Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/880

860 manual labor as simply nonsensical.' The next neighbor to this young man's father is a man of the same nationality and in similar circumstances, who showed me with no little pride two silver medals which a son and a daughter, now working together in the same shoe-factory, obtained at the high school. 'But,' said I, 'I have just been reading the writing of a man of learning and influence condemning the free high school, and arguing that it should be abolished.' 'That man,' he replied, 'I consider an enemy to his country.'"

Two New Zealand Mountains.—Mr. J. H. Kerry Nicholls, while exploring the "King Country" of New Zealand, succeeded in ascending the tabooed volcano of Tongariso, which the Maoris consider it sacrilege to approach. The cluster of cones that marks it forms collectively an almost complete circle, rising from a level plateau about 3,000 feet above the sea; while the burning mountain itself, of wonderfully symmetrical proportions, rises from the bottom of an extensive basin-like depression in the very center of this great circle of cones and extinct craters. At 7,000 feet above the sea the traveler was able to look over the hot, quaking edge of the crater, which is circular, nearly a mile in circumference, and 400 feet deep. Within it was a smaller or inner crater, funnel-shaped, and separated from the larger one only by a narrow slip or ridge. At the bottom of the crater were scattered about huge rocky ridges, from the large fissures of which jets of steam burst forth with a roaring, screeching noise that echoed from the depths below with a wailing sound. "Hot springs sent up streams of boiling water, which, running over the rocks and losing themselves in the hot soil, were sent high into the air again in the form of coiling jets of vapor. Miniature cones of dark, smoking mud rose up in every direction, while around all was a seething fused mass of almost molten soil. In every direction were large deposits of pure yellow sulphur, some of which assumed a rock-like formation. At other places it formed a crust over the steaming earth, and when the thermal action was less intense the glittering yellow crystals covered the ground like a thick frost." From the top of the neighboring great mountain of Ruapehu, 9,250 feet above the sea, "a glorious sight burst upon the view. Peak rose above peak from the dazzling expanse of snow, each towering mass of rock, tinted of a reddish hue, standing out clearly defined against the light-blue sky. Immediately beneath where we stood was a steep precipice which fell perpendicularly for hundreds of feet below, and beneath this again was an enormous circle of jagged rocks marking the outline of a gigantic crater, filled to its brim with snow, which was furrowed into chasms of great depth." Adjoining this great mountain is the Onetapu Desert, or "desert of sacred sand," forming one of the most curious features of the region, which covers a large area of country. "In summer it is parched and dried, and gives life only to a few stunted Alpine plants; and, in the winter months, when the snows cover it, it is both difficult and dangerous to traverse. The desert at the surface is composed entirely of a deposit of scoria, with rounded stones and trachytic bowlders above, while in some places rise enormous lava-ridges. By its formations it would appear as if Ruapehu, when in a state of activity, had distributed its shower of ashes and lava over this wide region; and it would also appear that, at the period at which this extensive deposition of scoria occurred, there must have been growing upon this very spot an extensive forest; for as we rode over the dreary expanse we found the remains of enormous trees, which had been converted into charcoal, as it were, at the time when the fiery ashes swept over them."

Protection against Malaria.—We have already noticed the discovery, by Professors Klebs and Tommasi-Crudelli, of the bacterial germ of malaria in the soil of the Roman Campagna. This discovery disposes of the chemical theories of the origin of malaria, and redeems marshes from the stigma of being its direct producers. There are, in fact, marshes where there is no malarial disease, and, on the other hand, disease rages where there are no marshes. The malarial germ, however, requires a certain degree of moisture for its development, and, as the marshes afford it, when marsh and bacteria are brought together, there is