Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/147

Rh male of the Arins of Ceylon and the Chionais of the Sea of Galilee carry the eggs in the back part of the mouth. The eggs of dog-fishes, sharks, skates, and rays are inclosed in capsules which in texture resemble a bit of sea-weed. The mother-frog of the Alytes obstetricans lays her eggs in long chains of sixty or more. The male takes this string, twines it around his thighs, and retires till the young are ready to leave the egg: then he goes into the water, and the young swim out. The eggs of the American frogs are placed in pouches in the back of the mother, and in the Surinam toad the egg and the tadpole go through their full development thus inclosed, each in its own cell, till, when they emerge, they differ only in size from the parent. More than one hundred and twenty of these tadpole-cells have been counted in the back of a single female of this species. A Chilian frog has the organs, corresponding with the "vocal sacs" of our bull-frogs greatly distended,! and the young are hatched in these. The j exaggeration of these organs has produced j more or less of distortion in other parts of the animal.

Happy Tenant-Farmers.—A writer in "Chambers's Journal" holds up Lord Tollemache, of Peckforton Castle, Cheshire, as a landlord who has found a plan of dealing with his tenants that satisfies his farmers, his laborers, and himself, and which is working with encouraging results. This proprietor set out to establish cottage-farms upon his estate, for the purpose of attaining three results: To satisfy the natural and praiseworthy desire of the laborers to have a cow, and land to maintain it; to train the rising generation of laborers' children from infancy in dairying and agricultural pursuits; and to secure a supply of high-class laborers for his large tenant-farmers. All of these results are in process of accomplishment. The cottage-farms consist of house inclosures—the houses being built in pairs and fitted with conveniences—of about half a rood of garden-land each, with a tract attached, including pasture, of about three acres, and are leased at a fixed rent of fifty dollars a year, for twenty-one years. The laborers thus housed are declared markedly superior to those of their class in most counties."Their wives are robust, their children are unusually intelligent, and the social atmosphere of the neighborhood is exhilarating. In every house visited the furniture was good and excellently cared for. Neatness and cleanliness were evidently habitual. . . . And it is the proud boast of the neighborhood that the laborers on the Tollemache estates are unexcelled in England." As a consequence of this system, "while dread and perplexity pervade the shires, the happy dwellers upon Lord Tollemache's estate are at peace. Every large farm is occupied, and the obtaining of one is the great object of those living outside."

Automatic Fire-Extinguishers.—Professor Silvanus P. Thompson, in a recent address before the Society of Arts, dwelt upon the fact that great fires usually owe their magnitude and their consequent terrors to the circumstance that a certain interval of time necessarily elapses before any application is made to extinguish them—because no one is at hand and ready to act on the instant. It is to the fatal two minutes or five minutes that pass before help arrives, that the mischief is due. Nothing but a self-acting or automatic system, which will operate at the right moment and at the very spot, without the intervention of the human hand, will meet the case. Automatic systems exist, and are of several kinds, and efficient. Automatic sprinklers are self-acting valves connected with a system of water-pipes placed in the ceiling of a room, which, on the outbreak of a fire, open and distribute water in a shower or spray exactly at the place where the fire breaks out. The apparatus may be arranged so that, whenever it is called into operation by the heat, it shall sound an alarm-bell and summon aid to the spot. These devices are relied upon in many of the manufacturing establishments of New England, with an estimated reduction of the risk of conflagration to one twentieth of what it formerly was. Several designs for sprinklers depend for their efficacy on the melting of some kind of easily fusible solder or cement by the heat of the incipient fire, and the consequent loosening of the valve which holds the water back. The obvious