Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/403

Rh raising of the eyebrows; and this, although not the least apropos to the words spoken at the time, has instantly evoked a like movement on the faces before me. The response was quite involuntary, and was a pure piece of instinctive reflex action. Why does a yawn spread like pestilence through the room when conversation flags? I know of those who have started such an epidemic by a little piece of acting, and not a mouth in the company (save the guilty one) knew why it gaped. Have not we all noticed that a man of marked individuality becomes a center of physical influence to those who wait on his words, so that his gestures, tones of voice, and turns of phrase are reproduced? I know a tutor whose peculiarities of speech and carriage have been adopted more or less by every one of his pupils during the last six years, and several of them have come to resemble him in feature. This unconscious imitation of expression is very noticeable in children. Has it occurred to many careful parents that the good looks of their daughters may depend in no slight degree upon their choice of nurse girls and governesses?

For some reason which we can not fathom, the imitative faculty is so ingrained in us that what the eye perceives the brain makes haste to reproduce without stopping to ask our permission; and where two people live long together the facial muscles of each are constantly receiving stimuli prompting them to mimicry. As in the case of the emotions, these influences may be infinitesimal at any given moment, and may give rise to no visible change of expression. Yet in the course of time they tend to mold the whole countenance, feature for feature, into an almost exact facsimile of another.—Blackwood's Magazine.

most remarkable feature noticed by Prof. Krasnov, of Kharkov, in his study of the distribution of plants in the island of Sakhalin, is the existence side by side of distinct types of vegetation, due to variations, not of climate, but of soil and relief. This, it is suggested, should be a warning against hasty conclusions as to the succession in past times of distinct types of vegetation in Europe, since it appears possible that they likewise existed side by side. In Java, which he also visited, the similarity of the flora on the tops of the volcanoes with that of the polar swamps suggested to Prof. Krasnov problems as to the evolution of polar forms from tropical prototypes.

in the Buddhist department of the Gallery of Religions at the British Museum contains an apparatus for exorcising evil spirits which is used by some of the Buddhist sects in Japan. It consists of a brazier surrounded by a small tray for offerings, and bouquets of artificial flowers, the whole encircled by a rope supported on poles. Before this lighted brazier the officiating priest takes his seat, and, reciting appropriate prayers or incantations, burns one by one a bundle of one hundred and eight sticks. Each stick represents one of the wicked spirits "that lead the heart of man into sin," and the exorcism of the whole batch may be assumed to secure a certain immunity from attacks for some time.