Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/586

568 the vineyards, wine-cellars, and wines, whose name, Fafian, is but little changed from Fufluns, the ancient Etruscan Bacchus, is described as "enchantingly beautiful" and given to good-natured mischief. When the peasants arc gathering grapes, he comes invisibly and knocks their panniers all about; but if this is taken pleasantly, he replaces everything, and then his ringing laughter is heard. Sometimes he falls in love, and, of course, always woos successfully. Teramo is the spirit of merchants, thieves, messengers, and carrier-pigeons, and corresponds with Turnus, the old Etruscan Mercury. Maso or Mas is Mars, not the god of war, but his Etruscan prototype, a god of crops and fertility. Diana preserves to this day her title of queen of the witches. The great mediæval writers declare that all the Italian witches asserted that they did not worship Satan, but Diana and Herodia. Marcellus of Bordeaux, who was court physician to the Emperor Honorius in the fourth century, collected and recorded a hundred magical cures which he had gathered among old women and peasants. Of these, Mr. Leland by dint of much inquiry had found fifty in practical use, and bad recovered some of them in a more perfect form than that given by Marcellus. Through all this lore there runs the thread that all disorders and ill luck and earthly mischances are caused by witchcraft, and must be cured by Christian saints or heathen sorcerers, of which the latter are preferred.

Allotropism in Alloys.—In his presidential address before the Chemical Section of the British Association, Prof. Roberts Austen spoke of the consequences of allotropic changes which result in alteration of structure as being very great. The case of the tin regimental buttons which fell into a shapeless heap when exposed to the rigorous winter of St. Petersburg is well known. The recent remarkable discovery by Hopkinson, of the changes in the density of nickelsteel (containing twenty-two per cent of nickel) which are produced by cooling to 30°, affords another instance. This variety of steel, after being frozen, is readily magnetizable, although it was not so before; its density, moreover, is permanently reduced by no less than two per cent by the exposure to cold; and it is startling to contemplate the effect which would be produced by a visit to the arctic regions of a ship of war built in a temperate climate of ordinary steel, and clad with some three thousand tons of such nickel-steel armor; the shearing which would result from the expansion of the armor by exposure to cold would destroy the ship. The molecular behavior of alloys is, indeed, most interesting. W. Spring has shown, in a long series of investigations, that alloys may be formed at the ordinary temperature, provided that minute particles of the constituent elements are submitted to great pressure. W. Hallock has recently given strong evidence in favor of the view that an alloy can be produced from its constituent metals with but slight pressure, if the temperature to which the mass is submitted be above the melting-point of the alloy, even though it be far below the meltingpoint of the more easily fusible constituent. A further instance is thus afforded of the fact that a variation of either temperature or pressure will effect the union of solids.

The Instincts of Cattle.—Many habits of the lower animals can be explained by analogy with our own behavior in similar circumstances and still more with that of savage men. Thus the tenderness and ingenuity that a cow shows in caring for her calf, and the fierce courage that she displays in its defense against foes from which she would flee if alone, all find their counterparts in human life. Several instincts that are more difficult to account for are discussed by Mr. W. H. Hudson, in a recent number of Longman's Magazine. This writer accounts for the angry excitement shown by cattle on the appearance of a red cloth as an outgrowth of curiosity. Were a red flag displayed in a field by itself, the animals would surround it with every sign of interest and curiosity; but should a man drape himself in it, the bolder would attack him, not on account of the color, but because the man had drawn their attention irresistibly to himself. In regard to the unerring detection by cattle of the spot where blood has been spilled, the furious fighting over it by the stronger males, the strange anxiety of the whole herd to survey it, and above all the weird horror expressed in the discordant