86o 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



firearms. As the Slavic Peron and the Scan- 

 dinavian Thor traverse the sky during storms 

 in chariots drawn by two horses or two 

 bucks, and as Elijah ascended to heaven in 

 the midst of lightnings and thunders in a 

 chariot drawn by two horses, the Russian, 

 Servian, and Bulgarian peasants hear in the 

 thunder the rolling of Elias's chariot wheels 

 and imagine him chastising God's enemies 

 with thunderbolts. A solemn festival to 

 Elias is held in Russia at the season when 

 droughts usually occur, in which the saint is 

 invoked to let the rain fall. There were at 

 Novgorod in the middle ages two churches, 

 one dedicated to Elias humid and the other 

 to Elias dry, to which processions marched 

 according to the kind of weather that was 

 wanted. Other ceremonies of devotion to 

 Elias as the saint of the storm, and legends 

 giving him the attributes of their old thun- 

 der god and associating him with meteoro- 

 logical phenomena characteristic of the Slav- 

 ic countries, are described by M. Henri Gali- 

 ment in the Revue deV Ecole (P Anihropologle, 

 all going to illustrate how hard it is to eradi- 

 cate the ideas and customs of their olden 

 times from the minds of the people, and how 

 the old persists in living by the side of the 

 new ; and teaching that when two forms 

 of religion are standing in rivalry with one 

 another, the younger, even with the aid of 

 the secular arm, can never supplant the 

 older except by making concessions to it. 



Asiatic and African Explorations in 1896. 



The long list of geographical explorations 

 accomplished during 1896, some of the most 

 important features of which have already 

 been mentioned in the Monthly, includes the 

 exploration of a large region pertaining to 

 the upper Yang-tseKiang River, Chinese 

 Empire, by M. Bonin, a French officer in Ton- 

 kin, who visited countries not previously 

 traversed by Europeans, and has been able 

 to make important corrections in the map of 

 the Yang-tse-Kiang and its tributaries. Dr. 

 Sven Hedin, in exploring the Takla Makan, a 

 continuation of the Desert of Gobi, has found 

 the ruins of two of the towns said to be part- 

 ly buried in the desert, and has made inter- 

 esting investigations on the past and present 

 hydrography of the Lob Nor region. M. D. 

 Elements, sent out by the Siberian Geograph- 

 ical Society to the Khengai Mountains of 



northwest Mongolia, found a great glacier on 

 the western slope of the mountain, and every- 

 where signs of former volcanic activity, A 

 Russian expedition has been exploring the 

 course of the Amu Daria, with a view to as- 

 certaining if it would be possible to divert its 

 waters by means of a canal into the Caspian 

 Sea. The exploration of Asia Minor, pre- 

 dominantly archseological, has been continued 

 by young men of the University of Oxford. 



Antiquity of Writing. It is observed by 

 Dr. Biihler, in his book on Indian Palasogra- 

 phy, that a very remote period is indicated 

 for the beginning of writing by the fact that 

 in a Jain text of about 300 b. c. its origin is 

 forgotten and its invention attributed to the 

 creator Brahma. Indian imitations of Greek 

 drachmas prove that the Greek alphabet was 

 employed in northwestern India before the 

 time of Alexander the Great. Knowledge of 

 the art of writing is established for the ear- 

 liest Vedic period by one of the great works ; 

 and the grammarian Panini, who is assigned 

 to the fourth century, mentions Greek writ- 

 ing and the words signifying writer. The 

 evidence of the canonical books of Ceylon 

 indicates that the knowledge of writing was 

 pre-Buddhistic ; and passages in the Jataka 

 and in the Maha Vagga prove the existence, 

 at the time of their composition, of writing 

 schools and of a wooden slate, such as is still 

 used in Indian elementary schools. Writing, 

 as a subject of elementary instruction, is also 

 mentioned in an inscription of the second 

 century before Christ. The palasographical 

 evidence of the Asoka inscription clearly 

 shows that writing was no recent invention 

 in the third century before Christ ; for most 

 of the letters have several, often very diver- 

 gent, forms, sometimes nine or ten. 



Tlie St. Lawrence Drainage System. 



The drainage system of the St. Lawrence 

 River is characterized by Mr. G. K. Gilbert, 

 in his paper on Niagara Falls and their His- 

 tory, as of exceptional character, in that it 

 has no such continuous slope from the pri- 

 mary rill through the brook and succeeding 

 tributaries and the river itself to the sea as 

 mark the drainage systems of most other re- 

 gions ; but " the district is composed mainly 

 of a group of great basins, like hollows, in 

 each of which the surface slopes toward some 



