Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/589

Rh supernatural power or influence called mana, which shows itself in physical force, or in any kind of excellence which a man may possess. "This mana is not fixed in anything, and can be conveyed in almost everything; but spirits, whether disembodied souls or supernatural beings, have it and can impart it; and it essentially belongs to personal beings to originate it, though it may act through the medium of water or a stone or a bone. All Melanesian religion consists, in fact, in getting this mana for one's self, or getting it used for one's benefit—all religion, that is, as far as religious practices go, prayers and sacrifices." The sacrifices are different in different places. In the western islands the offerings are made to ghosts, and are consumed by fire as well as eaten; in the eastern islands they are made to spirits, and there is no sacrificial fire or meal. In the former, nothing is offered but food; in the latter money has a conspicuous place. Notwithstanding our association of idolatry with these people. Dr. Codington gives it no place in his account of their religion. Their belief is all in ghosts. There are land-ghosts and sea ghosts, of which the latter have the more important place. At Wango, in the Solomon Islands, there was a canoe-house full of carvings and paintings representing native life, among them a canoe attacked by ghosts that haunt the seas. Two of them are composed as much as possible of forms of fishes—their spears and arrows long-bodied gar-fish and flying-fish. Even sharks have ghosts. In the volcanic islands it is generally believed that the souls of the dead ascend the mountain and are received within the craters by the ghosts which assemble to welcome the new-comer.

The "Rare Earths" in America.—Mr. Waldron Shapleigh exhibited at a recent meeting of the Franklin Institute some forty specimens of salts of what are called the rare earths, with minerals from which they are obtained, viz.: samarskite, zircon crystals, and monazite sand from North Carolina, monazite sand from Brazil, gadolinite from Texas, and allanite from Virginia. This was the first time the salts of praseodymium and neodymium have been shown and probably separated in this country; the separation of these elements is long and tedious. The specimens shown had undergone nearly 400 fractional distillations, and had been in a state of constant preparation since early in 1888. Tons of cerite and monazite sand had been used, and tons of the salts of cerium and lanthanum obtained, but the yield of praseodymium was only a few kilogrammes. The percentage of neodymium was much higher. Zirconium, lanthanum, and cerium should no longer be classed among rare earths, as hundreds of tons of ores from which they are obtained have been located in North Carolina, and there seems no end to the deposits of monazite sand, one of the richest ores, and containing most of the rare earths. In Brazil it does not have to be mined, as it is in the form of river-sand. In North Carolina it is found in washing for gold. Should the arts, trades, or manufactures create a demand for these so-called rare earths. Nature could readily supply it from these two localities. Thorium and yttrium minerals are not so easy to obtain, but they have recently been found in quantity in North Carolina and Texas.

Cultivation of the Poppy.—The poppy is cultivated for opium in a region of India about six hundred miles long and two hundred miles wide. The plants come into full flower in February, when they are some three or four feet high. Each stem produces from two to five capsules, about the size of a duck's egg. Previous to piercing these capsules, the petals of the flower, now beginning to fall off, are carefully collected. They are formed into circular cakes from ten to fourteen inches in diameter, and put into shallow earthen vessels which are heated over a slow fire, and are eventually used as shells or coverings for the drug. When the capsules have reached their highest development, the ryot visits his poppy field in the afternoon and scarifies each capsule from top to bottom, adding sometimes a horizontal cutting. The juice at once begins to exude; milky white at first, but afterward taking on a pinkish tinge. The exudation continues during the night. If there is no wind and abundance of dew, the return is favorable. A westerly wind and cloudy atmosphere diminish the yield.