Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/578

 and the signs of disease and of death, and on the use of medicines; Part II relates to injuries and wounds and their treatment; Part III, to sudden attacks, painful attacks, pain in the chest, and pain in the stomach; Part IV, to some common ailments and diseases of the skin; and Part V, to diseases of infancy and childhood; numerous particular forms of attack being described under each heading.

A Manual of Physics for university students, prepared by Prof. William Peddie, of Edinburgh, has been issued by G. P. Putnam's Sons (price, $2.50). It is a treatise of a high grade, and is confined to pure science. It makes large use of mathematics, but the author states that the student may assume the results of the mathematical portions, and use the remainder, which is much the larger part, of the text in his study of experimental physics. The volume has an index, and there are over two hundred diagrams in the text.

The ejection of blood from the eyes of the lizards of the genus Phrynosoma—popularly called horned toads—is now attracting considerable attention. In the Proceedings of the United States National Museum, O. P. Hay gives a very interesting account of his experiments with this lizard. It appears that upon irritating the animal blood spurts from just above the eye. For what purpose the horned toad thus besprinkles an enemy with his own blood, what is the source of the blood, and how is it expelled with.such force, are the questions that are puzzling biologists. It is suggested that the purpose of the ejection is to defend the animal from the attacks of enemies, although it seems improbable that the discharge would seriously pain or affect an enemy; however, Mr. Hay thinks it likely that this is the purpose of the habit, and he says: "A discharge of blood into the eyes of some pursuing bird or snake might so seriously interfere with its clearness of vision that the lizard might make its escape while its enemy was wiping its eyes."

The determination of the source of the blood has offered serious difficulties to the investigations of biologists, the most probable theory being that the blood or matter is lodged in a blood sinus upon each side of the head, a portion of the wall lying on the inner surface of the eyelid. This sinus is supposed to be surrounded with muscular tissue of sufficient force to cause the thin wall in the lid to be ruptured and the blood to be ejected to a considerable distance. These toads are found in nearly all parts of California, and are called by the Mexicans "sacred toads," "because they wept tears of blood."

In the Contemporary Review Prof. A. H. Sayce contributes a valuable paper to philological literature, which he entitles The Primitive Home of the Aryans. Until recent years the accepted belief was that the parent speech had its home in Asia, probably on the slopes of the Hindu Koosh. The parent speech of the Indo-European Languages was entitled the Ursprache, or "primæval language"; but, as linguistic history developed, this supposition was abandoned, for it was found to differ from Sanskrit or Greek only in its fuller inflectional character. Sanskrit then became the parent, and its home was determined to be in Asia, the choice being fixed upon two arguments, the first of which is linguistic, the second being historical. "On one hand it has been laid down by eminent philologists that the less one of the derived languages has deflected from the parent speech the more likely it is to be geographically nearer to its earliest home";. . . and, "as Sanskrit was held to be the most primitive of the Indo-European languages to reflect clearly the features of the parent speech, the conclusion was drawn that that parent speech had been spoken at no great distance from the country where the hymns of Rig-Veda were first composed." Prof. Sayce, however, draws attention to the fact that the result of recent discoveries has been a complete revolution in the study of Indo-European etymology; and that whereas, ten years ago, Sanskrit was invoked to explain Greek, "it is to the Greek that the new school now turns to explain Sanskrit." He claims, with Dr. Penka, that "southern Scandinavia was the primitive "Aryan home," and he adds that "a more profound examination of Teutonic and Keltic mythology, a more exact knowledge of the words in the several Indo-European languages which are not of Indo-European origin, and the progress of archaeological discovery will furnish the verification we need" to establish that in Europe and not Asia was the home of the parent speech.

The Birth of Invention is a most interesting pamphlet, by Otis T. Mason, Ph. D.,