Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/442

428 winds and the rain shape these deposits into abrupt, elevated, square-cut masses. This property of forming a kind of vertical cliffs, with the porous texture and the absence of stratification, are characteristic of the loess, as is also the presence of terrestrial or lacustrine remains instead of sea-fossils. Being exceedingly fine in constitution and well charged with certain salts, the loess is generally, when well irrigated, exceedingly fertile. In all the tillable regions of central Asia, including China, it plays the same part as the "black earth" of Russia. The mountains which form on the south the western border of Zungaria are rich in minerals. Gold is an important product of the region of Khotan, where there are twenty-two mines, some of them employing three or four thousand workmen. This region has long enjoyed the honor of being the only known place where nephrite or jade was found. The beds of that rare substance are in the district of Kárakach; but the quarrying for it has greatly fallen off since the disturbances that occurred during the brief reign of Yacoub Beg in Kashgar.

A Young Trader of the Solomon Islands.—It is amusing, says Mr. Woodford, in his Naturalist among the Head-hunters, to see a mere child paddle alongside in a crazy trough of a canoe, only just capable of supporting its weight. "The water splashes into the canoe at every stroke of the paddle, and at intervals the small child kicks it overboard with his foot—a novel kind of baler. Three or four moldy-looking yams, ostentatiously displayed, are rolling about in the water at the bottom of the canoe. The unsuspecting stranger takes pity on the tender years and apparent anxiety of the small native to trade, and gives him probably four times the price for his rusty yams. The child eagerly seizes the coveted stick of tobacco, and immediately stows it for safety through a hole in his ear, where at least it will be in no danger of getting wet. He next whisks aside a dirty-looking piece of matting that has apparently got accidentally jammed in one end of the canoe, and displays some more yams, of a slightly better quality than the last. For the sake of consistency you can not well offer him less than you did before, and another stick of tobacco changes hands and is transferred to the other ear. You think now that he must have finished, as there is no place in the canoe to hide anything else, but with a dexterous jerk that nearly upsets the canoe he produces a single yam that he has been sitting upon. How it managed to escape notice before is a puzzle. For this he demands a pipe, but is not satisfied with the first or second that is shown him. No; he must have a piala tinoni, or have his yam back. The piala tinoni is a pipe with a man's face upon the bowl. But again the young trader is particular; it must also have a knob at the bottom, or he will have none of it."

Population of Cheese.—M. Adametz, of Somthal, Switzerland, has been making a census of the microscopic animalcules in cheese. In the fresh cheese of Emmenthal he finds from 90,000 to 140,000 microbes to a gramme, the number increasing with time—a cheese 71 days old had 800,000 to the gramme. The population of mild cheese (fromage mou) was still more dense. At 25 days of age it was 1,200,000; at 45 days, 200,000,000 microbes per gramme. These figures apply to the middle of the cheese, while the population is much more dense toward the outside, where it rises to from 3,600,000 to 5,600,000. At this rate, the number of living beings in 360 grammes of cheese is as great as the number of men on the globe.

Green Seeds and Early Fruit.—Correspondents of Garden and Forest remark upon the evidence afforded by recent experiments that seeds from immature fruit will give a product requiring less than the usual time to ripen, and that the earliness thus gained can be increased by continuing the selection. This has been observed, according to Dr. E. Lewis Sturtevant, at the New York Experiment Station, in the case of varieties of corn, turnip, and cabbage. At Purdue University, Indiana, a gain of from fifteen to twenty days has been obtained by early selection. Prof. Arthur, of Purdue University, has observed further that the plant as well as the fruit thus cultivated tends to early ripeness, and hence the period of fruitfulness, or the time between the first and the last ripe fruit,