Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/152

140 perfecting of even a simple machine, or how little the last man may need to add to complete the invention. Facts and natural laws, known for years as curiosities, are taken up by some inventor, who fails in the attempt to render them of practical use; then a second genius takes hold, and, profiting by the mistakes of the first, produces, at great cost, a working machine. Then comes the successful man, who works out the final practical design, and, whether making or losing a fortune, yet permanently benefits mankind. This course is exemplified in the address by the relation of the growth of the steam-engine; and so with other inventions: the steamboat was being developed from 1760 to 1807; the locomotive from 1802 to 1829; the telegraph, from 1729 to 1844; the sewing-machine, with its two thousand patents, from 1790 to 1860; and the reaping-machine for seventy-five years—the last successful man adding generally but little to the work of his forerunners. The rule has been that "the basis of success lay in a thorough acquaintance with what had been done before, and in setting about improvement in a thoroughly scientific way."

Composite Photography of Handwriting.—Dr. Persifer Frazer has published a paper on "Composite Photography applied to Handwriting." The principle of the application is the same as that proposed by Mr. Galton for the production of composite portraits, to be typical of a family, a race, or a class of persons. With relation to the practical value of the application contemplated in Mr. Frazer's paper, the author says that, in examining with care a composite signature, "it at once arrests the attention that the variations are not equally distributed over the entire body of the letter, but that there are regions of each letter where variations of a particular kind are noticeable, and other regions where there are few or none. The more the manuscripts of an individual are compared the more forcibly does this fact appear, until finally one is tempted to conclude that after a handwriting is once formed it can not naturally exhibit deviations except within a defined variation and in certain limited areas adjacent to the separate letters. It is thus as great an assistance to an observer to study the variations as to study the ideal signature. Indeed, the variations are all-important in the matter of identification, and if there were no variations the method would be inapplicable, because an exact copy might be made by tracing." The principle was applied by Mr. Frazer in a recent case in a Philadelphia court, and he thinks, from the experience thus far gained, that "it will (at least in many cases) more surely lead to the truth than will the mere opinions of the most skillful expert."

Sesostris.—On the first day of June last, M. Maspero, in the presence of the Khedive and a number of Egyptian and European notables, unwrapped the bandages of the mummy of Rameses II—the Sesostris of the Greeks, and the Pharaoh of Moses and the Hebrew oppression—which was found about two years ago at Dayr-el-Bahari, near Thebes. The mummy was identified by the inscriptions on the lid of the sarcophagus and on the outer winding-sheet. The profile of the goddess Nut, which was painted on a linen sheet covering the front of the mummy, was "unmistakably designed after the pure and delicate profile of Seti I," the father and predecessor of Rameses. In a quarter of an hour after the unrolling was begun, the face of the monarch was revealed, as it had been laid away 3,300 years ago. "The head is long, and small in proportion to the body. The top of the skull is quite bare. On the temples there are a few sparse hairs, but at the poll the hair is quite thick, forming smooth, straight locks about five centimetres in length. White at the time of death, they have been dyed a light yellow by the spices used in embalmment. The forehead is low and narrow; the brow-ridge prominent; the eyebrows are thick and white; the eyes are small and close together; the nose is long, thin, hooked like the noses of the Bourbons, and slightly crushed at the tip by the pressure of the bandages. The temples are sunken; the cheek-bones very prominent; the ears round, standing far out from the head, and pierced, like those of a woman, for the wearing of earrings. The jawbone is massive and strong; the chin very prominent; the mouth small