bone. Moreover, just as Weigner found to be the case in animals supplied with small doses of phosphorus in their food, a compact layer of bone was found immediately beneath the epiphyseal cartilages of the long bones. This effect was apparent after the arsenic had been given for nineteen days, and where only 0·02 to 0·035 gramme had been taken. It was observed that animals fed in the same stable presented the same appearances in the bones, which Gies refers to the air being laden with the arsenic