pleasure resorts is suggested in a book by Mr. Warwick Wroth on the
London pleasure gardens. The history of these places has in some cases
a strong family resemblance. They usually began as tea gardens, with a
bowling green, tea and coffee, hot loaves, and milk "fresh from the
cow," as their chief attractions. If the business prospered, other
amusements were added, such as music and dancing, with perhaps the
exhibition of a giant or a fat woman. Equestrian performances were
given in the more important gardens. The manager of one of them kept
on the grounds a fine collection of rattlesnakes, one having nineteen
rattles and "seven young ones." "Sixteen hundred visitors were present
at another one day in August, 1744, to hear honest 'Jo Baker' beat a
trevally on his side-drum as he did before the great Duke of
Marlborough at the bloody battle of Malplaquet. It was not unusual,
moreover, for the owner of a successful tavern to discover on his
premises a mineral spring, of which a favorable analysis was easily
obtained"--although the spring might be really a bad one. The Spa of
Hampstead Wells enjoyed a delightfully pure and invigorating air on
the open heath, and had a tavern with coffee rooms, a bowling green,
raffling shops, and a chapel, which offered visitors an advantage
possessed by no other gardens in London, as a clergyman was always in
attendance, and a couple on presenting a license could be married at
once on the payment of five shillings. Mr. Wroth suggests that the
license was sometimes dispensed with, and the fee, moreover, was
remitted if the wedded pair gave a dinner in the gardens.
=A Library of Astronomical Photographs.=--The appointment of Mrs. M.
P. Fleming as curator of astronomical photographs in the Harvard
Observatory is noteworthy because hers is the first woman's name to be
placed along with the officers in the university catalogue. It is more
so as a recognition of Mrs. Fleming's proved abilities in certain
lines of astronomical work. The astrophotographic building is not used
for the taking of photographs, but as a peculiar kind of library where
the plates secured by the astronomers at Cambridge and Arequipa are
preserved, arranged, and catalogued, as is done with books. The duties
of the curator are like those of a librarian. But instead of books, of
which many copies exist, each of the treasures in the photographic
collection is unique and can not be duplicated. Prints of them on
paper are of little scientific value, because no paper copy can repeat
all the minute accuracy of the original negative on glass; and prints
are not taken from them for scientific use, but only for illustration.
If one is destroyed it can never be replaced; and it is impossible to
predict what fact one of them may embody of the greatest importance to
the labors of some future astronomer desiring to compare the aspect of
his special object of research at his period and ours. Mrs. Fleming's
name is frequently mentioned in the reports of the observatory, and
she has distinguished herself in several lines of stellar
investigation. She has about a dozen women assistants, some of whom
are computors of long experience, and some are known by the
discoveries they have made.
=Forest Planting on the Plains.=--Mr. Charles A. Keffer, in a report
to the Forestry Division on Experimental Tree Planting in the Plains,
defines the forestless region of America as including all the States
between the Mississippi River north of the Ozark Mountains and eastern
Texas and the Rocky Mountains, together with the plateau west of the
Rocky Mountains. The possibilities of forest growth in this vast area
are yet to be proved. Roughly speaking, any species that thrive in the
adjacent wooded region can be grown in Iowa, the Red River Valley of
Minnesota and North Dakota, the Sioux Valley of South Dakota and the
eastern counties of Nebraska, and in the more southern States. We know
that difficulties of cultivation increase as one goes westward, but we
can not say where the western limit of successful tree culture is. We
can not even define the limits of successful agriculture in the
plains, for with increased facilities for irrigation splendid crops
are now produced where only a few years ago it was thought desert
conditions would forever prevail. It is admitted that forest planting,
as a financial investment, will probably be profitable on the plains
only in a limited degree. Favorable sites may enable the profitable
raising of fence posts and other specialized tree crops, but the
growing of timber on a commercial scale can hardly be expected.
=A Siamese Geological Theory.=--The east coast of Siam as far south as
Champawn is characterized by wide bays, with detached masses of
limestone set on steep-sided islands or high-peaked promontories with
serrated ridges, the most conspicuous of which is Sam Roi Yawt, or the
three hundred peaks. The relations of these various rock masses to one
another, Mr. H. Warington Smyth observed, in an address to the Royal
Geographical Society, have been long ago lucidly set forth by Siamese
geologists, who are unanimously agreed on the subject. "It appears
that one Mong Lai and his wife once inhabited the neighborhood (they
were giants), and each promised their daughter in marriage, unknown to
the other, to a different suitor. At last the day of the nuptials
arrived, and Chao Lai and the Lord of Mieang Chin (China) both arrived
to claim the bride. When the horrified father found how matters
stood--having a regard for the value of a promise, which is not too
common in the East--he cut his daughter in half, so that neither
suitor should be disappointed. Chao Lai, in the meantime, on finding
that he had a rival, committed suicide, and the peak of Chaolai is the
remains of his body. The unfortunate bride is to be found in the
islands off Sam Roi Yawt, the peaks of which are the remains of the
gifts which were to be made to the holy man who was to solemnize the
wedding; while Kaw Chang and Kaw King, on the east side of the gulf,
are the elephant and buffalo cart in which the presents were brought."
="The Hell of War."=--The Cost of a National Crime and The Hell of War
and its Penalties are the appropriate names which Edward Atkinson has
given to two essays bearing upon the craze for expansion in which the
nation has been abruptly plunged. In them an evil which has not yet
received due attention, if any, is presented as sure to be inflicted
upon us if the policy of militarism is persisted in. "How much
increase of taxation," Mr. Atkinson asks, "are you willing to bear,
and how many of your neighbors' sons are you ready to sacrifice by
fever, malaria, and venereal disease, in order to extend the
sovereignty of the United States over the West Indies and the
Philippine Islands?" Another question is put to the missionary
enthusiasts: "It may be well to ask all who are imbued with this
missionary sympathy, How many young men of your own brotherhood are
you willing to sacrifice for each convert? How many of your own sons
will you expose to sure infection and degeneration in the conduct of
your philanthropic purpose? Or will you satisfy your own conscience by
consenting to the necessary conscription of other people's sons when
it presently becomes impossible to maintain our armed forces in those
islands without a draft?" Mr. Atkinson says that his attention has
been called to this phase of the evil attendant upon military
occupation in the course of his social studies. "The greatest and most
unavoidable danger," he writes to the commander in chief of our
armies, "to which these forces will be exposed will be neither fevers
nor malaria; it will be venereal diseases in their worst and most
malignant form."
MINOR PARAGRAPHS.
A new and very ingenious method of space telegraphy is discussed at
length in an article by Karl Zickler in the _Elektrotechnische
Zeitschrift_. It depends on a phenomenon discovered by Hertz in 1887,
viz., the influence of certain short wave-length light rays upon
electrical discharges. The ultra-violet waves, which are obstructed by
glass but transmitted by quartz, are the most effective. The source of
light is an arc lamp. The light is passed through a lens of rock
crystal to the receiver. The receiver is a glass vessel partially
exhausted of air, one end of which consists of a truly parallel plate
of rock crystal. In front of the receiver there is a condensing lens
of rock crystal, and within the exhausted chamber are the two
electrodes, one of which is an inclined disk and the other a small
ball. The electrodes are connected with the secondary portion of an
induction coil, and when the ultra-violet rays fall upon the inclined
disk and are reflected to the ball, a discharge will be produced which
may be read either with a telephone or a coherer. The signals are sent
by alternately interposing a plate of glass in front of the rays
issuing from the transmitter and removing it therefrom. Herr Zickler
has made many experiments to verify his conclusions and appears to
have demonstrated the feasibility of his idea in practice.
Mr. Dawson Williams has announced in Nature the discovery in many
susceptible persons of a periodicity in the effects that follow a
sting. The immediate result, he says, is a small flattened wheal, pale
and surrounded by a zone of pink injection. This is attended by
itching, but both wheal and itching are gone in less than an hour.
About twenty-four hours later the part begins to itch again, and in a
few minutes a hard, rounded, deep-red papule appears, and is quickly
surrounded by an area of oedematous skin. The formication is intense,
and in the affected area, while the ordinary sensations of touch are
dulled, those of temperature and painful feelings are exaggerated. In
two or three hours the itching diminishes and the oedema disappears,
leaving a small, red papule, which itches but little. The phenomena
recur, with diminished intensity, in the course of another twenty-four
hours, and may return in this way, growing fainter all the time, in
four or five daily repetitions. After these returns have ceased, a
small, indolent papule may persist for weeks or months. This
periodicity is not observed in all subjects, but most generally in
those who suffer most.
Among the advantages of Linde's liquid-air process, Prof. J. A. Ewing,
speaking at the English Society of Arts, claimed its giving a means of
separating more or less completely the oxygen of the atmosphere from
its associated nitrogen. After describing a process by which a liquid
consisting largely of oxygen may be produced, the author said that the
most interesting application of the liquid which had hitherto been
tried on a commercial scale was to make an explosive by mixing it with
carbon. When liquid air, enriched by the evaporation of a large part
of the nitrogen, was mixed with powdered charcoal, it formed an
explosive comparable in power to dynamite, and which, like dynamite,
could be made to go off violently by using a detonator. The chief
advantage of the explosive was its cheapness, the cost being only that
of liquefying the air. Even the fact that after a short time the
mixture ceased to be capable of exploding might be urged as a
recommendation, for if a detonator hung fire, there was no danger of
the charge going off accidentally some time after the explosion was
due, nor was there any risk of its being purloined or used for
criminal purposes.
NOTES.
According to the _Tribune de Genève_, twenty new hotels were opened in
Switzerland in 1897, and twenty-five were enlarged, adding two
thousand beds and making the whole number of beds about ninety
thousand. The number of nights' lodgings furnished during the season
is estimated at ten million. Supposing each guest to spend twelve
francs a day, the total revenue from tourists would amount to one
hundred and twenty million francs, or twenty four million dollars.
Classifying the guests according to nationality, it is estimated that
the Swiss constitute eighteen per cent of the whole, Germans
thirty-four per cent, English sixteen per cent, French twelve per
cent, Americans eight per cent, and those of other nations twelve per
cent.
A list of women astronomers, compiled by Herman S. Davis from
Ribiere's _Les Femmes dans la Science_, contains as contemporary
workers in the science the names of seventeen American women who have
taken part in astronomical computations or are teachers of astronomy,
and twelve who are working in the application of photography to
astronomy. Of the women in the later list, Miss Ida C. Martin, Miss
Dr. Dorothea Klumpke (now in the Paris Observatory), and Mrs. M. P.
Fleming have attained distinction for successful original researches.
The object of the Pure Food and Drug Congress, which met in Washington
in March, 1898, with Joseph E. Blackburn, of Columbus, Ohio, as
president, is declared in its resolutions to be to secure suitable
national legislation to prevent the adulteration of food, drink, and
drugs, to secure the enforcement of laws, and secure and promote
uniformity of State legislation looking to that end; to create and
maintain a high public sentiment on these subjects, to sustain public
officers enforcing the laws respecting them; and to promote a more
general intelligence concerning the injury to health and business
interests resulting from food adulteration. In this work all are
invited to join. The congress was in session four days, and several
important papers were read to it.
The large Atlantic coastal plain beginning with southern New Jersey,
Mr. John Gifford affirms, in The Forester, would soon be capable, if
protected from reckless devastation, of producing almost limitless
quantities of the valuable smooth-bark or short leaf pine. In
Northampton and Accomac Counties, Virginia, lying in this plain, the
forests are already properly cared for and propagated without the aid
of forest laws. This is done by insuring their freedom from fire,
which is attended to purely as a matter of present economy. The value
of the woods in holding the loose sandy soil and as windbreaks is
recognized, and the litter of the pine trees is a precious dressing
for the sweet potato fields. This litter, of pine "chats," "needles,"
or "browse," is carefully raked off every year and spread on the
fields, and there is nothing left in which fire can start.
The Lalande prize of the French Academy of Sciences has been conferred
upon Prof. S. C. Chandler, of Cambridge, Mass., in recognition of "the
splendor, the importance, and the variety" of his astronomical work;
the Damoiseau prize upon Dr. George William Hill, of Washington, for
his researches in mathematics and astronomy; and the Henry Wilde prize
on Dr. Charles A. Schott, of Washington, for his researches in
terrestrial magnetism.
Prof. J. Mark Baldwin, of Princeton, author of the books The
Development of the Child and the Race, Handbook of Psychology, and The
Story of the Mind, has been elected a member of the French Institute
of Sociology.
Among the recent deaths of men associated with scientific pursuits we
notice those of Charles Michel Brisse, professor at the Lycée
Condorcet for twenty-five years, and professor at other French
schools, author of papers on the displacement of figures and on the
general theory of surfaces, and of other works in mathematics and
mathematical physics, and a co-worker on the _Journal de Physique_, in
his fifty-sixth year; Prof. H. Alleyn Nicholson, of the University of
Aberdeen, author of books on zoölogy and geology; M. F. Gay, of the
University of Montpellier, a student of the green algæ, aged forty
years; Dr. Dumontpallier, of Paris, author of contributions to the
pathology of the nervous system, aged seventy-four years;
Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Pringle, of the British Army, author of
papers on the hygiene and diseases of India; Pastor Christian Kaurin,
of Norway, a student of Scandinavian mosses, aged sixty-six years; T.
Carnel, professor of botany and director of the Botanic Garden,
Florence; the Rev. Bartholomew Price, author of several elaborate
works in mathematics, and secretary of the Oxford University Press, in
his eighty-first year; Dr. Constantine Vousakis, professor of
physiology in the University of Athens; William Dames, professor of
geology and paleontology in the University of Berlin, and subeditor of
the _Paläontologische Abhandlungen_, in his fifty-second year; and Dr.
Gottlieb Gluge, emeritus professor of physiology and anatomy in the
University of Berlin and author of an atlas of pathological anatomy,
aged eighty-six years.
Transcriber's Notes:
Words surrounded by _ are italicized.
Words surrounded by = are bold.
Obvious printer's errors have been repaired, other inconsistent
spellings have been kept, including inconsistent use of hyphen (e.g.
"newcomers" and "new-comers").
Illustrations were relocated to correspond to their references in the
text.
Caption "Photograph of a _Thelyphonus_" added to the captionless image
on p. 608.
[vc] means letter c with diacritical mark caron (v-shaped symbol)
above it.
['c] means letter c with diacritical mark accute accent above it.