Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/445

Rh naturalist of the American Eclipse Expedition to Japan, collected 4,000 botanical specimens, representing nearly 800 species, and 6,000 entomological specimens, representing about 1,200 species, mainly Lepidoptera and Coleoptera. He obtained also by purchase the entire collection of Pyralidæ made by Mr. H. Pryer, representing the labors of nearly seventeen years, and containing nearly 4,000 specimens, of more than 375 species, the larger part of them as yet undetermined, and some possibly new to science. This collection of Pyralidæ covers the entire group of the Japanese Islands. The botanical collections exhibit strikingly the wonderful affinity between the flora of Japan and that of the United States.

incidents are related by the London "Spectator," which seem to indicate that animals are able to think and carry out a plan. They occurred in India. A rough terrier, when given a bone, was sent to eat it on the gravel drive in front of the bungalow. Two crows had sought often to snatch the meat from the dog, but had always been defeated. Finally, they discussed the matter in a neighboring tree; after which one of them flew down and pecked at the dog's tail, and while he was attending to this matter, the other one came and seized the bone. The same dog had a favorite seat, of which a visiting dog had frequently deprived it. One day, the terrier, having found his seat thus occupied, flew savagely out of doors, barking at a supposed enemy. As the intruding dog rushed out to take a part in the fray, the terrier hastened back to secure possession of its-seat.

of the Agricultural College of Michigan, while he disputes the exercise of a direct influence of forests in promoting moisture—saying that all the trees in the world will not put it where it is not—believes that the moisture on the continent is advancing toward the west, and that the planting of forests and increased cultivation will cause the rainfall to advance farther west every year. Seven hundred thousand acres of forest have already been planted in Nebraska; the cotton-wood and the willow first, and then the soft maple and the hard woods.

skeletons of Akkas, from central Africa, representing probably the smallest of the human races, have been received at the British Museum from Emin Pasha. As described by Prof. Flower, though both of full grown people, they are hardly four feet high, while a woman of the race, measured by Emin Pasha, was still shorter. They are well formed, and present most of the characteristics of the negro race, except that the skull is rather rounder than usual. They appear to belong to the branch of the human race called "negrito," which includes also the smaller tribes of the Indian Archipelago.

north side of the Romsdal, Norway, is a magnificent wall of dark-colored rock, ranging at the lower part of the valley from two to three thousand feet in height. Over this are poured a multitude of cascades, some of them mere threads of water. On a clear summer's day the continuous sunshine warms the dark rock so effectually that some of these minor falls, after breaking, as they all do, into snow-like spray, vanish altogether by evaporation.

according to a British consular report from Trieste, has a larger proportion of forest to its area than any other country. The woods cover about 3,500,000 acres, of which 80 per cent is timber forest, and the remainder is of young growth. The Government and the large land-owners own 69 per cent of the whole, the parish authorities 20 per cent, the clergy 5 per cent, and the peasants about 1 per cent. The total value is estimated at $200,000,000, and the annual increase at $2,500,000.

to the British consul at La Rochelle, since the failure of the vineyards from phylloxera, an imitation of claret is made there by steeping raisins and currants in water and mixing the compound with cheap Spanish wine. In other districts of France, a spurious brandy is made from a mixture of beet-root and cheap German spirit. This, having been sent to a port of exportation in its true character, is rc-marked and sent abroad as cognac.

asks Prof. W. Mattieu Williams, must we suppose the existence of a luminiferous ether distinct from other matter, when it is just as easy to account for the phenomena of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and chemical force as "modes of activity of ordinary matter, analogous to the waves of sound," but differing from them by being molecular vibrations, while sound is molar vibration? Gaseous matter being infinitely expansible in the presence of radiant heat, there is no difficulty in imagining space filled with ordinary gases thus expanded, and performing all the functions ascribed to the ether.

a paper on "Earthquake-Sounds," Prof. Milne suggests that there is a close connection between the sounds that precede the shock and the smaller vibrations that bear a like relation to them. He had counted as many as seven per second of these sinuosities, and believes that we are warranted in assuming the existence of still smaller and quicker vibrations preceding even these. With more delicate seismographs we might be able to catch the very early infinitesimal movements that herald the approach of an earthquake. With thirty or forty vibrations per second, we should have an audible note of very low pitch.