Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/293

Rh contents. Comparative experiments showed that, when bellite was confined, the energy developed on detonation was equal to that of dynamite; but that when unconfined, bellite apparently did less work. In mine-blasting bellite was proved capable of doing the work of three or four times its weight of gunpowder, without the fumes that rise when dynamite or gunpowder is used.

Distribution of Rotifera.—Of the little animals classified as Rotiferæ, the most species have been found in Great Britain—not certainly because they are more abundant or varied in England than elsewhere, but because they have been more industriously looked for, and more found there. In late years, two and a half times as many species have been added to the British lists as to those of all other countries put together. There are curiosities in the distribution of these animals. Twenty-four out of the recorded species in Australia are also British; and of the remaining species, one has a habitat in the United States. The same phenomena occur, though on a reduced scale, in the United States, Jamaica, and Ceylon. The question arises, How could these minute creatures, which are inhabitants of lakes, ponds, ditches, and sea-shore pools, contrive to spread themselves over the whole earth? A species which is known only in a small duck-pond in England has also been found at Sydney. Another species has been found almost simultaneously at Sydney and in Ontario. These creatures, "to whom a yard of sea-water is as impassable a barrier as a thousand miles of ocean," could only have reached distant countries in the egg; this they do by the hardy ephippial egg. These eggs fall to the bottom of the water in shallow pools, or are attached to the confervoid growth on the stones. The pool dries up, is swept by the winds, and the eggs are lifted up and carried away. There is hardly any limit to the distances to which they may be thus taken and yet keep vital. Then, as Dr. C. T. Hudson shows in his paper on this subject, "the eggs, of course, must often fall on unsuitable places, and be carried past suitable ones, and this accounts for the capricious appearance of Rotifera in some well-watched ponds, and for the frequent disappointment of the naturalists who visit such spots. To this aërial carriage of the eggs is also due the perplexing fact that when any rare Rotifera is found in one spot, it is frequently found at the same time in closely neighboring ponds and ditches, even in such an unlikely hole as the print of a cow's foot filled with rain, but not at all in more promising place, at some distance off." They may also be distributed by water-birds and dogs. The animals themselves are very hardy against heat and dryness. The Philadinadæ, when time is given them to don their protective coats, oan bear a heat gradually advancing to 200° Fahr., or a fifty days' exposure to a dryness produced over sulphuric acid in the receiver of an air-pump.

The City of the Cat-Goddess.—M. Edouard Naville recently gave before the Victoria Institute an account of his important discoveries at Bubastis, one of the ancient great cities of the Delta of Egypt, and the principal seat of the worship of the cat-goddess, Pasht. The speaker said, at the beginning of his lecture, that it was remarkable that while one of the latest writers on the East had referred to the failure of the prophecies of Ezekiel regarding the cities of Egypt, he had himself found in the same prophecies the light by which he was guided in his search. Bubastis was found to have been a city of much more historical importance than had generally been supposed, the recovered monuments bearing dates all the way down from the fourth (or Pyramid-builders') to the thirtieth, or last Egyptian, dynasty. The most conspicuous relics were of the fourth, sixth, twelfth, shepherds', nineteenth, and twenty-second dynasties. Some very interesting relics of the shepherd-kings, hitherto rare except at Tanis, were found; and from the beauty of their statues, and other evidences, the author concludes that they must have been a highly cultivated people, and have come probably from Mesopotamia. Dr. Virchow considered that their monuments represented Turanians, and Prof. Flower that they represented people of a Turanian or Mongolian type. But that did not mean that the population itself was Turanian. Their worship and language were of a Shemitic type, but the statues of their kings showed that they were not Shemites. M. Naville remarked: "It was then what it still