Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/404

396 author ventures a rationalistic interpretation, that the leaf conceals a worm which hatches into a butterfly. A more probable explanation, judging from the cut, is that it is a case of leaf mimicry by a moth.

On the Island of Panay, the Spaniards told him that when it thunders there fall crosses of a greenish-black stone which have great virtue. Here, too, the author is skeptical and suggests that 'it is possible they might make 'em of the stones that fell.' It is, however, not uncommon for fulgurites, formed by the fusion of the sand by lightning, to have a branching form like a rude cross.

It appears that a great many of those curious creatures of the class described by Herodotus, Ptolemy, Pliny and Mandeville have taken refuge from advancing civilization in the Philippines. Here were to be found mermaids, not only of the common species, but its converse form. Besides were-wolves, there were even Vere-crocodiles,' if such a word can be used. The missing link was also a native of the Island of Mindoro, with tails half a span long. The account of the same tribe of Negrillos, four pages beyond, seems to have been written later, for the tails had grown. "Some fathers of the society of great credit told me, that these Mangihani have a tail a span long. In other respects they are brave, and pay tribute, but have not as yet embraced the Christian faith." The clause connecting the two sentences is more logical than it sounds. Mention should also be made of the Amazons which inhabited islands near the coast of Palapa; of the serpents which magnetized their victims, and of the monkeys which caught oysters weighing several pounds by fishing with their tails.

From a political point of view, it is important to note that not a tenth of the inhabitants of the Philippines owned allegiance to the King of Spain, and also that the Moluccas were formerly included as a part of the Philippines.

From Manila Dr. Gemilli set sail for California, which he gives evidence to prove was not an island, as had been commonly supposed, but was a part of New Spain. The paragraph in which he gives his opinion of the ocean, misnamed Pacific, is as stately and antiquated in its architecture as a seventeenth century galleon and forms a suitable close to these extracts from the ancient history we have annexed;

"The voyage from the Philippine islands to America may be call'd the longest, and most dreadful of any in the world; as well because of the vast ocean to be cross'd, being almost the one-half of the terraquous globe, with the wind always a-head; as for the terrible tempests that happen there, one upon the back of the other, and for the desperate diseases that seize people, in seven or eight months living at sea, sometimes near the line, sometimes cold, sometimes temperate, sometimes hot, which is enough to destroy a man of steel, much more flesh and blood, which at sea had but indifferent food."