Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/436

424 It must be recollected, however, that cruel murder is, according to their code of ethics, a conspicuous virtue, a moral duty. They all apparently believe that man is compounded of a body and spirit. The spirit leaves its tenement during sleep, and at death does not return. Hence, in waking up a sleeper, they proceed to rouse him by degrees, so that the spirit may have time to return and take its place.

Korean Marriages.—Korean girls, according to Mr. H. S. Saunderson, after enjoying freedom till they are eight years old, are consigned to the women's quarters, where they live in seclusion till they are married, at sixteen or seventeen years. After marriage the woman is allowed to see no man but her husband. The boys, on the other hand, are taught that it is undignified for them to enter the women's part of the house. They never see their brides till the wedding day, all having been arranged for them, often when both bride and groom are infants. The marriage ceremony is very simple. The bride and bridegroom invite their most intimate friends to assist them in dressing their hair in the manner befitting their new estate. Then the bridegroom mounts a white pony, which is led by two servants, while two others on either side support the rider in his saddle. Thus he proceeds to the bride's house, accompanied by his relatives. At their destination they find a pavilion erected in the courtyard of the house, in which the bride and her relatives are awaiting their arrival. A goose (the Korean symbol of fidelity), which the bridegroom brings with him, is then produced. The bride (who has to cover her face with her long sleeves) and the bridegroom then bow to each other until their heads almost touch the ground. This they do three or four times, and are then man and wife. A loving-cup is passed round, and then the bride is taken off to the woman's apartments of her husband's home, where she is looked after by her mother and mother-in-law, while the groom entertains his friends. Fidelity is imposed on the wife, but the husband is under no such obligation. He can marry but one wife, it is true, but he is allowed as many concubines as he can afford. These, however, never inhabit the same house as his principal wife. The husband is forced to maintain his wife properly and treat her with respect. Marriage is the great event in a Korean's life, for he then attains man's estate. Before marriage, no matter how old he may be, he is treated as a boy, and has to maintain a deferential attitude toward the married men, even though they be only half his age.

Rapid Transmission of Earthquake Motion.—Attention is called by Prof. John Milne to the apparently high velocity with which motion is transmitted from an earthquake center to places far distant from it—a quarter of the earth's circumference—and to the importance of instituting an extended systematic observation of these movements. During the last few years European observers have recorded earth movements that had their origin in Japan or in other distant countries. Beyond a radius of a few hundred miles from their origin these disturbances are often too feeble to be sensible or to be recorded by ordinary seismographs. Their presence is, however, made known by the use of specially contrived nearly horizontal pendulums, and it is found that they have a duration of from ten to thirty minutes, and sometimes last for one or two hours. Observations made at Tokyo of the earthquake of March 22, 1894, the distance from the epicentrum being about six hundred miles, indicated that the rate of propagation of the motion of the waves was from 2·3 kilometres per second for the more pronounced superficial waves, to 11·5 kilometres per second for the lighter shocks, and they passed to Italy at the rate of nine or ten kilometres per second. An investigation is especially wanted of the velocities of propagation of the elastic movements which apparently go from Japan to Europe in fifteen or twenty minutes. Prof. Milne has devised some delicate instruments expressly to be used in these investigations.

American Nickel Mines.—The nickel mine at Lancaster Gap, Pa., belongs to the class of ores described by Prof. J. H. L. Vogt, of Christiania, Norway, as typical deposits of nickeliferous sulphides, formed by a process of magnetic differentiation in basic igneous rocks. It is situated about three miles south of the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, a little more than fifty miles west of