Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/881

 their plans. They now turned the cockroach on its back, and in this position they moved it onward triumphantly for three or four inches. At length the body was successfully brought to the smooth edge of the shelf, where it could be dropped to the floor beneath. But here occurred a new difficulty: the floor was strewed with bricks and plants. In fact, there was but one open space of about four inches square into which the body could be sent so as to be carried securely to its destination; to reach this spot" they had to drag the burden along the ledge for a space of seventeen inches. That spot having been reached, the carcass was dropped by all at once loosing their hold of it. Previously to this, however, the "surveyors" had run down the wall to the floor and posted themselves directly under the ledge on which the body lay (four feet above). After the drop of the body, all the ants came running down the wall, seized their prey again, and in half an hour carried it a distance of nearly three feet to the entrance of the nest. But here a new difficulty faced them: it could not pass between the boards when lying on its back. They turned it on one side and tried again. At last, as the legs still hitched, the ants bit them off, and then the body was turned on its side and taken through the narrow way into the nest.

Cinchona Cultivation in California.—Five packages of fresh cinchona-seeds were received from India some months ago, by the Director of the Economic Garden of the University of California. These seeds represented five different species of cinchona, viz., C. succirubra, C. calisaya, C. officinalis, C. condaminea, and C. hybrida. Professor E. W. Hilgard writes in the "California Horticulturist" that the calisaya germinated most readily. At present there are growing in the propagating house of the Agricultural Department of the university several hundred healthy plants of each of the five species. So soon as the trees are sufficiently advanced they will be distributed to the various sections of the State of California, where the climate gives promise of success, there to be tried by careful and competent persons. The accounts received from India and Australia of the success of the cinchona in those countries, encourage the belief that some of the five species will prove hardy both as regards cold and drought in the coast region south of San Francisco, and in the more sheltered portions of the bay region. There the summer fogs and the uniformity of temperature seem to present the main conditions known to be requisite for the growth of the cinchona, which appears to be a tree of considerable adaptability.

Eastern Extension of the Long Island Drift.—Mr. Warren Upham, in an article on the formation of Cape Cod, published in the "American Naturalist," shows how the two series of drift-hills of Long Island extend, the more northerly one across Cape Cod from west to east, and the more southerly across Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island. The outmost border of the great ice-sheet of the glacial period is definitely marked by a continuous series of drift-hills which extend across New Jersey and from end to end of Long Island. From the Narrows to Montauk Point this moraine is commonly known as "the backbone of Long Island." The west portion, reaching from Fort Hamilton to Roslyn, is mainly an unstratified deposit; but from Roslyn to Montauk the hills are composed of modified drift. South of these hills are gently sloping plains of fine gravel and sand. Another series of plains extends to the north from Syosset to Riverhead, and thence continues along the north branch of the island to Orient Point. North of these plains, from Port Jefferson to Orient Point, is another series of drift hills which, like the southerly chain, is mainly composed of stratified sand and gravel with few bowlders; but in the vicinity of Greenport and Orient the material is changed to a very coarse unstratified deposit like the upper till. This series is very plainly continued northeastward in Plum and Fisher's Islands, which are made up of hills of glacial drift like those near Greenport; thence it passes into Rhode Island at its southwest corner, and extends close to the coast seventeen miles from Watch Hill nearly to Point Judith. About two miles northwest from Point Judith it sinks to the sea-level, and its further continuation is lost, probably because it turns southward into the ocean.