POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



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and sonic of the German school assert that 

 such signs exist, and are not difficult to rec- 

 ognize ; or, that the criminal was a criminal 

 potentially before he was one actually. The 

 chief problem of dealing with crime funda- 

 mentally is, then, one of taking it at this 

 stage ; and it is here that medical anthro- 

 pology can make itself most useful. 



Explorations in Labrador and Alaska. 

 Of the geographical explorations on the 

 American continent during 1894, Prof. An- 

 gelo Heilprin, in the Bulletin of the Geo- 

 graphical Club of Philadelphia, mentions as 

 most noteworthy those of Messrs. Tyrrell 

 and Low, on British territory. To the for- 

 mer we owe the exploration of a large por- 

 tion of unknown region lying to the west of 

 Hudson Bay a region that for at least six 

 hundred miles was totally unknown and 

 the rectification of much of the western con- 

 tour of the bay. A peculiarity of the region 

 traveled over by Mr. Tyrrell is the total ab- 

 sence of timber. " All the wood that was 

 gathered in the course of this six hundred 

 miles' journey, it is said, would not have 

 been sufficient to give the material for a 

 single boot-peg. On the other hand, even in 

 this most treeless area, game of at least one 

 kind is described as being most unmanage- 

 ably abundant. Over an area of three square 

 miles or more the reindeer were so thick as 

 almost completely to shut out from view the 

 ground." To Mr. Low belongs the honor of 

 having made the first crossing of Labrador. 

 Beginning at Lake Mistassini on the east, 

 and terminating at Ungava Bay on the 

 north, he crossed the height of land of the 

 region, a rugged and forbidding country, 

 partly timber-covered, and in the main de- 

 void of inhabitants. No specially marked 

 physiographic features were discovered, no 

 great mountain ridges or peaks, and no 

 large streams, " but the accessions of general 

 knowledge to a region are always welcome, 

 and particularly when it is so little known as 

 is Labrador." A third exploration on our 

 continent is that of the joint Anglo-Ameri- 

 can Alaska Boundary Commission. The state- 

 ments in the newspapers that the surveys 

 of this commission would remove Mount 

 St. Elias from the United States to British 

 America is " perhaps premature," and Mr. J. 

 C. Russell, who first definitely determined 



the position of the mountain, is quoted as 

 authority for saying that no basis exists for 

 the assumed necessary transfer. Two other 

 peaks, however, possibly higher than Mount 

 St. Elias, have been observed, unquestiona- 

 bly on British soil. 



Snow-coloring Insects. An interesting 

 communication has been published from Dr. 

 Vogler de Schaffhouse concerning red snow- 

 insects. An excursion of a Vaudois society 

 to the Great St. Bernard in August, 1893, at 

 an altitude of twenty-six hundred metres, 

 near the col de Fenetre remarked in a little 

 combe at the left of the path a well-defined 

 rose-red spot on the snow. One of the ex- 

 cursionists, M. Th6odore Bottinger, found by 

 the aid of a glass that the red color was due 

 to little jumping insects, of which thousands 

 were distributed on the surface of the melt- 

 ing snow. There were such prodigious 

 numbers of them at the bottom of the 

 combe that they formed a compact mass 

 an inch thick in spots, like a bed of orange- 

 red sawdust. The insect, called in French a 

 podurelle, is a new species of the Lipura of 

 Burmeister the Anurophorus of Nicolet, 

 hitherto undescribed. The red and black 

 colorations of snow are usually ascribed to 

 an alga {Protococcus nivalis), which turns 

 black from red in the course of its growth. 

 M. J. Brun observes, in an article he has 

 published on the subject of coloration, that 

 he has met the podurelle of Benedict de 

 Saussure (Desoria glacialh) in innumerable 

 masses, and believes that the existence of 

 the podurelle is connected with that of the 

 protococcus, and that the insects owe their 

 color to the black spores on which they feed. 

 It appears, then, that the coloration of the 

 snow is chiefly due to the presence of the 

 lower vegetation, but that the existence of 

 the podurelles being connected with that of 

 the protococcus, those insects may under 

 some circumstances contribute by their num- 

 ber to form colored spots. 



Power of Petty Snperstitions. The 



force of superstition, the London Specta- 

 tor observes, in an article on that subject, 

 is rarely felt by the cultured Englishmen, be- 

 cause their superstitions are usually unim- 

 portant, it not signifying much whether you 

 pass under a ladder or not, or whether you 



