Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/733

Rh set away for "cultivation," at a temperature of 80° Fahr., those opened after about ten weeks, yielded a white acicular crystalline substance having the same odor and taste as that found in the original suspected milk. The effects of this substance on the experimenter and on dogs and cats were the same. For this ptomaine, the author suggests the name of lactotoxine.

Myths and Theories about Earthquakes.—Professor Milne, in a lecture before the Scientific Society of Tokio, Japan, classified the theories that have been enunciated respecting the cause of earthquakes as unscientific, quasi-scientific, and scientific. Having mentioned as among the unscientific theories those which ascribed the convulsions to dispensations of Providence, the lecturer described some of the myths which attribute them to a creature living underground. In Japan it is an "earthquake-insect," covered with scales and having eight legs, or a great fish having a rock on his head which helped to keep him quiet. In Mongolia the animal was said to be a frog, in India the world-bearing elephant, in Celebes a world-supporting hog, in North America a tortoise. In Siberia there was a myth connected with the great bones found there, that these were the remains of animals that lived underground, the trampling of which made the ground shake. In Kamchatka the legend was connected with a god that went out hunting with his dogs; when the latter stopped to scratch themselves, their movements produced earthquakes. In Scandinavian mythology, Loki, having killed his brother Baldwin, was bound to a rock, face upward, so that the poison of a serpent should drop on his face. Loki's wife, however, intercepted the poison in a vessel, and it was only when she had to go away to empty the dish that a few drops reached him and caused him to writhe and shake the earth. The quasi-scientific theories endeavored to account for earthquakes as part of the ordinary operations of Nature, as that they were produced by the action of wind confined inside of the earth. The theory of electrical discharges was advocated in 1760 by Dr. Stukely, and by Percival and Priestley, and is held in California at the present day, where it is believed that the network of rails is a protection to the State against dangerous accumulations of electricity. The lecturer thought that the electric phenomena which sometimes attended earthquakes were their consequences, not their causes. The chemical theories were very strong in Europe up to the beginning of the present century. It was only in 1760 that Dr. Mitchell first threw out the theory that earthquakes were connected in some way with volcanoes, and attributed them to the penetration of strata by steam. Professor Rogers, at about the same time, in America, endeavored to show that it was not steam, but really lava, that ran along underneath the ground, causing it to rise and fall, thus producing an earthquake.

Weathercocks.—Why, asks Mr. J. A. Farrer, in an essay on "Animal Lore," should cocks figure on the tops of steeples? Christians connect the custom with the reproach the cock once conveyed to St. Peter. But the cock used to be placed on the tops of sacred trees long before it was transferred to church-steeples, and in North Germany it still stands upon the May-poles. It was partly a watchman and partly a weather-prophet, and by its crowing it could disperse evil spirits and all approaching calamities. Its life was sacred in India and Persia, and Cicero speaks of the ancients regarding the killing of a cock as a crime equal in blackness to the suffocation of a father. Our weathercocks are doubtless the survivals of these old ideas, though the solar mythologists trace all these things to the use of the domestic fowls as obvious personifications of the sun. One can scarcely conceive anything more absurd; and it would be interesting to know how on solar principles would be explained the Tyrolese custom of not letting a black hen live for seven years, lest she should then lay an egg, out of which might issue a dragon destined to live a hundred years.

School-room Lights.—Dr. Willoughby, of English Society of Medical Officers of Health, in a paper on "School Lighting," maintains that as long as the light from the left is the stronger, so that the shadow of the hand does not fall on the writing, the objections urged against "cross-lighting "