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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tending much farther east, and stretching 

 south nearly to the Gulf of Mexico. The 

 fauna of this lake-basin indicates a warm 

 temperate climate. The more common 

 mammals are a mastodon, rhinoceros, cam- 

 els, and horses, the latter being especially 

 abundant. 



Inseet-catching Plants. Mr. William M. 

 Canby communicates to the American Natu- 

 ralist some observations on the Drosera fili- 

 formis, or thread-leaved sundew, which con- 

 firm and supplement the observations of 

 other naturalists on the manner in which 

 the leaves of that plant capture insects. 

 At 1 a. m. he placed bits of the common 

 house-fly on sundry leaves of the drosera, 

 near their apices, and, twelve hours later, 

 not only had the glandular hairs around 

 bent toward and touched the atoms of fly, 

 but also in every case the leaves themselves 

 had bent over them, the inflection being 

 about 17. There were other leaves in the 

 vicinity which had themselves captured 

 flies : many of these were much more bent, 

 undoubtedly from having held the prey a 

 longer time. In one case the leaf had 

 curled round the prey so as completely to 

 encircle it. 



Extermination of the Thistle The Ber- 

 lin correspondent of Land and Water pub- 

 lishes a piece of information that will be 

 welcome to many a farmer. " Who ever 

 knew," says he, " of two plants being so 

 inimical to one another as one to kill the 

 other by a mere touch ? This, however, 

 seems to be the case when rape grows 

 near the thistle. If a field is infested by 

 thistles, give it a turn of rapeseed, and this 

 plant will altogether starve, suffocate, and 

 chill the thistle out of existence. A trial 

 was being made with different varieties of 

 rapeseed in square plots, when it was found 

 that the whole ground was full of thistles, 

 and nobody believed in the rape having a 

 fair run. But it had, and as it grew the 

 thistle vanished, faded, turned gray, and 

 dried up as soon as the rape-leaves began 

 to touch it. Other trials were then made 

 in flower-pots and garden-beds, and the this- 

 tle always had to give in, and was alto- 

 gether annihilated, whether old and fully 

 developed, or young and tender." 



Food of the Bongos. The Bongos, a 

 negro tribe on the Upper Nile, are repre- 

 sented by Schweinfurth as being very indis- 

 criminate feeders. Among them rats and 

 field-mice are esteemed delicacies. The pur- 

 suit of these animals is a favorite occupa- 

 tion of the children, who tie them together 

 by the tails in dozens, and carry on a 

 lively barter in them among themselves. 

 But a still greater delicacy is cat-flesh. The 

 children place, in the narrow paths through 

 the tall grass of that region, traps of bam- 

 boo, with living field-mice for bait. In these 

 they catch cats. The Bongos, indeed, eat 

 meat of all kinds, except human flesh and 

 the flesh of dogs. They make no objection 

 to meat that is in an advanced state of de- 

 composition ; it is then more tender, and, 

 besides, is more nourishing, more strength- 

 ening than fresh meat. " Whenever I had 

 cattle slaughtered," says Schweinfurth, " I 

 saw my bearers eagerly contending for the 

 half-digested contents of the stomach, after 

 the manner of Esquimaux, whose only sup- 

 ply of vegetable food seems to come from the 

 contents of the reindeer's paunch. They 

 would even strip off the amphistomous 

 worms which literally live in the stomachs 

 of all cattle in this region, and, without more 

 ado, put them raw into their mouths by the 

 handful. After this, it could no longer sur- 

 prise me to find that the Bongo reckons as 

 game every thing that creeps or crawls, 

 from rats and mice to snakes, from the 

 carrion vulture to the mangy hyena, from 

 the great fat earth-scorpion to the cater- 

 pillar, or the winged termite with its oily, 

 mealworm-like body." 



NOTES. 



Monsieur N. Rauis, connected with the 

 secretariat of the Brussels Royal Academy 

 of the Sciences, proposes to publish a " Uni- 

 versal Dictionary of Academies, Learned So- 

 cieties, Observatories, Universities, Muse- 

 ums, Libraries, Botanic Gardens," etc. a 

 systematic catalogue of all institutions con- 

 cerned with the progress of science, letters, 

 and the arts. He requests of the officials 

 of such institutions everywhere to send him 

 information about their establishments un- 

 der the following heads: 1. Title; 2. Date 

 of foundation ; 3. Aims ; 4. List of officials 

 (titles only) ; 5. Location, with the exact 

 address ; 6. Prizes, etc., offered ; 7. Prop- 

 erty owned such as library, archives, mu- 



