Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/588

574 of inclosures—not cages—liberal in extent, and in strict accordance with the respective habits and instincts of the animals to be confined. Cages can not well be avoided by traveling menageries; in zoölogical gardens they are inexcusable." In the landscape features of a zoological garden, the aim should be to unite beauty with use. The surroundings should imitate, as near as the climate permits, the scenic characteristics of the homes of the various specimens. "This would be a pleasant delusion to both visitor and animal. These widely different styles of scenery should, of course, be blended into a harmonious and well-balanced composition by a very guarded and gradual transition, thus affording delightful surprises at every step."

The One Hundred Cataracts of the Iguazu (South America).—One of the most remarkable systems of waterfalls in the world is described by Herr Gustav Niederlein, who last year made an exploration of the Paraná River into the Argentine province of Misiones. The falls are called the One Hundred Cataracts of the Iguazu, a stream which at that point defines the boundary between the Argentine Republic and Brazil. The river, which is about three miles wide at a short distance above, falls from the Albert Archipelago in a three-quadrant arc, which is compared with that of the Victoria Falls, a descent of about one hundred and seventy feet. The falls appear in three divisions, called the Brazilian, Island, and Argentine Falls, or as Herr Niederlein prefers to style them, the Emperor Dom Pedro, the Emperor William, and the General Roca falls. The first excel in grandeur, the last in beauty, while the Emperor William falls, less extensive, and situated between the other two, impinge upon the handsomely wooded Emperor William's Island. The Dom Pedro Fall plunges a sheer depth of forty or fifty metres into a narrowly contracted basin, whence flows the Brazilian arm of the Iguazu, into which farther down the island-cataracts pour their masses. The bow-shaped Argentine Fall is broken into two stages, the upper one of which is divided by the interposition of a rocky mass into two minor bows, so that it is really a kind of triple fall. This triple cataract feeds the smaller Argentine arm of the river, which joins the Brazilian arm farther on. Not far from these falls the stream receives from the Argentine side the two Bosetti Falls, which, issuing from side-clefts, throw their water-masses over a ledge, about fifty feet high, upon a rocky platform, whence they immediately plunge into the Iguazu. Still below these are fourteen smaller falls, and, finally, the Prince Bismarck Cataract, which falls with a descent broken into two falls, about one hundred and twenty-five feet into a gulf fringed with the primitive sub-tropical forest. About ten miles below this, the Iguazu, now about six hundred and sixty feet wide, unites with the Paraná.

The Southern Andes and Patagonia.—Dr. Karl Martin, of Jena, has recently published a description of the Patagonian wilderness and the lower Andes, from his own observations. The Andes do not stretch in a continuous chain to Cape Horn, as is often supposed, but are broken south of Central Chili by several interruptions. Down to the volcano of Villarica, in south latitude 39°, they are a solid range; but below that peak the mountains fail far below the sixteen thousand feet which it attains. From its southern slope the Shoshuenco River, the chief affluent of the Valdivia, penetrates the mountains through a pass of only about thirteen hundred feet above the sea, receiving its water from a lake which is separated only by a low ridge from the waters of the Limai, a stream flowing into the Atlantic. The mountain standing between this and the next pass of three thousand feet in height is 8,700 feet high, while south of it are lower mountains, between which a number of little known but not very elevated passes lead into the Patagonian highland. A view from the hills surrounding the city of Osoruo shows a number of considerable mountains with no connecting ridge between them, and, in the south, a chain of three peaks. One of these peaks, the shapely cone of the volcano of Osonio, rises from between two lakes, into one of which flows from the east the Puella, a stream whose source is in the glacier of the Tronador, ten thousand feet high. Near it and separated by a pass of only twenty-nine