Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/141

 desires unabated, and surviving separation from their gross bodies.

It is such souls only that are considered to stick to the earth and become what are called Pishachas, or what the Western spiritualists miscall "spirits"! But even these are not considered to continue in this state of existence for ever, nor is this state of existence considered in any way desirable. With regard to the majority of human souls, it is held that, according to their holy or unholy deeds and desires in this life, they go either to higher and better worlds, ending with Brahma loka by the archirádi márga, or to the nether worlds by the yama márga. The former are considered to be temporary elevations to better existences, the latter to worse existences than in this world in human shape.

But the state of existence known as Pishacha yoni is regarded in the Hindoo system of philosophy and religion as the most horrible and pitiful that the human soul can enter. The reason of it is that it is the state that comes over the human soul as the result of the baser desires having preponderance at the time of separation from the corporeal body; it is the state in which the capacities for the enjoyment of sensual pleasurer are in a developed state, but the soul lacks the means of physical enjoyment, viz., a corporeal body; it is the state in which the soul can never make progress and develop into better existence. It is considered that in this state the soul, being deprived of the means of enjoyment through its own physical body, is perpetually tormented by hunger, appetite, and other bodily desires, and can. have only vicarious enjoyment by entering into the living physical bodies of others, or by absorbing the subtilest essences of libations and oblations offered for their own sake. Not all Pishachas can enter the living human body of another, and none can enter the body of a holy man—that is, an ascetic or adept in occultism.

Director of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College announces in his annual report for 1879 that a subscription of five thousand dollars a year for carrying on the work of the observatory for five years has been completed. The astronomical work of the year at the observatory includes photometric measurements of Japetus, Saturn's outer satellite, photometric observations of the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, the photometric observation of faint stars as aids to the formation of standards of magnitude, measurements of the planetary nebulæ, and the completion of the observation of the zone of eight thousand stars between 50° and 55° north, which has been going on for eight years. A work of some magnitude has been undertaken in the determination of the light of all the stars visible to the naked eye in the latitude of Cambridge. The report is printed at the University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

languages allied to the English are sketched in an introductory chapter. The main subject is treated under the two heads of "General History" and the "History of Inflections." The former part is of more general literary interest. In it we notice a carefully weighed estimate of the effect which the introduction of the mass of French words in the fourteenth century has had on the character and capacity of the language. The second part has been prepared more particularly for special students.

to the general subject, this work attempts to present all the essential facts that have been gathered, without burdening the reader with elaborate speculations. The chapter on Butler County, Ohio, gives the fruits of the original researches and surveys of the author, which he made as thorough and exact as possible, in a county which was once an important seat of the mound builders. Most of the engravings were made especially for the work, and to them is added a sectional archæological map of Butler County.

little work is intended to present the facts of the life-history of moths and butterflies in such a manner as to interest children, and lead them to study and observe for themselves. The author has relied upon and described her own observations.