of perpetuating her kind. She knows that her young are predaceous,
devouring anything in the shape of an insect or an egg that they can
secure; she is aware of the fact that, if she were to deposit her eggs,
side by side, on a leaf, the first young aphis-lion hatched out would
devour all of the remaining eggs. In order to guard against this, she
spins a delicate but stiff stalk of hard silk, upon the tip of which
she deposits an egg. By the side of this stalk she rears another, and
another, and another, tipping each with an egg, until finally, when she
has finished ovipositing, there appears a miniature grove of delicate
silken stems, each one of which bears aloft on its summit a round and
shining egg. When the first-born of this brood makes its appearance, it
crawls down the stem to the surface of the leaf, and goes in search of
food, utterly unconscious of the rich and toothsome feast just above its
head on the tips of the other stalks!
Lubbock concludes, from certain experiments, that the yellow ant
will not voluntarily drop from an elevation. Now, observations and
experiments made by myself teach me that these ants (_Lasius flavus_)
_will_ drop from elevations when they wish to attain a certain object.
On one occasion one of the herds of aphides under observation was
discovered by a wandering black ant (_Lasius niger_), which reported
her discovery to her comrades. At once a marauding expedition was
inaugurated by these cattle thieves, which fiercely attacked the yellow
guardians of the herd. The black rievers swarmed up the grapevine, but
were met by the brave yellow warriors, which valiantly withstood their
attack. Finally, the yellow ants were in danger of being overwhelmed by
numbers, when I suddenly perceived that they were being re-enforced.
Closer examination revealed the fact that they were crawling up a
neighboring vine and then dropping from an overhanging leaf on to the
leaf on the stem of which the aphides were feeding. They could not reach
the herd by way of the original path on account of the intervening
army of black ants, hence their shrewd and most intelligent use of
the neighboring vine and overhanging leaf. I am glad to report that
the yellow ants were victorious, and that they completely routed the
would-be robbers.
When alarmed, the yellow ant will draw in its legs and drop to the
ground; moreover, this is characteristic of all vine- and tree-climbing
ants, Lubbock to the contrary notwithstanding. It stands to reason that
past experiences must have taught them that they received no injury from
involuntary tumbles; that they have evolved the habit of voluntarily
throwing themselves from an elevation in order to attain certain objects
does not seem to me, therefore, at all wonderful or extraordinary.
TWO GIFTS TO FRENCH SCIENCE.
BY M. HENRI DE PARVILLE.
M. Antoine Thomson d'Abbadie, of the Academy of Sciences and Bureau
of Longitudes, France, who died in Paris, March 20, 1897, was born in
Dublin, January 3, 1810, of a family of the Basses-Pyrénées temporarily
residing in Ireland, but which returned to France in 1815. The
d'Abbadies are said to have been descended from the lay monks instituted
by Charlemagne to defend the frontier against the incursions of the
Saracens. The name d'Abbadie was not originally a proper name, but the
title of a function (_abbatia abbadia_), and designated those soldiers
who lived in the abbeys of the Basque country, lance in hand. Hence the
name, which is well diffused, whether spelled with two _b_s or one.
While still very young Antoine d'Abbadie manifested an unusual curiosity
concerning the unknown around him. "What is there at the end of the
road?" he asked his nurse. "A river," she replied. "And what is beyond
the river?" "A mountain." "And what then?" "I don't know; I never was
there." "Well," said he, "I will go and see." He was the same as he grew
up, always wanting to know. He visited Brazil upon a mission for the
Academy of Sciences, and on his return joined his brother at Alexandria.
Unknown Ethiopia attracted his attention, and he engaged with his
brother Arnould in archæological researches. Archæology proved
unfruitful, and the two brothers took up geodesy. For eleven years
Antoine d'Abbadie traveled though Ethiopia, living the life of the
natives, and making himself master of the five Abyssinian dialects.
The exploration was difficult and sown with dangers. Antoine d'Abbadie
covered the country from Massouah, on the shore of the Red Sea, to the
interior of the land of Kaffa, which he was the first to visit, with a
triangulation that involved the fixing of five thousand positions at
five hundred and twenty-five successive stations. The distance between
Massouah and Mount Wocho in southern Kaffa is about one thousand
kilometres, a little more than the crossing of France along the meridian
of Paris, and the trigonometric network reached two hundred and fifty
kilometres in breadth. Antoine d'Abbadie remained in Gallaland from
1837 to 1848. The labors of the two brothers, too numerous to cite
here, concerned also ethnography and linguistics. Both were nominated
Chevaliers of the Legion of Honor on the same day, September 27, 1850.
The doors of the Academy of Sciences were opened to Antoine d'Abbadie
August 27, 1867, and he was named a member of the Bureau des Longitudes
in 1878. He was in charge of the observation of the transit of Venus in
Santo Domingo in 1882.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--CHÂTEAU D'ABBADIE. General view. (A gift to the
French Academy of Sciences.)]
Instead of devoting himself to a specialty, as is done now to excess,
d'Abbadie pursued the scientific movement in its various forms, and
was at once an astronomer, geodesian, archæologist, ethnographer,
numismatist, and interested in other fields. With his noble character he
made himself esteemed and loved during his whole working life by all so
fortunate as to make his acquaintance. In an interview I had with him a
few weeks before his death, when his disease had already gained a strong
hold upon him and he was nearly speechless, he expressed himself freely
concerning the future, although he uttered every word with difficulty,
and it was easy to see that it caused him pain. The topic was science,
and he wanted to talk about it.
When he was president of the Academy of Sciences, a few years ago, he
sacrificed himself to be equal to the honor that had been conferred upon
him. Speaking was already becoming very difficult to his tired vocal
organs. He made extreme efforts during the whole year to fulfill his
duty as president, and was punctual at the Monday sessions to the end.
In 1896, feeling the advance of age, he determined to make a splendid
present to the Academy of Sciences. The Duc d'Aumale had given Chantilly
to the Institute. M. Antoine d'Abbadie gave the Academy of Sciences his
magnificent Château d'Abbadie, near Hendaye, in the Basses-Pyrénées,
on the coast of the Bay of Biscay. The academy will enter upon the
possession of this property, of three hundred and ten hectares of land
surrounding it, and of a capital producing a revenue of forty thousand
francs (eight thousand dollars) after the death of Madame d'Abbadie.
Only a single condition is imposed on the gift. Having carried on his
astronomical work at Abbadia and begun there to catalogue the stars
and study the variations of gravity, he asked in exchange for his
incomparable gift that the academy should complete in fifty years a
catalogue of five hundred thousand stars. The bureau of the academy
dispatched its president, M. Cornu, and its perpetual secretary, M.
Bertrand, to Abbadia as its representatives to express its gratitude
to M. and Madame d'Abbadie. The faith of the academy was pledged to
continue the work begun by M. d'Abbadie, and a commemorative medal was
given him bearing on one side a portrait of Arago, and on the other a
minute of the gift and the thanks of the company.
The Château of Abbadia will therefore be devoted to the determination
of the stars that are not yet catalogued. Probably, as was the donor's
thought, the religious orders or some of the secular priests will
perform this colossal labor. The chaplain of the château has already
given his service to the work. In any case, those who may live in the
château will have no cause to complain of their home. Abbadia is a very
interesting structure, built from plans by Viollet-le-Duc, modified and
carried out by the architect Duthoit, with suggestions of the fourteenth
and sixteenth centuries. The observatory adjoins the château, which
it antedates thirty years in building, and has a meridian telescope
and the essential astronomical instruments. In the deep cellar of
the observatory M. d'Abbadie made more than two thousand seismic
observations with the pendulum.
The château stands in an admirable situation, and presents a very fine
external aspect. We give a general view of it and a picture of the main
entrance. The interior decoration is very beautiful.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--PRINCIPAL ENTRANCE TO THE CHÂTEAU D'ABBADIE.]
Those who have had the privilege of visiting Abbadia have remarked that
a stone is missing from the balcony of one of the windows; this stone,
according to the wishes of the donor, is never to be put in place. A
history is connected with its absence. M. d'Abbadie, in the course of
a journey in America, contracted a strong friendship with Prince Louis
Napoleon, who was then in the United States. The prince once said to
him, "If I ever come into power, whatever you may ask of me is granted
in advance." The prince became Emperor of the French. Napoleon III had
a good memory. He met his former companion one day, and said to him in
an offhand way: "I promised when we were in America to give you whatever
you would ask for; have you forgotten it?" M. d'Abbadie replied: "I have
built myself a château near Hendaye, where I hope to spend the rest of
my days. If you will be so kind as to go a few kilometres out of the way
for me during your coming visit to Biarritz, I shall consider myself
highly honored if you will lay the last stone of my house." Napoleon
smiled and promised. But that was in 1870, and Napoleon III never
returned to Biarritz. That is the reason a stone is missing at Abbadia.
An account is also appropriate here of that other gift to French science
and letters of the Château of Chantilly, made to the Institute of France
in 1886, by the late Duc d'Aumale, whose tragic death in consequence
of the terrible disaster at the Bazaar de Charité, Paris, occurred
near in time to that of M. d'Abbadie. The duke was conspicuous as a
soldier, as a man of letters, the author of the History of the Princes
of Condé, and as a great bibliophile; as a member of the French Academy
(1871), taking the place of Montalembert; of the Academy of Moral and
Political Sciences, and of the Academy of Fine Arts; and as a patriot,
though a banished prince. The gift was made three months after the
decree was issued banishing the Orleans princes from France, and after
the duke had expostulated with M. Grévy in vain against the step. The
deed reads: "Wishing to preserve to France the domain of Chantilly
in its integrity, with its woods, lawns, waters, buildings, and all
that they contain--trophies, pictures, books, objects of art, and the
whole of what forms, as it were, a complete and various monument of
French art in all its branches, and of the history of my country in its
epochs of glory--I have resolved to commit the trust to a body which
has done me the honor of calling me into its ranks by a double title,
and which, without being independent of the inevitable transformations
of societies, escapes the spirit of faction and all too abrupt
shocks, maintaining its independence through political fluctuations.
Consequently, I give to the Institute of France, which shall dispose of
it according to conditions to be hereafter determined, the domain of
Chantilly as it shall exist on the day of my death, with the library and
the other artistic and historical collections which I have formed in
it, the household furniture, statues, trophies of arms, etc." The sole
condition attached to the gift was that nothing should be changed at
Chantilly. The chapel, where the heart of Condé is deposited, should be
retained, devoted to worship, with special masses to be said at stated
times, and the splendid collections of the château should together be
called the Condé Museum. In 1889 the Government authorized the duke to
return to France. He refused to accept the permission as a matter of
favor, but only as one of right. He returned, however, and took his seat
in the academy in May of that year.--_Translated for the Popular Science
Monthly from articles in La Nature._
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--THE CHÂTEAU OF CHANTILLY. (Presented by the late
Duc d'Aumale to the Institute of France.)]
THE MONGOOSE IN JAMAICA.
BY C. W. WILLIS, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF JAMAICA.
About fifteen or twenty years ago the mongoose (_Herpestes griseus_) was
imported from India by the colonial government and introduced into the
island of Jamaica, in the West Indies, for the ostensible purpose of
destroying the large, gray, white-bellied rat which played havoc with
the growing cane on the sugar plantations.
The mongoose belongs to the _Viverridæ_, or civet-cat family, which is
closely allied to the _Felidæ_, one of the most widely diversified among
the carnivora. But the mongoose differs materially from the civet cats,
for it belongs properly to the subfamily _Herpestinæ_, or ichneumons,
having toes slender and straight, and separate from one another; the
scent glands, so highly developed in the civet cat, being either small
or entirely absent. Most of the ichneumons are natives of Africa, but
several are Indian, and one form (_H. ichneumon_) extends to southern
Spain.
_H. griseus_ is the true mongoose of India, and is the animal imported
into Jamaica. In its native habitat it devours snakes, rats, lizards,
and other creatures not in favor with humanity. Its color is gray,
darker on the head and legs; its feet are blackish, and the end of the
tail is tipped with black. Beneath the longer gray- or white-ringed
hairs there is a fine, short, reddish under fur. The body of the
full-grown animal is about twenty-one inches in length, and the tail
eighteen inches.
Like Pharaoh's rat in Egypt, to which it is allied, the mongoose is
highly valued in India, and is often kept tame about the houses for the
services that it renders in destroying snakes and other plagues. It is
especially famous for its prowess in destroying the deadly cobra, a feat
performed by force of its superior boldness and activity.
That the little animal has fairly achieved the object for which it
was imported can not be gainsaid, but that it would ever become the
universal pest which it is at the present day, and has been for several
years, was never anticipated. So long as it kept to the cane-growing
plantations, and ate the planter's poultry and all young and available
animal life, all went well; but with its rapid and prolific powers of
reproduction and its vagabond and roaming disposition, in a very short
time it was found to be in every part of the island, from the seashore
to the tops of the loftiest mountains, the highest peak of which is
seventy-three hundred feet above the sea level.
[Illustration: THE MONGOOSE (_Herpestes griseus_) IN JAMAICA.]
Though it has not exterminated the cane rats, it has lessened their
numbers, and saved the sugar planters a vast sum of money. But it has
nearly exterminated the ground laying and feeding birds. It devours
poultry and eggs of all kinds, on the ground and in trees, including
those of the land turtle, so that the latter, once very numerous and
highly esteemed as an article of food by the native epicures, is now
seldom found. Here may be mentioned an interesting fact, that the
mongoose, in no way a tree-climbing animal in its native India, has
become such in Jamaica, as its voracious appetite lessened the numbers
of ground feeding and laying birds, and compelled it to take to the
trees in order to enlarge its food supply.
The mongoose kills young pigs that roam, half wild, over the island;
also lambs and kids. It eats fruits of all kinds, fish, wild fowl,
snakes, lizards, and crabs; and the once plentiful edible lizards and
land crabs are now rarely seen. All young and tender life, both animal
and vegetable, is included in its daily _menu_. When the mongoose has
cleared off all the animal life, it turns its attention to the "ground
provisions," and here it shows the varieties of its tastes and the
strength of its jaws. It will grovel with its paws until yams, cocos,
sweet potatoes, cassava both bitter and sweet, and other ground food
tubers are laid bare.
Of fruit, the mongoose has a partiality for bananas, the mango, and
others, as well as for some of the tree vegetables, such as the
delicious akee (_Cupania edulis_), and the avocado, or alligator pear.
It will, likewise, when the irrigating canals are drained for cleansing,
seize fish and make off with them. Not the least harm it has done
has been the destruction of insectivorous birds and lizards, and the
consequent increase of another nuisance, the tick. This is a subject
which the Jamaica Government is bound to take up in the near future, and
there will be found only one remedy--the introduction, propagation, and
protection of insect-eating birds, for the question of adopting some
plan for the wholesale destruction of the mongoose has thus far proved
fruitless.
The mongoose breeds six times a year, and each time there are from
five to ten young ones. The animal lives in the hollows of trees, dry
walls, and other similar places. Its activity is wonderful, and it very
seldom misses its quarry, which, when secured, the mongoose proceeds
to mutilate in the groin, first of all drinking the warm blood, then
devouring the liver and heart.
In Jamaica there was a very beautiful indigenous snake (_Chilobothrus
inornatus_), a friend of the agriculturist, commonly called the yellow
or banana snake, which grew to a length of six or seven feet. It is
practically extinct, for during the last five or six years it has been
nearly impossible to find a specimen. This bloodthirsty little animal
has also nearly exterminated another ally of the cultivator, a certain
ground lizard (_Anolis corsalis_), which is now very rarely seen.
In its general appearance, except in point of size, it being much
larger, it may be stated that the mongoose very closely resembles the
common gray squirrel of the northern United States, although the latter
does not have feet and tail tipped with black.
* * * * *
Comparing the flint implements of palæolithic and neolithic
age, Prof. T. McKenny Huse exhibited at the British Archæological
Institute a series of flints to illustrate his view that in their
earlier stages of manufacture the palæolithic and neolithic
implements passed through the very same steps--that is, a block of
flint was first rough dressed by both palæolithic and neolithic
people into the same general form. The neolithic man merely
proceeded further on the same lines, afterward finding out the
way to grind the edge, and at last the whole implement. With
few exceptions, the author said, neolithic flints were found on
the surface or in artificial excavations; whereas, as a rule,
palæolithic implements were found in deposits that seemed to be
due to the sweeping down into hollows or river terraces of surface
soils in or on which the implements and other stones lay.
THE CAUSE OF RAIN.[12]
BY J. E. PLUMANDON, METEOROLOGIST AT THE OBSERVATORY OF THE PUY-DE-DÔME.
A great many theories have been invented to explain the formation of
rain, some of which are remarkable chiefly for their absurdity or
their complexity. Even most of the scientific theories depend too
largely on hypotheses and are not sufficiently supported by facts.
There are, however, some which are as a whole established on authentic
observations, and, although they are still incomplete, they do not, like
some of the speculations, contradict facts that are observed every day.
For more than thirty years I have studied professionally and because I
had a taste for it all the atmospheric phenomena which came before me.
Several times I have been so fortunate as to witness, at Clermont, or on
the top of the Puy-de-Dôme, the genesis or development of heavy showers,
and have fancied that I have detected some of the details or secrets of
their formation. In a pamphlet on this subject, which I published in
1885, I expounded the ideas which a large number of observations on fog,
drizzle, mist, rain, snow, sleet, and hail had suggested to me; and by
means of some of these ideas, the resultant of facts observed hundreds
of times, I hope to be able to explain the formation of rain.
First, I must say that heat, and especially moisture, do not vary in
the lower part of the atmosphere in the way it was long thought. At
extreme altitudes the temperature of the air is very low, but the cold
does not increase regularly as we rise, and the same is the case with
the moisture. In high ascensions, or while sailing almost horizontal
courses, aëronauts traverse atmospheric regions alternately warm and
cold, dry and moist. Such anomalies present themselves even near the
surface. There are between eighty and a hundred days every year in which
a higher temperature is registered for a greater or less length of time
on the Puy-de-Dôme than at Clermont. Sometimes the difference is very
great. Thus, on the 26th of December, 1879, the temperature was -16°
C. at Clermont, while on the summit of the Puy-de-Dôme the thermometer
marked +5° C., showing a difference of 21° in favor of the top of the
mountain. Differences of temperature of this kind occur everywhere.
The moisture of the air varies in the same way through the atmosphere.
In ascending or descending a few hundred metres, the hygrometer may be
observed to pass from dryness to saturation. At the altitude of the
Puy-de-Dôme extreme moisture may succeed almost absolute dryness in a
few instants, in a clear sky and without any change of wind.
The parts of the atmosphere included within the same limits of
temperature or humidity therefore rarely form concentric or parallel
layers. They constitute regions interlacing zones which the clouds,
thick or scattered in groups, often mark to our eyes, showing us those
which are saturated with the vapor of water. The distribution of these
zones in space depends chiefly on the heat action of the sun, and upon
preceding and present movements of the atmosphere. Now, if a certain
increase of heat is adequate to melt a piece of ice and to transform the
water of the fusion into vapor, in like manner a corresponding cooling
may suffice to cause the vapor to return to the state of a liquid and
then to that of ice. The processes in the atmosphere are not different,
and all showers, results of the more or less extensive condensation of
the vapor of water, may arise from the cooling of that vapor or of the
water which it produces.
A certain volume of atmospheric air is capable of holding in suspension
a quantity of water proportioned to the elevation of its temperature.
But, for each determined temperature, there is a maximum which can not
be exceeded without the excess of vapor returning to the liquid state.
If, therefore, an atmospheric region is saturated with vapor, and its
temperature falls, that region will give rain. Immense and superabundant
causes for the cooling necessary to provoke rain exist in such an
atmosphere as we have described. The cooling may take effect in three
principal ways: first, by the radiation of different regions between
one another and toward interplanetary space, the temperature of which
is extremely low, as has been indicated by measurements made in high
balloon ascensions; second, by the expansion which air rising in the
atmosphere undergoes in being rarefied; and, third, by the mingling of
masses of warm or moist air with cold or dry.