FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



423 



economy is upon the side of mechanical pro- 

 pulsion. Horseless vehicles were believed to 

 compare favorably in point of cost and de- 

 preciation with horse vehicles. 



The Work of Physical Chemistry. Prof. 

 William A. Noyes, as Vice-President for the 

 Chemical Section of the American Associa- 

 tion, opened his section with a very interest- 

 ing and suggestive review and forecast of 

 the achievements of physical chemistry. 

 Though the progress of this branch seems 

 slow in comparison with what we may 

 conceive as ultimately possible, notable ad- 

 vance has been made through the efforts 

 of the numerous investigators who have 

 been industriously working in it. Light has 

 been cast upon many problems, and it is 

 now possible to predict phenomena of which 

 the operator could formerly have knowledge 

 only by experiment. The older methods 

 have given place to mathematical determina- 

 tions, and new regions of investigation have 

 been opened to chemists. We have still be- 

 fore us, however, the vast task of learning 

 how to save and utilize the immense propor- 

 tion of the power far exceeding that which 

 is saved which now goes to waste in all 

 our operations. To make good as large a 

 part as possible of that which Is now lost 

 should be the object of future work in phys- 

 ical chemistry. 



A Woman among African Cannibals. 



Miss Kingsley, who returned to England in 

 the fall of 1895, after a journey of nearly a 

 year in the Cameroons, collecting fishes, re- 

 lates stories of thrilling adventures, particu- 

 larly among the Fangwe cannibals living 

 between the Ogowe and Rembwe Rivers. 

 These people are always at war with one an- 

 other, and are one of the few tribes in Africa 

 that eat their own dead. As her little band 

 of three Fangwe "elephant men" and four 

 Djuma men approached each Fangwe town, 

 it was found to be in a state of defense, and 

 the leader of the band invariably fell into 

 some trap which the inhabitants had laid 

 outside the town for the enemy. At almost 

 every town the Fangwe stopped the expedi- 

 tion and wanted to eat the Fangwe elephant 

 men, who were of a hostile section. Miss 

 Kingsley had guaranteed the elephant men 

 safety, and sometimes by persuasion, some- 



times by threats of punishment, and some- 

 times by a little present, they were saved. 

 Not one burial place was found in the coun- 

 try, but pieces of human bodies are kept in 

 most of the native mud huts just as civilized 

 people keep eatables in their larders. The 

 Adjumas, on the other hand, bury their dead 

 in the forest. Miss Kingsley climbed the 

 Cameroons Peak, 13, 700 feet high. At an 

 altitude near 10,000 feet, she came across 

 the great crater. There are about seventy 

 craters in the Cameroons Mountains, and 

 from the largest of these the peak shoots 

 up almost perpendicularly on the sea side ; 

 hence it has to be reached from the other 

 side. Inland from the Cameroons the Rum- 

 bi Mountains are inhabited up to about 7,000 

 feet, and Miss Kingsley found shelter in na- 

 tive huts. In the higher ascent she had to 

 sleep on the ground in the open air, and was 

 frequently drenched by the heavy rains, but 

 suffered no injury to health thereby. In the 

 canoe journey up the Ogowe, the craft was 

 upset and its occupants thrown into the 

 water nearly a dozen times. Miss Kingsley 

 had several narrow escapes, and was saved 

 more than once by clutching the rocks in 

 the rapids and holding on to them till the 

 natives righted the canoe. 



Drifting Fruits. For nearly three hun- 

 dred years a curious fruit has been found 

 drifting along the coasts of the West Indies, 

 concerning the origin and nature of which 

 nothing could be determined. It was first 

 noticed, described, and pictured by Clusius 

 in the Exoticorum libri decern in 1605. The 

 next reference to it was by Johannes Jonston, 

 in his Latin history of trees and fruits, in 

 1662. It was noticed again in 1680, and 

 thence down to 1764, after which it does not 

 seem to have been mentioned till 1884, when 

 Mr. D. Morris collected specimens of it near 

 Kingston, Jamaica ; and in 1887 a specimen 

 was picked up on the shore of Bigborough 

 Bay, in the south of England. In ^March, 

 1889, it was identified by Mr. J. H. Hart, 

 Superintendent of the Botanic Gardens at 

 Trinidad, as the fruit of Sacoglottis ama- 

 zonica, or, locally, cojon de burro, a tree 

 very rare in Trinidad, but more abundant in 

 the delta of the Amazon. From one or both 

 of these localities, says Mr. Morris, who de- 

 scribes the fruit and gives its history in Na- 



