Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/443

Rh knows little of its delights, for it brings him no change. It is well, in arranging for the holiday, to give attention to individual tastes and idiosyncrasies, so that the lover of natural scenery, the seeker for historical associations, and the lover of art may each go where he will find what he will enjoy the most. For the best use of a holiday some definite object may be combined with the general fundamental idea of rest; but there is a possibility of carrying this feature too far and making the excursion a season of work. This leads to the next rule, not to attempt too much. "Take it easy," should always be the motto. Long railway journeys and tedious excursions drawing upon the strength are good things to avoid. Age, physical condition, and previous training should always be regarded; change of life and surroundings should be sought, but mischief may result if the change is too violent; and whatever interferes with regularity of life and sleep should be indulged in only sparingly. Provided the traveler is a good sailor, few forms of holiday are so entirely unobjectionable as a sea voyage.



to Curator Duerden, of the Museum of the Jamaica Institute, as cited by Robert T. Hill in Science, a turn of the tide has come in the life of the mongoose in Jamaica. This animal was imported there to rid the island of rats. Having disposed of these, it turned upon the other small animals and nearly exterminated them. Consequently the ticks and chigoes, in the absence of the lizards and snakes which had eaten them, throve enormously, and became nearly as veritable pests as the rats had been. Within the past few years, however, the mongooses have seemed to decline in numbers, and, when caught, to be suffering from the attacks of ticks. Birds and snakes and lizards are becoming more numerous, poultry and domestic animals suffer less from depredations, numerous crocodile's eggs are found, bevies of quails are occasionally seen, and the rats are appearing again.

researches of Alfred Goldsborough Mayer on the color and color-patterns of moths and butterflies have resulted in the demonstration of several results believed to be new to science, among which are the prevalence of a surprisingly large percentage of black in the great majority of the colors of Lepidoptera, the composite character of the colors as distinguished from simple colors, and the derivation of the pigments of the scales by various chemical processes from the blood, or hæmolymph, of the pupa. While the number of species of Papilio in South America is nine times as great as in North America, the number of colors which they display is only twice as great. Hence the greater number of colors displayed by the tropical forms may be due simply to the far greater number of species, and not to any direct influence of climate. The scales in Lepidoptera do not strengthen the wing or aid the insects in flight. The vast majority of the scales are merely color-bearing organs which have been developed under the influence of natural selection.

to a communication of M. Albert Gauttard to the French Ethnographic Society, the efforts which the Japanese have been making since the revolution of 1868 to adapt themselves to European civilization and modes of life have resulted in surprising transformations of their national type. Some of them are losing the eccentricity of their eyes and the prominence of their cheek bones; children born recently have less flattened noses than their ancestors, and a skin not so yellow. On the other hand, Europeans residing permanently in Japan lose the rosy color of their skin and tend to acquire an eccentricity in the eye. M. Adhemar Leclère, French resident at Kratié, said that he had observed that some of the French residing in Cambodia began in a short time to acquire the type and the gait of the natives.

the use of the Iroquois wampum belts, his studies of which have already been noticed in the Monthly, the facts associated, and other features in the Indian life of both American continents, Mr. Horatio Hale believed that evidence was found that the Indians enjoyed systems of government and forms of civilization that evinced intellectual and moral faculties of no mean order—a real money, elements of a written language