Bush, characterizes the treatment of the natives by the settlers
as constituting, on the whole, one of the darkest chapters in the
colonization of Australia. "Everywhere and always we find the same
process: the whites arrive and settle in the hunting grounds of
the blacks, who have frequented them since the remotest time. They
raise paddocks, which the blacks are forbidden to enter. They breed
cattle, which the blacks are not allowed to approach. Then it happens
that these stupid savages do not know how to distinguish between a
marsupial and a placental animal, and spear a calf or a cow instead
of a kangaroo, and the white man takes revenge for this misdeed by
systematically killing all the blacks that come before his gun. This,
again, the natives take amiss, and throw a spear into his back when he
rides through the bush, or invade his house when he is absent, killing
his family and servants. Then arrive the 'native police,' a troop of
blacks from another district, headed by a white officer. They know the
tricks of their race, and take a special pleasure in hunting down their
own countrymen, and they avenge the farmer's dead by killing all the
blacks in the neighborhood, sometimes also their women and children.
This is the almost typical progress of colonization, and even though
such things are abolished in the southeastern colonies and in southeast
and central Queensland, they are by no means unheard of in the north
and west."
MINOR PARAGRAPHS.
In a brood of five nestling sparrow-hawks, which he had the opportunity
of studying alive and dead, Dr. R. W. Shufeldt remarked that the
largest and therefore oldest bird was nearly double the size of the
youngest or smallest one, while the three others were graduated down
from the largest to the smallest in almost exact proportions." It was
evident, then, that the female had laid the eggs at regular intervals,
and very likely three or four days apart, and that incubation commenced
immediately after the first egg was deposited. What is more worthy
of note, however, is the fact that the sexes of these nestlings
alternated, the oldest bird being a male, the next a female, followed
by another male, and so on, the last or youngest one of all five being
a male. This last had a plumage of pure white down, with the pin
feathers of the primaries and secondaries of the wings, as well as the
rectrices of the tail, just beginning to open at their extremities.
From this stage gradual development of the plumage is exhibited
throughout the series, the entire plumage of the males and females
being very different and distinctive." If it be true, as is possibly
indicated, that the sexes alternate in broods of young sparrow-hawks as
a regular thing, the author has no explanation for the fact, and has
never heard of any being offered.
Architecture and Building gives the following interesting facts
regarding the building trades in Chicago: "Reports from Chicago are
that labor in building lines is scarce. The scarcity of men is giving
the building trades council trouble to meet the requirements of
contractors. It is said that half a dozen jobs that are ready to go
ahead are at a standstill because men can not be had, particularly
iron workers and laborers--the employees first to be employed in
the construction of the modern building. It is also said that wages
have never been better in the building line. The following is the
schedule of wages, based on an eight-hour day: Carpenters, $3.40;
electricians, $3.75; bridge and structural iron workers, $3.60; tin and
sheet-iron workers, $3.20; plumbers, $4; steam fitters, $3.75; elevator
constructors, $3; hoisting engineers, $4; derrick men, $2; gas-fitters,
$3.75; plasterers, $4; marble cutters, $3.50; gravel roofers, $2.80;
boiler-makers, $2.40; stone sawyers and rubbers, $3; marble enamel
glassworkers' helpers, $2.25; slate and tile roofers, $3.80; marble
setters' helpers, $2; steam-fitters' helpers, $2; stone cutters, $4;
stone carvers, $5; bricklayers, $4; painters, $3; hod carriers and
building laborers, $2; plasterers' hod carriers, $2.40; mosaic and
encaustic tile layers, $4; helpers, $2.40."
In presenting the fourth part of his memoir on The Tertiary Fauna
of Florida (Transactions of the Wagner Free Institute of Science,
Philadelphia), Mr. William Healey Dall observes that the interest
aroused in the explorations of Florida by the Wagner Institute and its
friends and by the United States Geological Survey has resulted in
bringing in a constantly increasing mass of material. The existence of
Upper Oligocene beds in western Florida containing hundreds of species,
many of which were new, added two populous faunas to the Tertiary
series. It having been found that a number of the species belonging to
these beds had been described from the Antillean tertiaries, it became
necessary, in order to put the work on a sound foundation, besides the
review of the species known to occur in the United States, to extend
the revision to the tertiaries of the West Indies. It is believed that
the results will be beneficial in clearing the way for subsequent
students and putting the nomenclature on a more permanent and reliable
basis.
The numerical system of the natives of Murray Island, Torres Strait, is
described by the Rev. A. E. Hunt, in the Journal of the Anthropological
Society, as based on two numbers--_netat_, one, and _neis_, two. The
numbers above two are expressed by composition--_neis-netat_, three;
_neis i neis_, or two and two, four. Numbers above four are associated
with parts of the body, beginning with the little and other fingers
of the left hand, and going on to the wrist, elbow, armpit, shoulder,
etc., on the left side and going down on the right side, to 21; and the
toes give ten numbers more, to 31. Larger numbers are simply "many."
President William Orton, of the American Association, in his address at
the welcoming meeting, showed, in the light of the facts recorded in
Alfred R. Wallace's book on The Wonderful Century, that the scientific
achievements of the present century exceed all those of the past
combined. He then turned to the purpose of the American Association to
labor for the discovery of new truth, and said: "It is possible that
we could make ourselves more interesting to the general public if we
occasionally foreswore our loyalty to our name and spent a portion of
our time in restating established truths. Our contributions to the
advancement of science are often fragmentary and devoid of special
interest to the outside world. But every one of them has a place in
the great temple of knowledge, and the wise master builders, some of
whom appear in every generation, will find them all and use them all at
last, and then only will their true value come to light."
NOTES.
The number of broods of seventeen-year and thirteen-year locusts has
become embarrassing to those who seek to distinguish them, and the
trouble is complicated by the various designations different authors
have given them. The usual method is to give the brood a number in a
series, written with a Roman numeral. Mr. C. L. Marlatt proposes a
regular and uniform nomenclature, giving the first seventeen numbers to
the seventeen-year broods, beginning with that of 1893 as number I, and
the next thirteen numbers (XVIII to XXX) to the thirteen-year broods,
beginning with the brood of 1842 and 1855 as number XVIII.
Experimenting on the adaptability of carbonic acid to the inflation of
pneumatic tires, M. d'Arsonval, of Paris, has found that the gas acts
upon India rubber, and, swelling its volume out enormously, reduces it
to a condition like that following maceration in petroleum. On exposure
to the air the carbonic acid passes away and the India rubber returns
to its normal condition. Carbonic acid, therefore, does not seem well
adapted to use in inflation. Oxygen is likewise not adapted, because it
permeates the India rubber and oxidizes it, but nitrogen is quite inert
and answers the purpose admirably.
Mr. Gifford Pinchot, Forester of the Department of Agriculture, has
announced that a few well-qualified persons will be received in the
Division of Forestry as student-assistants. They will be assigned to
practical field work, and will be allowed their expenses and three
hundred dollars a year. They are expected to possess, when they come,
a certain degree of knowledge, which is defined in Mr. Pinchot's
announcement, of botany, geology, and other sciences, with good general
attainments.
In a communication made to the general meeting of the French Automobile
Club, in May, the Baron de Zeylen enumerates 600 manufacturers in
France who have produced 5,250 motor-carriages and about 10,000
motor-cycles; 110 makers in England, 80 in Germany, 60 in the United
States, 55 in Belgium, 25 in Switzerland, and about 30 in the other
states of Europe. The manufacture outside of France does not appear
to be on a large scale, for only three hundred carriages are credited
to other countries, and half of these to Belgium. The United States,
however, promises to give a good account of itself next time.
Mine No. 8 of the Sunday Creek Coal Company, to which the American
Association made its Saturday excursion from Columbus, Ohio, has
recently been equipped with electric power, which is obtained by
utilizing the waste gas from the oil wells in the vicinity. This, the
Ohio State Journal says, is the first mine in the State to make use of
this natural power.
In a bulletin relating to a "dilution cream separator" which is now
marketed among farmers, the Purdue University Agricultural Experiment
Station refers to the results of experiments made several years ago as
showing that an increased loss of fat occurs in skim milk when dilution
is practiced, that the loss is greater with cold than with warm water,
and that the value of the skim milk for feeding is impaired when it
is diluted. Similar results have been obtained at other experiment
stations. The results claimed to be realized with the separators can be
obtained by diluting the milk in a comparatively inexpensive round can.
To our death list of men known in science we have to add the names
of John Cordreaux, an English ornithologist, who was eminent as a
student, for thirty-six years, of bird migrations, and was secretary
of the British Association's committee on that subject, at Great
Cotes House, Lincolnshire, England, August 1st, in his sixty-ninth
year; he was author of a book on the Birds of the Humber District,
and of numerous contributions to The Zoölogist and The Ibis; Gaston
Tissandier, founder, and editor for more than twenty years, of the
French scientific journal _La Nature_, at Paris, August 30th, in
his fifty-seventh year; besides his devotion to his journal, he was
greatly interested in aërial navigation, to which he devoted much
time and means in experiments, and was a versatile author of popular
books touching various departments of science; Judge Charles P. Daly,
of New York, who, as president for thirty-six years of the American
Geographical Society, contributed very largely to the encouragement
and progress of geographical study in the United States, September
19th, in his eighty-fourth year; he was an honorary member of the Royal
Geographical Society of London, of the Berlin Geographical Society,
and of the Imperial Geographical Society of Russia; he was a judge of
the Court of Common Pleas of New York from 1844 to 1858, and after
that chief justice of the same court continuously for twenty-seven
years, and was besides, a publicist of high reputation, whose opinion
and advice were sought by men charged with responsibility concerning
them on many important State and national questions; Henri Lévègne de
Vilmorin, first vice-president of the Paris School of Horticulture;
O. G. Jones, Physics Master of the City of London School, from an
accident on the Dent Blanche, Alps, August 30th; Ambrose A. P. Stewart,
formerly instructor in chemistry in the Lawrence Scientific School, and
afterward Professor of Chemistry in the Pennsylvania State College and
in the University of Illinois, at Lincoln, Neb., September 13th; Dr.
Charles Fayette Taylor, founder of the New York Orthopedic Dispensary,
and author of articles in the Popular Science Monthly on Bodily
Conditions as related to Mental States (vol. xv), Gofio, Food, and
Physique (vol. xxxi), and Climate and Health (vol. xlvii), and of books
relating to his special vocation, died in Los Angeles, Cal., January
25th, in his seventy-second year.
Efforts are making for the formation of a Soppitt Memorial Library of
Mycological Literature, to be presented to the Yorkshire (England)
Naturalists' Union as a memorial of the services rendered to
mycological science and to Yorkshire natural history generally, by the
late Mr. H. T. Soppitt.
The United States Department of Agriculture has published, for general
information and in order to develop a wider interest in the subject,
the History and Present Status of Instruction in Cooking in the
Public Schools of New York City, by Mrs. Louise E. Hogan, to which an
introduction is furnished by A. C. True, Ph. D.
The United States Weather Bureau publishes a paper On Lightning and
Electricity in the Air, by Alexander G. McAdie, representing the
present knowledge on the subject, and, as supplementary to it or
forming a second part, Loss of Life and Property by Electricity, by
Alfred J. Henry.
A gift of one thousand dollars has been made to the research fund of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science by Mr. Emerson
McMillin, of New York.