Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/734

716 more, and in the first nine months of 1882 a half more. In the back streets and alleys of Southern cities, where the colored people live crowded together, Bishop Penick says that one may see "squalor, degradation, dirt; green scum in the gutters, dammed with decomposing vegetables, and, it may be, interspersed with a stray cat or dog that came to his untimely end at some uncertain period of the distant past. It does not take a man who knows how to read a diploma in Latin to see that here are conditions most favorable for engendering diseases." During four years spent in Africa he observed that "in his native state and scanty clothing the African is the most cleanly person I ever met. As a rule, he bathes twice a day and oftener in warm water. Deformity among them is as rare as among the birds and squirrels here"; but, on the other hand, that "no sooner did I begin to put clothes on these people than their aversion to water as an external application began to manifest itself, and punishment had to be resorted to to compel those who used to be scrupulously clean to keep moderately decent." Besides the charitable motive for improving the sanitary condition of the negroes, there is another side to the matter. "In other words," says the bishop, "it is a matter of deep concern to every thoughtful man, even if he looks no higher than self-preservation, what kind of diseases cling to those who cook our food, nurse our children, make our beds, wash our clothes, and porter our sleeping-cars. We know that in all of these departments the colored race play a prominent part." The diseases arising from the filth of the back streets and alleys may thus be brought through the back door into homes whose sanitary condition gives their inmates a sense of security.

The Salt-Beds of South America.—The salt-beds on the west coast of South America, according to the description of Dr. Carl Ochsenius, occur in a narrow strip along the coast-fine of the rainless district, rarely exceeding twenty-five miles in width. The district is bounded on the east by the Andes, and extends into the coast Cordilleras on the south. The author considers that, before the upheaval of the Andes, salt began to deposit in certain bays, which had been wholly or partially shut off from the sea by the gradual formation of an intercepting bar. Then, while the process of evaporation was still incomplete, the district was raised by volcanic action, and the mother-liquors from the salt-lakes eventually escaped, running down into the valleys, and, where they encountered no obstacle, reaching the sea. The coast Cordilleras acted as a barrier in the southern portion of the district; while in the northern part the liquors doubtless returned to the sea. The volcanoes which produced the upheaval exhaled immense quantities of carbonic-acid gas, by the action of which a portion of the sodium chloride in the mother-liquors was converted into sodium carbonate. The coast in this part of Chili is studded with small islands containing deposits of guano rich in ammonia. The guano-dust is carried by the prevailing west winds far into the country, where, on exposure to the air, at a warm temperature, it would gradually oxidize to nitrate, and, acting on the sodium carbonate, would form sodium nitrate, or Chili saltpeter.

Relics of the Chiriquians.—From the graves of the ancient inhabitants of Chiriqui, on the Isthmus of Darien, great numbers of relics in clay, stone, and metal have been obtained during the past thirty years. A collection of such objects, gathered mostly by Mr. J. A. McNeil, is now deposited in the National Museum. The Chiriquians seem to have been skilled in the working of metals. Gold, silver, copper, and tin—the latter in alloys with copper, forming bronze—are found in the graves. Gold is the most important, and is found associated with all the others in alloys or as a surface coating. The objects consist to a great extent of representations of life-forms, in many cases more fanciful than real, and often extremely grotesque. They include the human figure and a great variety of birds and beasts indigenous to the country, in styles resembling work of the same region in clay and stone. Gold, pure and in the usual alloys, was also used in the manufacture of other articles, such as bells, beads, disks, balls, rings, whistles, thimble-shaped objects, and amulets of varied shapes. Bells are more generally made of bronze, because, perhaps, of its greater degree of resonance. The great majority of