Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/151

 themselves, who constructed several of the more expensive pieces of apparatus. A great deal can be done in this way. At the very lowest computation, one half of the apparatus might be extemporized by the teacher, and, if (as was done in the town under consideration) the construction of every article were carefully explained to the students, it would give them a grasp and familiarity with the subject which they could not otherwise obtain. The subject being entirely new to every one of the students, their attention was kept up, and their interest in the work never allowed to flag, by an unsparing use of the apparatus in performing as many experiments as possible. It turned out, however, that those students who were likely to fail at the government examination would do so not because their information was defective, but because of their inability to put their thoughts into writing. From want of practice they experience so much difficulty in arranging their facts in intelligible sentences, that one half of their available time has passed before they have completed the answer to the first question on the examination paper. This difficulty was got over by giving the students questions to work at home, and having a written examination every month during the course of the session. The result proved the efficacy of this arrangement. Nearly sixty students have been examined in the first stage of the subject, and there has not been a single failure."

Japanese Archaeology.—In a report of a lecture by Professor E. S. Morse, published in the "Tokio Times," we find the following list of human bones found in the Kitchen-midden at Omori, their presence, together with other circumstances, indicating, in the opinion of the Professor, that the locality was once inhabited by cannibals (see "Popular Science Monthly," vol. xiv., p. 257): Right humerus; length of fragment, 195 millimetres; proximal end gone. Left humerus; length of fragment, 215 mm.; both ends gone. Left humerus; length of fragment, 160 mm.; both ends gone. Right ulna; length of fragment, 200 mm.; distal end gone. Right ulna; length of fragment, 180 mm.; both ends gone. Right radius; length of fragment, 80 mm.; upper portion only. Right femur; length of fragment, 150 mm.; proximal end and portion of shaft only. Right femur; length of fragment, 270 mm.; both ends gone. Right femur; length of fragment, 280 mm.; both ends gone. Right femur; length of fragment, 107 mm.; upper portion of shaft. Right femur; length of fragment, 304 mm.; articular surfaces broken; child. Left femur; length of fragment, 160 mm.; shaft only. Left femur; length of fragment, 270 mm.; great trochanter and head and distal end gone; child. Left femur; length of fragment, 85 mm.; lower portion only; articular surface gone; child. Right tibia; length of fragment, 135 mm.; upper portion of shaft. Right fibula; length of fragment, 205 mm.; both ends broken. Fifth right metatarsal; length, 65 mm.; distal articular surface partially gone. Left lower maxillary. Left parietal.

How the Humming-Bird feeds.—Mr. A. R. Wallace's account of the way in which the humming-bird takes its food, whether nectar or insects, would appear to be erroneous in the light of the observations made by W. H. Ballou, of Evanston, Illinois. According to Wallace, "the tubular and retractile tongue enables the bird to suck up honey from the nectaries of flowers, and also to capture small insects; but whether the latter pass down the tubes, or are entangled in the fibrous tips and thus drawn back into the gullet, is not known." Mr. Ballou's observations are recorded in the "American Naturalist." He attracted to his house two humming-birds by a saucer of sirup placed on the windowsill, to which the birds would come every day to satisfy their hunger. They always alighted on the edge of the saucer, and lapped the sirup as a dog laps water. The question whether insects "pass down the tubes or are entangled in the fibrous tips and are thus drawn back into the gullet" was also solved by Mr. Ballou. Insects too large to pass through these tubes being placed in their way, the birds were observed to take them as readily as smaller ones. The insects were evidently secured by adhesion to the saliva of the tongue-tips, and thence drawn into the gullet. The author