Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/733

 Mr. Andrews therefore entitles his method "The Ideological Method in Philology." His paper, which was long and elaborate, was listened to with the closest attention by the association throughout.

An Ironless Civilization.—Mr. A. Woeikof, in a narrative of his travels in Yucatan and the southeastern States of Mexico, published in "Petermann's Mittheilungen," introduces us to a so-called "civilized" people, who are practically unacquainted with the uses of iron. Writing about the northern portion of the State of Chiapas, he says that the inhabitants employ iron only in the shape of axes and machetes, which are imported from the United States. For the distance of one hundred kilometres round about Palenque not one blacksmith is to be found. Not a single nail is to be seen in their houses; everything is held together with cords or with vines. Even in the preparation of their usual article of food—tortillas—the apparatus they employ is equally primitive, though in this respect they follow the custom which is universal throughout all Mexico and Central America. The grains of maize are crushed between two stones, one of which, the nether one, is rather large, with a sloping upper surface. A woman kneels by this stone and strews upon it some grains of maize, over which she works to and fro another stone of cylindrical form, so grinding the maize. The coarse meal so obtained is baked into flat tortilla-cakes in the ashes. This is exactly the mode of preparing meal in vogue in Central and South Africa; the African negroes, however, show a higher grade of culture, inasmuch as they understand the working of iron. Our author caustically remarks hereupon that "the introduction even of hand-mills would be, for this country, a step of progress of far more value than many a high-sounding political prerogative, which can never be of any advantage to a population living in so low a grade of civilization."

A Two-Headed Snake.—H. Semler gives, in "Die Natur," an account of a living two-headed snake, found on the line of railroad from San José to Santa Cruz, and now on exhibition in the museum of the Woodward Garden in San Francisco. It is a gopher-snake (Pelicophis Wilksei), a species which lives on gophers, rats, mice, and small birds. The gopher-snake is a perfectly harmless reptile, like all the other snakes of California except the rattlesnake. The two-headed snake is twenty-two inches in length; its age can not be determined, but is not over two or three months; the full-grown snake is seven to eight feet in length. Its color is a dirty yellowish-white, with a double row of chestnut-brown spots along the back; these spots are nearly square and seventy-five in number. On each side is a row of smaller spots of the same color' and shape. On both of the necks up to the heads are also several small spots. From the point where the necks fork to the extremities of the jaws is one inch and a half. The heads and necks are perfectly separate and about one inch apart; each head and each neck is fully formed and in every respect symmetrical. Each of the heads has two large eyes. The animal can put out each of the two forked tongues separately or together. The two jaws open into one throat. As each neck is perfectly flexible, the snake can turn each of its heads in any direction at pleasure. It oftentimes lays its two heads close together; often it spreads them as far apart as possible, or rests one upon the other. It takes its food through either mouth indifferently, and both jaws seem to possess the same power. Some years ago a Missouri farmer, in plowing, found a rattlesnake which in like manner had two fully-formed heads, and a merchant of San Francisco avers that he observed a similar lusus naturæ in a Java snake.

The Color-Sense in Savages.—In order to determine the capacity possessed by uncultivated races for distinguishing different colors and shades of color, Mr. Albert S. Gatschet prepared a series of colored paper slips, twenty in number, insensibly blending into each other, and by personal inquiry ascertained the names employed by various tribes of American Indians for designating these differences. The result, published in the "American Naturalist," does not throw much light on the question of color-blindness in uncivilized men, for we have here not a statement of what' these Indians see in the way of color, but only of