FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



861 



central point, and not toward the mouth of 

 the river. Each basin is filled with water to 

 the lowest point of its rim, and each of the 

 lakes thus formed is a storage reservoir re- 

 ceiving a group of streams from the sur- 

 rounding country, and pouring an even dis- 

 charge over its rim to one of its neighbors." 

 The Niagara River is thus, from one point of 

 view, a strait connecting the two inland seas 

 of Erie and Ontario occupying two of these 

 basins ; from another point of view it is a 

 part of the St. Lawrence River the part 

 connecting the two expansions. "Viewed 

 either way, it departs so widely from the or- 

 dinary or normal river that its name is almost 

 misleading." Further, "a normal river re- 

 ceives most of its water directly from rain 

 or melting snow and varies with the season, 

 swelling to a flood in time of storm or at the 

 spring snow melting, and dwindling to rela- 

 tive insignificance in time of drought. The 

 water of Niagara comes only remotely from 

 storm and thaw. The floods of the tribu- 

 taries are stored by the lakes, to whose 

 broad surface they add but a thin layer. The 

 volume of Niagara depends only on the height 

 of Lake Erie at Buffalo, and from season to 

 season this height varies but little. On rare 

 occasions a westerly gale will crowd the lake 

 water toward its eastern end, and the river 

 will grow large. On still rarer occasions a 

 winter storm will so pile up or jam the lake 

 ice at the entrance to the river as to make a 

 dam, and for a day or two the river will lose 

 most of its water." The wastings of soil 

 and gravel that are usually carried along by 

 the streams in their course are carried by the 

 tributaries of the St. Lawrence system only 

 to the lakes, where they settle to the bottom. 

 Hence, " Niagara is ever clear. Sometimes, 

 when a storm lashes the shores of Erie, a 

 little sand is washed to the head of the river 

 and carried down stream ; sometimes a little 

 mud is washed into the river by the small 

 creeks that reach its banks. Thus Niagara 

 is not absolutely devoid of load, but its bur- 

 den is so minute that it is hard to detect." 



Himalayan Tea Porters. Darjeeling tea, 

 said Mr. George W. Christison, in a lecture 

 before the British Society of Arts, is all car- 

 ried by the hardy hill-men up the steep 

 mountain roads to the nearest railway station 

 on the way to market. It is no unusual day's 



work for a coolie to carry a tea chest, weigh- 

 ing from one hundred and ten to one hun- 

 dred and thirty pounds, a distance of five 

 or six miles, making at the same time an 

 ascent of from twenty-five hundred to thirty- 

 five hundred feet in sheer vertical eleva- 

 tion. There can be no deception about a 

 task like that, and we can not but have an 

 admiration for the powers of endurance of 

 those who perform such a feat. Of course, 

 these people are trained to load-carrying and 

 mountain-climbing from their very infancy, 

 and hence the peculiar set of muscular facul- 

 ties required for them are fully developed, 

 if not actually called into existence at the 

 cost of others so much so that walking on 

 a level, after a few miles, becomes positively 

 painful to them. In the prosecution of their 

 own trade, or in domestic affairs, they fre- 

 quently undertake long, arduous journeys 

 over ridges and along and across hot valleys, 

 varying many thousands of feet in eleva- 

 tion, occupying many days, carrying heavy 

 loads of from one hundred and fifty to two 

 hundred pounds, and over and in addition 

 to their food and bedding most cheerfully 

 lighting a fire, cooking and eating their 

 scanty meal, and going to sleep by the way- 

 side. There is a story still current of a 

 Bhootean in old times having carried a grand 

 piano up the hill to Darjeeling, a distance of 

 fifty miles forward, and involving a rise of 

 more than five thousand feet in elevation by 

 the old road. These hill tribes are a hardy 

 people, capable of performing marvelous 

 journeys without partaking of food, or on 

 the most meager fare. 



Progress in Botanical Stndy. In con- 

 nection with the history of the Botanical 

 Gazette, Prof. C. E. Bessy has given in a 

 paper on the Evolution of a Botanical Jour- 

 nal, read at the University of Nebraska and 

 published in the American Naturalist, a view 

 of the growth of interest in botany in the 

 United States. The Gazette was started in 

 November, 1875, by Prof. John M. Coulter, 

 of Hanover College, Indiana, as the Botan- 

 ical Bulletin, a monthly publication of four 

 pages. Its name was changed in the second 

 year to the Botanical Gazette. Its editorial 

 force was increased from time to time, it 

 went through several enlargements, and im- 

 provements were made in it ; in ten years it 



