Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/138

120 "These sciences," continues the author, "were chosen less as subjects of study than as instruments of training in order to cultivate the powers of observation, and to encourage a habit of inductive reasoning. If the teaching of science in its early stages is thus regarded more as a means than as an end, there is no child, who has begun to learn anything at all, who may not be taught some branch of it with advantage." The attempt was at first made to teach the children science without making them learn anything by heart. The result was, that they did not know what to do with the facts they had collected, and lost them as fast as they picked them up. "But, since the botany boys have been set to learn the chart by heart, and since the chemistry boys have been using a text-book, the progress made has been far more satisfactory. A young child's reasoning powers are so feeble that he needs to be constantly guided in the use of them, and, before being set to observe, he requires to be furnished with a cadre in which to arrange his battalions of facts."

Fishing for Glass-Sponges.—The mode of fishing for the Euplectella, or "Venus's Flower-basket," on the coast of Zebu, one of the Philippines, is described as follows in the journal of a member of the Challenger Expedition: "The natives use an ingeniously-contrived instrument in taking the sponges. Two long strips of bamboo meet at an angle of 45°, and are fixed in that position by an elaborate system of stays of bamboo, which are attached to a piece of wood running back from the angle, between the two arms or wings of the machine. The piece of wood is weighted with stones, and a line is attached to it, so that the machine is pulled along on the bottom, with the angle in advance, and the two wings sloping backward. The outer edge of each of the bamboo rods is armed with between thirty and forty large fish-hooks, with their barbs set forward. The regederas, as the Spaniards call the euplectellas, are found at a depth of about a hundred fathoms. The Indian lets down the machine with a strong fine line of Manila hemp, and pulls it slowly over the ground. Every now and then he feels a slight tug, and at the end of an hour or so he pulls it in, with usually from five to ten regederas on the hooks. Euplectella has a very different appearance, under these circumstances, from the cones of glassy network so well known under that name. Its silver beard is clogged with the dark-gray mud in which it lives buried to about one-third of its height, and the network of the remainder of the tube is covered with a pall of yellowish sarcode.

Congress of German Anthropologists.—The Congress of Anthropologists held its sessions for 1875 in Munich, in the early part of August. The president, Prof. Virchow, reviewed the history of the German Anthropological Society since its origin, sixteen years ago. Prof. Zittel called the attention of the delegates to the collection of prehistoric relics on exhibition in one of the halls of the Odeon. The collection represented the ancient Kelto-Germanic period of Bavarian history, and was the result of the joint efforts of various historical societies, aided by the Government and by private collectors. "Of Tertiary man," said Prof. Zittel, "no trace is found in Bavaria, any more than in the rest of Germany, nor have we any human memorials from the period of the preglacial Diluvium. Even the Cavern and the Stone age yield but few human remains. Burying-places furnish both dolichocephalous and brachycephalous crania—the latter belonging to Southern Bavaria, the former to the Allemans and Franks. We must not deny to the Bavarian of to-day a Germanic origin on account of his brachycephaly, for even the Frisians are brachycephalic also. In manners and customs Bavaria is as German as any other portion of Germany, and it is not to be dropped out of the German organism. Its post is that of guardian of the southern marches."

The Weddas of Ceylon.—A paper by Mr. B. F. Hartshorne, read at the British Association, gives some interesting particulars of the social condition and habits of the Weddas of Ceylon. The Weddas depend for their subsistence on bows and arrows, and pass their lives in the vast forests of the country without any habitation, and without even the rudest attempt at