contains an interesting article on Dr. Tilden's artificial production
of India rubber. India rubber, or caoutchouc, is chemically a
hydrocarbon, but its molecular constitution is unknown. When decomposed
by heat it is broken up into simpler hydrocarbons, among which is a
substance called isoprene, a volatile liquid boiling at about 36° C.
Its molecular formula is C_{5}H_{8}. Dr. Tilden obtained this same
substance (isoprene) from oil of turpentine and other terpenes by the
action of moderate heat, and then by treating the isoprene with strong
acids succeeded, by means of a very slow reaction, in converting a
small portion of it into a tough elastic solid, which seems to be
identical in properties with true India rubber. This artificial rubber,
like the natural, seems to consist of two substances, one of which is
more soluble in benzene and carbon bisulphide than the other. It unites
with sulphur in the same way as ordinary rubber, forming a tough,
elastic compound. In a recent letter Professor Tilden says: "As you may
imagine, I have tried everything I can think of as likely to promote
this change, but without success. The polymerization proceeds _very_
slowly, occupying, according to my experience, several years, and all
attempts to hurry it result in the production not of rubber, but of
'colophene,' a thick, sticky oil quite useless for all purposes to
which rubber is applied."
Dangers of High Altitudes for Elderly People.--"The public, and
sometimes the inexperienced physician--inexperienced not in general
therapeutics but in the physiological effects of altitude on a weak
heart," says Dr. Findlater Zangger in the Lancet, "make light of
a danger they can not understand. But if an altitude of from four
thousand to five thousand feet above the sea level puts a certain
amount of strain on a normal heart and by a rise of the blood-pressure
indirectly also on the small peripheral arteries, must not this
action be multiplied in the case of a heart suffering from even an
early stage of myocarditis or in the case of arteries with thickened
or even calcified walls? It is especially the rapidity of the change
from one altitude to another, with differences of from three thousand
to four thousand feet, which must be considered. There is a call
made on the contractibility of the small arteries on the one hand,
and on the amount of muscular force of the heart on the other hand,
and if the structures in question can not respond to this call,
rupture of an artery or dilatation of the heart may ensue. In the
case of a normal condition of the circulatory organs little harm is
done beyond some transient discomfort, such as dizziness, buzzing in
the ears, palpitation, general _malaise_, and this often only in the
case of people totally unaccustomed to high altitudes. For such it is
desirable to take the high altitude by degrees in two or three stages,
say first stage 1,500 feet, second stage from 2,500 to 3,000 feet,
and third stage from 4,000 to 6,000 feet, with a stay of one or two
days at the intermediate places. The stay at the health resort will
be shortened, it is true, but the patient will derive more benefit.
On the return journey one short stay at one intermediate place will
suffice. Even a fairly strong heart will not stand an overstrain in
the first days spent at a high altitude. A Dutch lady, about forty
years of age, who had spent a lifetime in the lowlands, came directly
up to Adelboden (altitude, 4,600 feet). After two days she went on an
excursion with a party up to an Alp 7,000 feet high, making the ascent
quite slowly in four hours. Sudden heart syncope ensued, which lasted
the best part of an hour, though I chanced to be near and could give
assistance, which was urgently needed. The patient recovered, but
derived no benefit from a fortnight's stay, and had to return to the
low ground the worse for her trip and her inconsiderate enterprise.
Rapid ascents to a high altitude are very injurious to patients with
arterio-sclerosis, and the mountain railways up to seven thousand and
ten thousand feet are positively dangerous to an unsuspecting public,
for many persons between the ages of fifty-five and seventy years
consider themselves to be hale and healthy, and are quite unconscious
of having advanced arterio-sclerosis and perchance contracted kidney.
An American gentleman, aged fifty-eight years, was under my care for
slight symptoms of angina pectoris, pointing to sclerosis of the
coronary arteries. A two-months' course of treatment at Zurich with
massage, baths, and proper exercise and diet did away with all the
symptoms. I saw him by chance some months later. 'My son is going to
St. Moritz (six thousand feet) for the summer,' said he; 'may I go with
him?' 'Most certainly not,' was my answer. The patient then consulted
a professor, who allowed him to go. Circumstances, however, took him
for the summer to Sachseln, which is situated at an altitude of only
two thousand feet, and he spent a good summer. But he must needs go up
the Pilatus by rail (seven thousand feet), relying on the professor's
permission, and the result was disastrous, for he almost died from a
violent attack of angina pectoris on the night of his return from the
Pilatus, and vowed on his return to Zurich to keep under three thousand
feet in future. I may here mention that bad results in the shape of
heart collapse, angina pectoris, cardiac asthma, and last, not least,
apoplexy, often occur only on the return to the lowlands."
The Parliamentary Amenities Committee.--Under the above rather
misleading title there was formed last year, in the English Parliament,
a committee for the purpose of promoting concerted action in the
preservation and protection of landmarks of general public interest,
historic buildings, famous battlefields, and portions of landscape of
unusual scenic beauty or geological conformation, and also for the
protection from entire extinction of the various animals and even
plants which the spread of civilization is gradually pushing to the
wall. In reality, it is an official society for the preservation of
those things among the works of past man and Nature which, owing to
their lack of direct money value, are in danger of destruction in
this intensely commercial age. Despite the comparative newness of the
American civilization, there are already many relics belonging to the
history of our republic whose preservation is very desirable, as well
as very doubtful, if some such public-spirited committee does not
take the matter in hand; and, as regards the remains of the original
Americans, in which the country abounds, the necessity is still more
immediate. The official care of Nature's own curiosities is equally
needed, as witness the way in which the Hudson River palisades are
being mutilated, and the constant raids upon our city parks for
speedways, parade grounds, etc. The great value of a parliamentary or
congressional committee of this sort lies in the fact that its opinions
are not only based upon expert knowledge, but that they can be to an
extent enforced; whereas such a body of men with no official position
may go on making suggestions and protesting, as have numerous such
bodies for years, without producing any practical results. The matter
is, with us perhaps, one of more importance to future generations; but
as all Nature seems ordered primarily with reference to the future
welfare of the race, rather than for the comfort of its present
members, the necessity for such an official body, whose specific
business should be to look after the preservation of objects of
historical interest to the succeeding centuries, ought to be inculcated
in us as a part of the general evolutionary scheme.
Physical Measurements of Asylum Children.--Dr. Ales Hrdlicka has
published an account of anthropological investigations and measurements
which he has made upon one thousand white and colored children in
the New York Juvenile Asylum and one hundred colored children in
the Colored Orphan Asylum, for information about the physical state
of the children who are admitted and kept in juvenile asylums, and
particularly to learn whether there is anything physically abnormal
about them. Some abnormality in the social or moral condition of such
children being assumed, if they are also physically inferior to other
children, they would have to be considered generally handicapped in the
struggle for life; but if they do not differ greatly in strength and
constitution from the average ordinary children, then their state would
be much more hopeful. Among general facts concerning the condition of
the children in the Juvenile Asylum, Dr. Hrdlicka learned that when
admitted to the institution they are almost always in some way morally
and physically inferior to healthy children from good social classes
at large--the result, usually, of neglect or improper nutrition or
both. Within a month, or even a week, decided changes for the better
are observed, and after their admission the individuals of the same sex
and age seem gradually, while preserving the fundamental differences
of their nature, to show less of their former diversity and grow more
alike. In learning, the newcomers are more or less retarded when put
into the school, but in a great majority of cases they begin to acquire
rapidly, and the child usually reaches the average standing of the
class. Inveterate backwardness in learning is rare. Physically, about
one seventh of all the inmates of the asylum were without a blemish
on their bodies--a proportion which will not seem small to persons
well versed in analyses of the kind. The differences in the physical
standing of the boys and the girls were not so great or so general as
to permit building a hypothesis upon them, though the girls came out a
little the better. The colored boys seemed to be physically somewhat
inferior to the white ones, but the number of them was not large enough
to justify a conclusion. Of the children not found perfect, two hundred
presented only a single abnormality, and this usually so small as
hardly to justify excluding them from the class of perfect. Regarding
as decidedly abnormal only those in whom one half the parts of the body
showed defects, the number was eighty-seven. "Should we, for the sake
of illustration, express the physical condition of the children by such
terms as fine, medium, and bad, the fine and bad would embrace in all
192 individuals, while 808 would remain as medium." All the classes
of abnormalities--congenital, pathological, and acquired--seemed more
numerous in the boys than in the girls. The colored children showed
fewer inborn abnormalities than the white, but more pathological and
acquired. No child was found who could be termed a thorough physical
degenerate, and the author concludes that the majority of the class of
children dealt with are physically fairly average individuals.
Busy Birds.--A close observation of a day's work of busy activity, of
a day's work of the chipping sparrow hunting and catching insects to
feed its young, is recorded by Clarence M. Weed in a Bulletin of the
New Hampshire College Agricultural Experiment Station. Mr. Weed began
his watch before full daylight in the morning, ten minutes before the
bird got off from its nest, and continued it till after dark. During
the busy day Mr. Weed says, in his summary, the parent birds made
almost two hundred visits to the nest, bringing food nearly every time,
though some of the trips seem to have been made to furnish grit for the
grinding of the food. There was no long interval when they were not at
work, the longest period between visits being twenty-seven minutes.
Soft-bodied caterpillars were the most abundant elements of the food,
but crickets and crane flies were also seen, and doubtless a great
variety of insects were taken, but precise determination of the quality
of most of the food brought was of course impossible. The observations
were undertaken especially to learn the regularity of the feeding
habits of the adult birds. The chipping sparrow is one of the most
abundant and familiar of our birds. It seeks its nesting site in the
vicinity of houses, and spends most of its time searching for insects
in grass lands or cultivated fields and gardens. In New England two
broods are usually reared each season. That the young keep the parents
busy catching insects and related creatures for their food is shown by
the minute record which the author publishes in his paper. The bird
deserves all the protection and encouragement that can be given it.
Park-making among the Sand Dunes.--For the creation of Golden Gate Park
the park-makers of San Francisco had a series of sand hills, "hills on
hills, all of sand-dune formation." The city obtained a strip of land
lying between the bay and the ocean, yet close enough to the center of
population to be cheaply and easily reached from all parts of the town.
Work was begun in 1869, and has been prosecuted steadily since, with
increasing appropriations, and the results are a credit to the city,
Golden Gate Park, Mr. Frank H. Lamb says in his account of it in The
Forester, having a charm that distinguishes it from other city parks.
It has a present area of 1,040 acres, of which 300 acres have been
sufficiently reclaimed to be planted with coniferous trees." It is this
portion of the park which the visitor sees as one of the sights of the
Golden Gate." As he rides through the park out toward the Cliff House
and Sutro Heights by the Sea," he sees still great stretches of sand,
some loose, some still held in place by the long stems and rhizomes of
the sand grass (_Arundo arenaria_). This is the preparatory stage in
park-making. The method in brief is as follows: The shifting sand is
seeded with _Arundo arenaria_, and this is allowed to grow two years,
when the ground is sufficiently held in place to begin the second
stage of reclamation, which consists in planting arboreal species,
generally the Monterey pine (_Pinus insignis_) and the Monterey cypress
(_Cupressus macrocarpus_); with these are also planted the smaller
_Leptospermum lævigatum_ and _Acacia latifolia_. These species in
two or more years complete the reclamation, and then attention is
directed to making up all losses of plants and encouraging growth as
much as possible." The entire cost of reclamation by these methods is
represented not to average more than fifty dollars per acre.
A Fossiliferous Formation below the Cambrian.--Mr. George F. Matthew
said, in a communication to the New York Academy of Sciences, that he
had been aware for several years of the existence of fauna in the rocks
below those containing _Paradoxides_ and Protolenus in New Brunswick,
eastern Canada, but that the remains of the higher types of organisms
found in those rocks were so poorly preserved and fragmentary that
they gave a very imperfect knowledge of their nature. Only the casts
of _Hyolithidæ_, the mold of an obolus, a ribbed shell, and parts of
what appeared to be the arms and bodies of crinoids were known, to
assure us that there had been living forms in the seas of that early
time other than Protozoa and burrowing worms. These objects were found
in the upper division of a series of rocks immediately subjacent
to the Cambrian strata containing _Protolenus_, etc. As a decided
physical break was discovered between the strata containing them and
those having _Protolenus_, the underlying series was thought worthy
of a distinctive name, and was called Etchemenian, after a tribe of
aborigines that once inhabited the region. In most countries the
basement of the Paleozoic sediments seems almost devoid of organic
remains. Only unsatisfactory results have followed the search for them
in Europe, and America did not seem to promise a much better return.
Nevertheless, the indications of a fauna obtained in the maritime
provinces of Canada seemed to afford a hope that somewhere "these
basement beds of the Paleozoic might yield remains in a better state
of preservation." The author, therefore, in the summer of 1898, made
a visit to a part of Newfoundland where a clear section of sediments
had been found below the horizons of _Paradoxides_ and _Agraulos
strenuus_. These formations were examined at Manuel's Brook and Smith's
Sound. In the beds defined as Etchemenian no trilobites were found,
though other classes of animals, such as gastropods, brachiopods, and
lamellibranchs, occur, with which trilobites elsewhere are usually
associated in the Cambrian and later geological systems. The absence,
or possibly the rarity of the trilobites appears to have special
significance in view of their prominence among Cambrian fossils. The
uniformity of conditions attending the depositions of the Etchemenian
terrane throughout the Atlantic coast province of the Cambrian is
spoken of as surprising and as pointing to a quiescent period of long
continuance, during which the _Hyolithidæ_ and _Capulidæ_ developed
so as to become the dominant types of the animal world, while the
brachiopods, the lamellibranchs, and the other gastropods still were
puny and insignificant. Mr. Matthew last year examined the red shales
at Braintree, Mass., and was informed by Prof. W. O. Crosby that
they included many of the types specified as characteristic of the
Etchemenian fauna, and that no trilobites had with certainty been
obtained from them. The conditions of their deposition closely resemble
those of the Etchemenian of Newfoundland.
The Paris Exposition, 1900, and Congresses.--The grounds of the Paris
Exposition of 1900 extend from the southwest angle of the Place de la
Concorde along both banks of the Seine, nearly a mile and a half, to
the Avenue de Suffren, which forms the western boundary of the Champ de
Mars. The principal exhibition spaces are the Park of the Art palaces
and the Esplanade des Invalides at the east, and the Champ de Mars and
the Trocadéro at the west. Many entrances and exits will be provided,
but the principal and most imposing one will be erected at the Place
de la Concorde, in the form of a triumphal arch. Railways will be
provided to bring visitors from the city to the grounds, and another
railway will make their entire circuit. The total surface occupied by
the exposition grounds is three hundred and thirty-six acres, while
that of the exposition of 1889 was two hundred and forty acres. Another
area has been secured in the Park of Vincennes for the exhibition of
athletic games, sports, etc. The displays will be installed for the
most part by groups instead of nations. The International Congress of
Prehistoric Anthropology and Archæology will be held in connection
with the exposition, August 20th to August 25th. The arrangements for
it are under the charge of a committee that includes the masters and
leading representatives of the science in France, of which M. le Dr.
Verneau, 148 Rue Broca, Paris, is secretary general. A congress of
persons interested in aërial navigation will be held in the Observatory
of Meudon, the director of which, M. Janssen, is president of the
Organizing Committee. Correspondence respecting this congress should be
addressed to the secretary general, M. Triboulet, Director de Journal
l'Aeronaute, 10 Rue de la Pepinière, Paris.
English Plant Names.--Common English and American names of plants
are treated by Britton and Brown, in their Illustrated Flora of the
Northern United States, Canada, and the British possessions, as full of
interest from their origin, history, and significance. As observed in
Britton and Holland's Dictionary, "they are derived from a variety of
languages, often carrying us back to the early days of our country's
history and to the various peoples who, as conquerors or colonists,
have landed on our shores and left an impress on our language. Many of
these Old-World words are full of poetical association, speaking to
us of the thoughts and feelings of the Old-World people who invented
them; others tell of the ancient mythology of our ancestors, of strange
old mediæval usages, and of superstitions now almost forgotten."
Most of these names, Britton and Brown continue in the preface to
the third volume of their work, suggest their own explanation. "The
greater number are either derived from the supposed uses, qualities,
or properties of the plants; many refer to their habitat, appearance,
or resemblance, real or fancied, to other things; others come from
poetical suggestion, affection, or association with saints or persons.
Many are very graphic, as the Western name prairie fire (_Castillea
coccinea_); many are quaint or humorous, as cling rascal (_Galium
sparine_) or wait-a-bit (_Smilax rotundifolia_); and in some the
corruptions are amusing, as Aunt Jerichos (New England) for _Angelica_.
The words horse, ox, dog, bull, snake, toad, are often used to denote
size, coarseness, worthlessness, or aversion. Devil or devil's is used
as a prefix for upward of forty of our plants, mostly expressive of
dislike or of some traditional resemblance or association. A number
of names have been contributed by the Indians, such as chinquapin,
wicopy, pipsissewa, wankapin, etc., while the term Indian, evidently
a favorite, is applied as a descriptive prefix to upward of eighty
different plants." There should be no antagonism in the use of
scientific and popular names, since their purposes are quite different.
The scientific names are necessary to students for accuracy, "but the
vernacular names are a part of the development of the language of
each people. Though these names are sometimes indicative of specific
characters and hence scientifically valuable, they are for the most
part not at all scientific, but utilitarian, emotional, or picturesque.
As such they are invaluable not for science, but for the common
intelligence and the appreciation and enjoyment of the plant world."
Educated Colored Labor.--In a paper published in connection with the
Proceedings of the Trustees of the John F. Slater Fund, Mr. Booker
T. Washington describes his efforts, made at the suggestion of the
trustees, to bring the work done at the Tuskegee school to the
knowledge of the white people of the South, and their success. Mr.
Carver, instructor in agriculture, went before the Alabama Legislature
and gave an exhibition of his methods and results before the Committee
on Agriculture. The displays of butter and other farm products proved
so interesting that many members of the Legislature and other citizens
inspected the exhibit, and all expressed their gratification. A full
description of the work in agriculture was published in the Southern
papers: "The result is that the white people are constantly applying
to us for persons to take charge of farms, dairies, etc., and in many
ways showing that their interest in our work is growing in proportion
as they see the value of it." A visit made by the President of the
United States gave an opportunity of assembling within the institution
five members of the Cabinet with their families, the Governor of
Alabama, both branches of the Alabama Legislature, and thousands of
white and colored people from all parts of the South. "The occasion
was most helpful in bringing together the two sections of our country
and the two races. No people in any part of the world could have acted
more generously and shown a deeper interest in this school than did
the white people of Tuskegee and Macon County during the visit of the
President."
Geology of Columbus, Ohio.--In his paper, read at the meeting of the
American Association, on the geology of Ohio, Dr. Orton spoke of the
construction of glacial drifts as found in central Ohio and the source
of the material of the drift, showing that the bowlder clay is largely
derived from the comminution of black slake, the remnants of which
appear in North Columbus. He spoke also of the bowlders scattered over
the surface of the region about Columbus, the parent rocks of which
may be traced to the shores of the northern lakes, and of Jasper's
conglomerate, picturesque fragments of which may be found throughout
central Ohio. Some of these bowlders are known to have come from
Lake Ontario. Bowlders of native copper also occur, one of which was
found eight feet below the surface in excavations carried on for the
foundations of the asylum west of the Scioto.