Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/796

716 be raised or lowered at will carries the axes of two circular saws; these latter are operated by power from the portable engine. The boat itself is moved by means of a rope run over a windlass, the loose end of the rope being attached to an anchor fixed in the ice at a distance in front of the boat, and in the direction to be taken. The framework containing the saws is placed at a suitable height, according to the thickness of the ice, and the saws are set in motion. Being separated from each other by a distance of about five yards, they cut out a band of ice which the boat breaks into fragments by its forward movement. By reason of its form it causes these fragments to scatter before it—that is to say, to disappear on the right and on the left under the ice remaining in place. Through ice two inches thick this machine forced a passage at the rate of twenty feet per minute. In eight-inch ice the advance was about one third of a mile per day.

The Cost of an Epidemic.—In a recent number of the British Medical Journal, Dr. Munro gives the following interesting statistics: In the course of an epidemic of enteric fever in 1893 there occurred eight hundred and fifty-nine cases, and seventy-four people lost their lives. The loss in wages was $16,455; the cost of treatment was $2 1,475; funeral expenses, $1,850. Adopting Farr's estimate of the average value of an individual as a wage-earner, $795, we have for the seventy-four deaths the large sum of $58,830. So that the pecuniary loss to the community, arising in connection with the epidemic, amounted to a total of $98,610. A consideration of these figures, says Dr. Munro, might well suggest the reflection whether any investment was calculated to yield a better pecuniary return than the expenditure involved in the operations of the Public Health Department, which has for its main object the prevention of epidemics.

In the Frankincense Country.—Near Cape Risut, on the coast of Arabia, Mr. Theodore Bent, in his exploration of the frankincense country, found the trees covering a large tract. They have bright green leaves like those of the ash, small green flowers, and insignificant fruit. Frankincense was the old staple of trade in this district, and it is still gathered in three places in the Gara Mountains, and is classified in three qualities. It is only collected in hot weather, before the rains begin, in March, April, and May, for during the rains the trails in the Gara Mountains are impassable. The collectors cut the stem, and after seven days return to collect the gum which has exuded. This they do three or four times a month. In the cool weather, as the gum comes down slowly, they leave the trees alone. The trees belong to the various families of the Gara tribe, each of them being marked and known to its owner. The product is sold wholesale to traders who come after it. This odoriferous gum was much more prized for temple worship and household consumption than it is now, and so precious was it that the old Sabæan merchants invented marvelous stories of genii and dragons guarding the trees and of the woods exhaling deadly odors, in order to protect them from too curious and enterprising trespassers.

Seebohm the Ornithologist.—The science of ornithology has sustained a severe loss in the death of Mr. Henry Seebohm, which took place at his home in London, November 26, 1895. From a brief biographical sketch in the London Spectator we take the following: Coming of an old Quaker family, and from childhood an enthusiastic observer and collector, when he later in life became a large steel manufacturer at Sheffield, he still found time to make numerous excursions to foreign lands, in order to see for himself the English migratory birds in their temporary homes. His History of British Birds and their Eggs is one of the best works of its class. Among the many trips which he took to clear up some question of migration or habitat, the one which led to his discovery of the north coast tundras as the great breeding ground for a large class of European birds is one of the most interesting. In looking for the breeding place of several English birds which regularly disappeared every spring, no one knew whither, he was led to visit the Petchora River, which flows from the Ural Mountains northward and falls into the Arctic Ocean opposite Novaya Zembla. On the upper river is the great Siberian forest, while lower down on either bank below the limit of trees is the tundra, which fringes the whole length of the