Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/149

Rh the highest point. The rim of a crater, the south side of which has been broken in, occupies a part of the summit. The explorers came down in a violent rain-storm which flooded the valleys and did much damage to the corn and destroyed some of the natives' huts. This was regarded by the people as a penalty for the sacrilege which the party had committed in intruding upon the holy summit. According to an Ossete tradition, when God had determined to send Jesus Christ down to the earth he could find no place except this peak which had not been defiled by the sinful feet of men. He therefore placed the child in this spot in a golden cradle, and by the side of it a dove, and a sheep with golden horns. The dove was to rock the cradle and coo, and the sheep to amuse the child with its bleating. The animals were fed from a pile of wheat which the Lord provided for them. When Jesus had grown up he came down to the earth, performed his divine acts, and went back to heaven; but he left the cradle, the dove, and the sheep on the mountain as memorials of his abode there. The dove is still rocking the cradle, and the bleating of the sheep can sometimes be plainly heard in the evening; and they are still fed on the wheat, which has never failed. The belief prevails among the Ossetes that God will never permit any one to go up to the top of the Kasbek. Many have tried it without succeeding. Some have been made blind, others have been cast into the gorges, and others have been buried under the snow. Now the Russian has gone up and taken away the golden cradle; for which God manifested his anger in a terrible storm.

Gas Cooking-Stoves.—Gas cooking-apparatus have the advantages over coal stoves that they produce no dust or cinders, and are more cleanly in every way. The oven can be heated to a desired temperature in only a few minutes after the gas is lighted, while the degree of heat can be regulated according to the nature of the articles to be cooked by simply adjusting the valves that control the supply of gas and the ventilation. While gas may be somewhat more expensive than coal, by careful regulation of the supply and attention to turning off the gas the instant it is out of use, the difference can be reduced till it is hardly perceptible. Gas-ovens may be heated by burning the gas directly within them, or by applying the flame to the walls. In the former case the products of combustion are present with the meat, with effects on taste and odor that are not always agreeable. In the other case the meat is not distinguishable from a joint roasted before the open fire. The stove should be supplied with an escape flue to the open air. Boilers—for the kitchen only—may be attached to the larger stoves and heated from below by atmospheric burners. The average consumption of gas in a range for a family of ten persons is estimated to be twenty feet an hour for six hours a day.

Geology as an Educational Instrument.—Prof. A. H. Green spoke in the Geological Section of the British Association over which he presided, on the value of geology as an educational instrument, and certain attendant risks that need to be guarded against. Geologists, he said, are in continual danger of becoming loose reasoners. They are too ready to accept conclusions upon insufficient evidence. The reason is not far to seek. The imperfection of the geological record is a phrase as true as it is hackneyed. Then, how many of the geological facts gathered from observation admit of diverse explanations as in the theories of the nature of Eozoon canadense! That, after all, is only one of the countless uncertainties that crowd the whole subject of invertebrate palæontology. In what a feeble light have we constantly to grope when we attempt the naming of fossil conchifers, for instance! It is from data scrappy to the last degree, or from facts capable of being interpreted in more than one way, or from determinations shrouded in mist and obscurity, that geologists have in a large number of cases to draw conclusions. Inferences based on such incomplete and shaking foundations must necessarily be largely hypothetical. That that is the character of a great portion of the conclusions of geology all are ready enough to allow. The living day by day face to face with approximation and conjecture must tend to breed an indifference to accuracy and certainty, and to abate that caution and wholesome suspicion which make the wary reasoner look to his foundations and refuse to sanction superstructures