Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/591

 and insects play in the tales of the gods and heroes, than the fact that they were already accredited in popular superstition with the powers which they display in the stories. Seeing how many of the European peasantry still construct mythologies in an old-fashioned way, and cling to the old views in spite of science, we should have less difficulty in believing that the Greeks and Hindoos originally proceeded in the same fashion, without that constant reference to the struggle between light and darkness which some writers ascribe to them.



Entomological Club of the American Association will meet at 9, August 15, 1888, in the High-School building in the city of Cleveland. As Cleveland is quite centrally located, this will be very convenient both for Canadian and United States entomologists. We may therefore expect an unusually large and interesting meeting. All who expect to present papers should send notice of their subjects to A. J. Cook, Secretary, Agricultural College, Mich.

meeting of the British Association is to be held at Bath, beginning September 5th. The sectional presidents will be Prof. Schuster in Mathematics, Prof. Tilden in Chemistry, Prof. Boyd Dawkins in Geology, Mr. Thiselton Dyer in Biology, Colonel Sir C. W. Wilson in Geography, Lord Bramwell in Economic Science and Statistics, Mr. W. H. Preece in Mechanical Science, and General Pitt-Rivers in Anthropology.

College of Engineering, of the Imperial University of Japan, graduated nineteen students in 1887—a number which the president thought, in view of the facilities for study offered, ought to be and would be much exceeded this year. There were four graduates from the College of Science. It appears that the people of Japan have not yet realized what promising careers are open to their young men in science. The small numbers which the scientific departments of the university are graduating are insufficient to meet the demands, which are increasing year by year, for the services of scientific men who shall further the national progress. Meanwhile, it is impossible to fill many vacant positions in the offices of the Imperial Government, and in various local governments and schools, where such graduates are needed.

reports that the Baluba, of Central Africa, do not see any wrong in selling their wives and children, but that they make a difference between domestic slaves and slaves for export. A Baluba chief, with whom he expostulated, listened quietly to his arguments, and then told him, rather in confidence, that they sold only their troublesome wives out of the country, never the good ones. Dr. Wolf saw in the slave-market at Mukenge a distinguished-looking old fellow who had been a chief. During his reign he was continually fighting with the neighboring tribes, and many of his subjects were killed in battle. At last his people began to grumble, and decided quietly to sell their own chief into slavery, as the best way to get rid of him, and to live for the future in peace. They sold him for ten goats, which were killed, and the meat distributed as a compensation among the relatives of those who had died in the frequent battles of their chief.

of Ann Arbor, Mich., has had a pleasant experience in tree cultivation during his life of eighty years. He can point to trees in Connecticut, now two feet in diameter, which he planted when a boy. His present home is shaded with a grove of maples which he planted. He allows squirrels to frequent the place, and encourages them to stay. They bring nuts, some of which find their way to the ground and grow; and thereby the maples are becoming interspersed with nut-bearing trees, which are already from six to twelve inches in diameter.

to "Land and Water" mentions having shot in the Crimea bustards which came to the shore over the water from the southward, and alighted very weary. The circumstances indicated that they had flown across the Black Sea, and confirmation of this belief was given by finding in their crops a species of dwarf bean which was not known to grow nearer the Crimea than upon the hill-sides of Asia Minor, around Brusa, almost three hundred miles distant. He also took in the hand several quails, very much exhausted, which had apparently come direct from the sea.

recorders have been so adjusted at the observatories in Japan as to give correct graphic representations of the movements undergone by a point on the soil during the progress of a shock. The resultant figure exhibits a series of twists and wriggles of the most complicated kind, so that the path pursued by the point might be, as it has been, compared to the form taken by a tangled string when thrown down in a heap. Prof. Sekiya, of the University of Tokio, has deciphered one of these tangles, and has made a model of seventy-two seconds of it in wire, in which the line of the curve of motion is distinctly designated for each second. The model, ten times the size of the graphic representation, is divided, to save confusion of the eye and mind of the student, into three sections, which are separately mounted, but fixed on a common table. 