Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/391

Rh the matter. The spherules concomitant with the gaseous erosion of granites and other rocks, thrown up into the atmosphere to the great height reached by fine volcanic ejections, may be sustained in the air for a very long time, and fall to the earth at great distances. In support of this opinion it will be recollected that in the basins of seas, the corpuscles of which we are speaking, to which MM. Rénard and Murray do not hesitate to ascribe an extraterrestrial origin, are generally associated with clearly volcanic products.

In order to elucidate completely the origin of the globuliform matters, I have placed melted wax in a pipette with a capillary end, and blown the jet into a vessel of cold water. The product had all the characteristics of the globules of which we are trying to explain the origin, some hollow and having little necks like the meteoric spherules, others full and joined together like the associated spherules in the bald men's locks in the crater of Mauna Loa.

The geological importance of atmospheric sediments is marked in these days in many ways. The facts with which we have been occupied will contribute to illustrate it still more.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from La Nature.



WANDERED last summer over that marvelous land of sunshine in our great Southwest where still fast dwindling groups of the real Americans cherish quaint customs, and linger among the superstitions of vanished centuries. And Fortune made me for a time a guest in a small tribe of these Indians, as yet almost untouched by the blighting finger of what to us is civilization.

I was drawn to them in this way: There came to our camp upon the plains, one evening, a woebegone dark fellow of this tribe, who with his squaw had wandered away from his comrades, seeking a quiet place to die. He was wan and feeble. A demon, he told us, had long since gained entrance to his body and had tortured him with pain and cold and fire. All the art of his tribal medicine men had failed to free him from the intruder, and a little while before, some spirit had begun to whisper to him in his sleep, he said, that he must go into the dark. All this was gathered from lip and gesture and pantomime as he lingered with