Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/769

Rh language, and physical type. This aboriginal substratum is represented to-day by the Finns, now scarcely to be found in purity, pushed aside into the nooks and corners by an intrusive people, possessed of a higher culture acquired in central Europe. Yet the Finn has not become extinct. His blood still flows in Russian veins, most notably in the Great and White Russian tribes. The former, in colonizing the great plain, has also been obliged to contend with the Asiatic barbarians pressing in from the east. Yet the impress of the Mongol-Tatar upon the physical type of the Great Russian, which constitutes the major part of the nation, has been relatively slight. For instead of amalgamation or absorption, as with the Finn, elimination, or what Leroy-Beaulieu calls "secretion," has taken place in the case of the Mongol hordes. They still remain intact in the steppes about the Caspian; the Tatars are banished to the eastern governments as well, save for those in the Crimea. The Asiatic influence has probably been more strong in determining the Great Russian character than the physical type. A struggle for mastery of eastern Europe with the barbarians has perhaps made the Great Russian more aggressive; vigor has developed at the expense of refinement. The result has been to generate a type well fitted to perform the arduous task of protecting the marches of Europe against barbarian onslaught, and also capable at the same time of forcefully extending European culture over the aborigines of the neighboring continent of Asia.

relates of the King of Cambodia, as illustrating one of the superstitions dominant in the country, that a French trader had a fowling piece of remarkable accuracy, which he valued very highly. The king wanted to buy it, but the trader did not care to sell. The king then said he would have a bottle enchanted by his sorcerer, which the man should shoot at. If he missed it, the king would take the gun and pay for it. If he hit it, the king would pay for the gun and the man might keep it. The offer was accepted; the bottle was enchanted and hung up at a distance of a hundred and sixty feet. The king and his sorcerer were satisfied that the man could not hit it; but it flew to pieces at the first shot. The king was very angry at his sorcerer, who fled for home as ashamed of himself "as a fox captured by a hen."

The highest flight of kites made at Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory in 1897 was on October 15th, when the meteorograph was raised to a height of 3,571 metres, or about 11,600 feet above sea level, while the highest kite rose more than 120 feet above this. About 20,475 feet of line were used, and the pull, when the line was in the air, varied between 12.3 and 128 pounds. At the highest point reached the temperature was 41° F., while at the observatory it was 70° F. An interesting feature of this flight was the passage of the meteorograph through the cumulus and alto-cumulus levels of the clouds, as shown by the increase followed by a decrease of humidity at heights corresponding with those occupied by such clouds.