Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/734

 what their idioms are able to express. Nevertheless, the author's conclusions, which apply only to seven Indian idioms, are interesting; they are as follows: 1. The Indians distinguish as many as, if not more shades of color, than we do. 2. No generic term meaning color exists, and it seems that such a term is too abstract for their conception. 3. Many of their color-terms, even the most opposite ones, are derived from one and the same radical syllable. For example, in the Kalapúya idiom blue is péiánkaf pawé-u, and yellow pé-i antk pawé-u. 4. In the Indian lists we observe some names of mixed colors which impress the eye by being not homogeneous. Such is the Klamath term mä'kmäkli, which is the blue mixed with gray, as seen in wild geese and ducks; and gray in most of the dialects means black mixed in with white, or white with black, as in the fur of the raccoon, gray fox, etc. 5. In naming some colors Indians follow another principle than we do, in qualifying certain natural objects by their color, and then calling them by the same name, even when their color has been altered. This we distinctly observe in kaka'kli, yellow and green in Klamath, the adjective having been given originally to the color of grass, trees, and other plants. Most frequently blue and green are rendered by one and the same term. 6. As stated above, Indians often follow principles differing from ours in naming colors. The Klamath language "has two terms for green, one when applied to the color of plants (käkä'kli), another when applied to garments and dress (tolalúptchi). So, too, blue, when said of beads, is expressed by a different word from the blue of flowers or of garments. 7. Reduplication of the word-root is very often met with in color-names, but the cause of this is not always the same. In Klamath and the Sahaptin dialects it is distribution and repetition (as of white hairs on a darker ground in the fur of the raccoon); in Dakota it is the idea of intensity that has produced this synthetic feature.

Draper's Researches on Oxygen in the Sun.—Professor Henry Draper, on the 13th of June, laid before the Royal Astronomical Society of London the evidence by which he claims to have demonstrated the existence of oxygen in the sun. A writer in the London "Times" (presumably Mr. J. Norman Lockyer) acknowledges the force of the evidence adduced by Professor Draper. He says: "We think that most spectroscopists will admit that Professor Draper does not pass beyond the limits of scientific caution in claiming that the coincidence shown in his photographs between the bright lines of oxygen and bright parts of the solar spectrum establishes the probability of the existence of oxygen in the sun. The burden of proof, or rather of disproof, should now fall on those who consider that the coincidence may, after all, be merely accidental. To us it seems that if such evidence as Professor Draper has obtained is rejected, hardly any spectroscopic evidence can suffice to prove the existence of an element in the sun. We certainly have not stronger evidence in the case of sodium or magnesium, elements which every physicist regards as present in the sun, than Professor Draper has obtained in the case of oxygen."

Telegraph Operators and Consumption.—Pulmonary consumption appears to be an exceptionally frequent cause of death among telegraphers, and one reason assigned for the fact is the peculiarly strained posture which an operator receiving messages continuously is obliged to assume in order not to lose the characters as they are ticked out to him from the sounder. "The operator in receiving bends his head and shoulder on his left side while listening to the sounder, this position confining his left lung and his heart in an unnatural position; and, being assumed day after day, month after month, eventually brings on the dread disease—consumption." But a writer in the "Journal of the Telegraph" suggests a different cause for the prevalence of consumption among telegraphers, viz., the original physical insufficiency of a large proportion of the young men who enter on this career. He says:

"In choosing an occupation for a young man, after he has received an education, if his health is not good, or if he should be of slight build, the question of his accepting a position requiring bodily labor is ignored entirely, and some field of usefulness