Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/442

428 of a domesticated dog to testify recognition, and the howl of an uncivilized dog as the moon rises, or of a civilized dog when the church-bells begin, are all, to human ears at least, unchanging sounds, sounds with one meaning and no other." So with numerous other familiar sounds peculiar to certain animals, and well understood; but they can not be regarded as "language" in the sense in which the term is used in the proposition under review. An interesting detail of the discussion concerns the grating sound not unlike the "gnashing of teeth" of the scolding or "swearing" of birds, which they utter also evidently in play as kittens and dogs are also fond of playing bite, and dogs bark. However much there may be that one can not learn of the "language of animals," the study of the little that is at our command is enough to furnish profitable as well as amusing occupation.

A Glance at Cambodia. A French traveler, writing from Penompein, the capital of Cambodia, says that "in passing from Cochin China to Cambodia, the difference between the Cambodian and the Annamite type is very striking. The Cambodian is almost the height of Europeans, and is idle and dirty, while the Annamite is small and active. A full-grown Annamite woman is like a French girl of twelve. A book on Cambodia would be very interesting. The banks of the river are covered with luxuriant vegetation. The entire territory and its inhabitants belong absolutely to the king, who lives here, with a second and third king besides him, while a fourth king is stationed in the interior. He has three hundred wives, chosen from the handsomest women in the whole country. The second king at present is in opposition to King Merodom. All the Cambodians are the king's earmen or slaves, and pay him rent. .. . The country is a most curious one. Elephants are very numerous here, and wander about in freedom through the brushwood, like oxen in the meadows of France. The capital of Cambodia consists of only one street, which is nearly four miles long. In all the town there are not ten houses built of stone or of bricks, and those so built are public buildings. All the officers are lodged together in two payothes, which are almost contiguous. A payothe is composed of a wooden floor resting in turn on a scaffolding of bamboo. The walls are formed of a trellis of straw or leaves, in the style of the thatch of cottages all over Europe. If you push with your finger a little strongly, it will pass through the wall. The roof is of thatch. The furniture is very primitive. It consists of a bed, formed of a frame in bamboo on which is placed a mat, and a table."

Stages of Himalayan Vegetation.—General R. Strachey describes the changes which the traveler meets in ascending one of the great mountain-ranges, as embodying a compendium of the climates and vegetation of the entire globe. Nowhere can such a display be better or more easily obtained than upon the Himalayas. The transition is abrupt from the well-cultivated plain of northern India, with its fields of rice and millet, or golden-flowering mustard, to the dense, umbrageous forests along their base, almost wholly composed of trees of tropical forms, with a few oaks and an elm, which, with a tangled growth of undershrubs and creepers and epiphytal plants, give cover to the elephant, the rhinoceros, and tiger, and afford shelter to the peacock and other gayly colored birds. The glens are choked with gigantic grasses and feathering bamboos. Great forests cover the outer ranges of the chain, scandent palms spreading over the lofty trees, whose stems are splendidly furnished with the dark-green foliage of climbing aroids; the ground beneath them is concealed under a rich growth of tree and other ferns, orchids, and Scitamineæ, or broad-leaved plantains. With gradually increasing elevation and falling temperature the character of the vegetation changes. More open woods of evergreen trees, typical of warm temperate climates, succeed, including rhododendrons, oaks, and laurels. Lofty pines cover the vast mountain-slopes through many thousand feet of altitude in unbroken uniformity. Still ascending, are reached forests of deciduous trees of surpassing size and beauty, crowning the hill-tops and fringing the courses of the rivers, intermingled with many flowering shrubs and an abundant display of herbaceous plants, of which, at the greater elevations, the forms are for the most part allied to or identical with