Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/296

284 slightly limp and lose their gloss. Leaves wilted in the dark were much less dangerous.

Dr. Brinton's Contributions to American Linguistics.—At the suggestion of the late James Constantine Pilling, Dr. D. G. Brinton has prepared an analytical survey of his contributions in the field of American linguistics, which have now extended over forty years. The list includes seventy-one titles of books and papers, of which sixteen are classed as general articles and works. The first four of these are occupied with the inquiry whether the native American languages, as a group, have peculiar morphological traits that justify their classification as one of the great divisions of human speech. Dr. Brinton finds a feature—incorporation—which, under the form polysynthesis, is present in a marked degree in nearly all of them. Another paper shows that the various alleged affiliations between American and Asiatic tongues are wholly unfounded, and another pleads for more attention to American languages. A volume of nearly four hundred pages—The American Race—was the first attempt at a systematic classification of all the tribes of North, Central, and South America on the basis of language. It defines seventy-nine linguistic stocks in North America and sixty-one in South America, pertaining to nearly sixteen hundred tribes. Other volumes in the list include writings, preferably on secular subjects, by natives in their own languages. One contains a list of native American authors, and notices some of their works. Another vindicates the claim of native American poetry to recognition. These works were followed by the Library of Aboriginal American Literature, of which eight considerable volumes were published, each containing a work wholly of native inspiration, in a native tongue, with a translation, notes, etc. Fourteen other publications relate to North American languages north of Mexico, thirty-two to Mexican and Central American languages, and ten to South American and Antillean languages. Many of these articles were collected in 1800 and published in a volume entitled Essays of an Americanist. It was arranged in four parts, relating respectively to Ethnology and Archæology, Mythology and folklore. Graphic Systems and Literature, and Linguistics. The value of Dr. Brinton's labors will be realized by all persons who know how rapidly things purely native American are passing away.

Metallic Alloys of Rich Colors.—A remarkable alloy of gold seventy-eight parts and aluminum twenty-two parts, discovered by Messrs. Roberts-Austen and Hunt, has a characteristic purple color which can not be imitated; for if the designated proportions of the constituents are varied from, the base is entirely changed. The compound lacks somewhat in the qualities of resistance and malleability. The color is abnormal in that it partakes of none of the color features of its constituents, as is the case in most combinations of metals. Thus, the colors of copper alloyed with zinc or tin pass gradually from red to white, according to the proportions of the constituent metals. In the union of two metals of white or bluish-white color, like zinc, tin, silver, and aluminum, the color of the alloys is not perceptibly different from that of the components—that is, it continues white. The purple of the gold aluminum alloy is not, however, the only exception to this rule. Aluminum gives highly colored compounds with several other metals, even when the second metal is clearly white. In the experiments of Charles Marcot, of Geneva, in alloying aluminum with platinum, palladium, nickel, and cobalt, combination took place abruptly at red heat, with the development of an intense temperature and a partial combination of the aluminum; and when platinum is the second metal, an explosion is liable to occur. An alloy of seventy-two parts of platinum and twenty-eight of aluminum had a bright golden or yellow color, which varied under slight changes in the proportions of the elements to violet green or coppery red. The alloy is hard and brittle and of crystalline structure. The yellow form is stable, while the other forms decompose in a short time. An alloy of seventy-two parts palladium and twenty-eight aluminum is of fine coppery rose color, crystalline texture, hard and brittle, and suffers no change with time. An alloy of from seventy-five to eighty