Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/715

Rh Before we reached the top of the next ridge the heat of the day obliged us to halt in the shade of a rock-tomb; hut curiosity soon got the better of my fatigue, and after a short rest we continued our march toward a river-valley, where we expected to meet the first living Monakees.

Curious Matrimonial Anomaly.—Hassanyeh Arab wives enjoy at times "a freedom from the ties and responsibilities of the marriage state unknown, I believe, to any other race in the world." When the parents of the man and woman meet to settle the price of the woman, the price depends on "how many days in the week the marriage tie is to be strictly observed." The woman's mother first of all proposes that, taking "everything into consideration, with a due regard to the feelings of the family, she could not think of binding her daughter to a due observance of that chastity which matrimony is expected to command for more than two days in the week." After a great deal of apparently angry discussion, and the promise on the part of the relatives of the man to pay more, it is arranged that "the marriage shall hold good, as is customary among the first families of the tribe, for four days in the week—viz., Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday; and, in compliance with old established custom, the marriage rites during the three remaining days shall not be insisted on, during which days the bride shall be perfectly free to act as she may think proper, either by adhering to her husband and home, or by enjoying her freedom and independence from all observation of matrimonial obligation."—Spencer's "Descriptive Sociology."

A Healthy Climate.—Papua is the paradise of birds, Natal of large quadrupeds, Surinam of snakes, Java of butterflies, but Borneo of crocodiles. On a river-island, hardly a mile in length, Professor Keppel counted not less than 740 of these eupeptic pets. But the climate in which, as reported several years ago, things have got most mixed, is New Holland, where it is summer when it is winter in Europe, and vice versa; where the barometer rises before bad weather, and falls before good; where the north is the hot wind and the south the cold; where the humblest house is fitted up with cedar and mahogany, and myrtle is burned for fuel; where the swans are black, and the eagles white; where the kangaroo, an animal between a squirrel and a deer, has five claws on its fore-paws, and three talons on its hind-legs, and yet hops on its tail; where the mole lays eggs and has a duck's bill; where there is a bird with a broom in its mouth instead-of a tongue; where there is a fish one half belonging to the genus Raia and the other half to that of Squalus; where the pears are made of wood with the stalk at the broader end; and where the cherry grows with the cherry-stone outside.