Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/877

Rh and some of the German school assert that such signs exist, and are not difficult to recognize; or, that the criminal was a criminal potentially before he was one actually. The chief problem of dealing with crime fundamentally is, then, one of taking it at this stage; and it is here that medical anthropology can make itself most useful.

Explorations in Labrador and Alaska.—Of the geographical explorations on the American continent during 1894, Prof. Angelo Heilprin, in the Bulletin of the Geographical Club of Philadelphia, mentions as most noteworthy those of Messrs. Tyrrell and Low, on British territory. To the former we owe the exploration of a large portion of unknown region lying to the west of Hudson Bay—a region that for at least six hundred miles was totally unknown—and the rectification of much of the western contour of the bay. A peculiarity of the region traveled over by Mr. Tyrrell is the total absence of timber. "All the wood that was gathered in the course of this six hundred miles' journey, it is said, would not have been sufficient to give the material for a single boot-peg. On the other hand, even in this most treeless area, game of at least one kind is described as being most unmanageably abundant. Over an area of three square miles or more the reindeer were so thick as almost completely to shut out from view the ground." To Mr. Low belongs the honor of having made the first crossing of Labrador. Beginning at Lake Mistassini on the east, and terminating at Ungava Bay on the north, he crossed the height of land of the region, a rugged and forbidding country, partly timber-covered, and in the main devoid of inhabitants. No specially marked physiographic features were discovered, no great mountain ridges or peaks, and no large streams, "but the accessions of general knowledge to a region are always welcome, and particularly when it is so little known as is Labrador." A third exploration on our continent is that of the joint Anglo-American Alaska Boundary Commission. The statements in the newspapers that the surveys of this commission would remove Mount St. Elias from the United States to British America is "perhaps premature," and Mr. J. C. Russell, who first definitely determined the position of the mountain, is quoted as authority for saying that no basis exists for the assumed necessary transfer. Two other peaks, however, possibly higher than Mount St. Elias, have been observed, unquestionably on British soil.

Snow-coloring Insects.—An interesting communication has been published from Dr. Vogler de Schaffhouse concerning red snowinsects. An excursion of a Vaudois society to the Great St. Bernard in August, 1893, at an altitude of twenty-six hundred metres, near the col de Fenetre remarked in a little combe at the left of the path a well-defined rose-red spot on the snow. One of the excursionists, M. Théodore Bottinger, found by the aid of a glass that the red color was due to little jumping insects, of which thousands were distributed on the surface of the melting snow. There were such prodigious numbers of them at the bottom of the combe that they formed a compact mass an inch thick in spots, like a bed of orangered sawdust. The insect, called in French a podurelle, is a new species of the Lipura of Burmeister—the Anurophorus of Nicolet, hitherto undescribed. The red and black colorations of snow are usually ascribed to an alga (Protococcus nivalis), which turns black from red in the course of its growth. M. J. Brun observes, in an article he has published on the subject of coloration, that he has met the podurelle of Benedict de Saussure (Desoria glacialis) in innumerable masses, and believes that the existence of the podurelle is connected with that of the protococcus, and that the insects owe their color to the black spores on which they feed. It appears, then, that the coloration of the snow is chiefly due to the presence of the lower vegetation, but that the existence of the podurelles being connected with that of the protococcus, those insects may under some circumstances contribute by their number to form colored spots.

Power of Petty Superstitions.—The force of superstition, the London Spectator observes, in an article on that subject, is rarely felt by the cultured Englishmen, because their superstitions are usually unimportant, it not signifying much whether you pass under a ladder or not, or whether you