Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/587

Rh different classes. Mr. Howitt explained a method for indicating members, which fully disposes of the idea that the paucity of numerals in the language of the Australians arises from any inability to conceive of higher numbers than two, three, or four.

Modern Greek Personifications of the Sun.—According to Mr. J. Theodore Bent, the personifications of the sun among the peasants of modern Greece compare well with the legends of classical times. His beauty, power, and strength endow him with regal attributes, and he is supposed at nighttime to seek his kingdom and live in a palace, where his mother tends upon him. We have also the sun's wife and the sun's daughter, and can compare the Macedonian legend of Heliojenni with the Homeric myths of Perse and her children, Circe and Aïetes. The sun, as messenger, may be compared with the words of the dying Ajax. The connection between sun-worship and that of the prophet Elias is very marked in modern Greece. Elias looks after rain, and is the Greek St. Swithin. Churches to him are always found on sites of ancient temples to Apollo. This idea of a union between St. Elias and a power over the elements is clearly shown in a manuscript from Lesbos. There is a connection between sun-worship and St. George, noticeable not only in the islands, but in Macedonia, where a curious swing ceremony is performed on St. George's day in honor of the sun's bride having been swung up to heaven on that day, and the κάρα fires are lit.

New Medicinal Plants.—Mrs. H. C. De S. Abbott has published an account of the enterprise of Mr. Thomas Christy, of London, in investigating and introducing the active principles of valuable medicinal plants. His operations are carried on at his estate in Sydenham and in the native countries of the plants, where he has agents employed in collecting and cultivating. One of the most important plants lately introduced is the Strophanthus, or arrow-poison of Africa, from which the powerful cardiac remedy strophantine is extracted. The plant is a creeper, topping the tallest trees, and bearing intensely bitter seed-pods. The oily pulp of the seeds, with which the natives smear their arrows, causes instant death, or stupor and foaming at the mouth, followed by death in the animals with whose blood it is mixed, while it does not appear to affect badly the flesh far from the wound. Among other new drugs are kerpod, good for chilblains; alvelos, efficient in skin-diseases; and the haya poison and sassy-bark, which produce anæsthesia of the cornea. Mrs. Abbott suggests that a rich field of research, to be cultivated with great advantage to the healing art, lies in the study of the uninvestigated plants of our own country. It is a field in which she is herself an earnest laborer.

Absence of Memory and Presence of Mind.—The sudden lapses of memory that occasionally attack persons of strong mind are frequently very surprising. Such lapses have occasionally been known to come upon public speakers without the audience seeming to have been aware that the speech had been marred. Thackeray relates that he once lost the thread of an after-dinner speech, and thought that he had made a fool of himself; but his mother, who was within hearing, was of the opposite opinion. The Rev. Henry Ware, of Boston, lost himself in the middle of a sermon and stopped abruptly. He was consoled after the service by hearing one member of the congregation remark to another that that was the best sermon Mr. Ware had ever preached. "That pause was sublime!" A French preacher, when a similar accident befell him, remarked, "Friends, I had forgot to say that a person much afflicted is recommended to your immediate prayers," and knelt down to pray. The afflicted person was himself, and his device was successful to the restoration of the thread of his discourse. A famous Irish actor was once called upon to sing his favorite song, "The Sprig of Shillalah," although it was not on the bills. He could not recollect the beginning, and appealed to the audience: "Ladies and gentlemen, I assure you that I have sung this song so often that I forget the first line!" The audience gave him the first line, and he went on with the song amid great applause. Father Taylor, the "sailor's preacher," when he once got confused, cried out: "Boys, I've lost my nominative case; but never mind, we're on the way to glory!"