Miss Kingsley defines one of the fundamental doctrines of African
fetich as being that the connection of a certain spirit with a certain
mass of matter, a material object, is not permanent. "The African will
point out to you a lightning-stricken tree and tell you that its
spirit has been killed; he will tell you when the cooking pot has gone
to bits that it has lost its spirit; if his weapon fails, it is
because some one has stolen or made sick its spirit by means of
witchcraft. In every action of his daily life he shows you how he
lives with a great, powerful spirit world around him. You will see
him, before starting out to hunt or fight, rubbing medicine into his
weapons to strengthen the spirit within them, talking the while,
telling them what care he has taken of them, reminding them of the
gifts he has given them, though those gifts were hard to give, and
begging them in the hour of his dire necessity not to fail him. You
will see him bending over the face of a river, talking to its spirit
with proper incantations, asking it when it meets a man who is an
enemy of his to upset his canoe or drown him, or asking it to carry
down with it some curse to the village below which has angered him,
and in a thousand other ways he shows you what he believes if you
will watch him patiently. It is a very important point in the study of
pure fetich to gain a clear conception of this arrangement of things
in grades. As far as I have gone I think I may say fourteen classes of
spirits exist in fetich. Dr. Nassau, of Gaboon, thinks that the
spirits affecting human affairs can be classified completely into six
classes."
At a recent meeting of the Institute of Mining Engineers (England),
reported by Industries and Iron, Mr. J. A. Longden, who delivered the
opening address, discussed the problem presented by the rapid
exhaustion of the English coal fields. During the last twenty-five
years, he said, the output of coal had increased from 120,000,000 to
200,000,000 tons, the ratio of increase being two and a half per cent
per annum. Assuming that the increase for the next twenty-five years
will only be one and a half per cent, the coal output in 1925 would
reach 280,000,000 tons. At such an increasing annual output the
commercially workable coal would be practically used up. Mr. Longden
suggested the propriety of putting an export duty of sixpence per ton
on all coal exported, and finally said: The evidence before them all
pointed to one thing--namely, that in fifty years they would
practically be dependent on the United States of America for cheap
coal, iron, and steel, and when this came about "we or our sons will
find out that an alliance with the United States for coaling our navy
was imperative." In conclusion, he insisted upon the necessity of
taking measures to avoid waste in the coal industry.
The following note is from Nature of May 11th: "At the last meeting of
the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland Dr. Elliot Smith
settled a point in the comparative morphology of the brain which at
one time was the subject of a heated controversy between Huxley and
Owen. In 1861, it may be remembered, Owen maintained that the _calcar
avis_ and the calcarine fissure which causes it were characters
peculiar to the brain of man, a statement which Huxley showed to be
untrue, the formation being well marked in all primate brains. Dr.
Elliot Smith has reached the further generalization that the _calcar
avis_ is a character shown by all mammalian brains, with the possible
exception of the prototherian. He identifies--and the reasons for this
identification do not seem capable of refutation--the calcarine
fissure of the primate brain with the splenial fissure of the brain of
other mammals. This generalization will materially assist in
homologizing the primate and unguiculate _pallium_."
The influence of wind on the speed of steamers is of considerably more
importance than is generally believed. In the _Annalen der
Hydrographie_ for January, 1899, L. E. Dinklage describes some
observations recently made on two of the North German Lloyd steamers
of about five thousand tons and fifteen or sixteen knots. The results
show that when the wind was favorable no difference whatever could be
detected in the speed of the vessels during a light breeze or a heavy
gale. But with a beam (cross-wind) or head wind a reduction of from
three to five knots and a half was produced. The obvious conclusion is
that the wind when favorable never helps a fast steamer, but always
hinders it when unfavorable. Probably with vessels steaming ten knots
or less a favoring gale might increase the speed.