POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



285 



begin ? Not even, I think, with the first 

 appearance of gregarious animals. It is 

 found at the point where parents first begin 

 to care for their feeble offspring. . . . We 

 may go back further yet much further. It 

 is an application of the same principle es- 

 sentially unchanged when the organic cells, 

 which are in the lower organisms independ- 

 ent beings, first unite in filaments to form 

 an aggregate of the second order, each cell 

 giving up a part of the strength with which 

 it could carry on a rivalry with its comrades, 

 for a power of co-operation which makes the 

 aggregate far better able to sustain itself 

 than as many separate rival cells could ever 

 be." 



The Biloxi Indians. The title Blloxi, as 

 applied to the Biloxi Indians of Louisiana, 

 said Mr. J. Owen Dorsey, in a paper read at 

 the American Association, was probably a 

 corruption of the name they gave themselves. 

 Lakes or Lakeau, meaning the first people. 

 They lived in 1669 at Biloxi Bay, Mississippi. 

 In 1763 they moved to Louisiana, where their 

 number has been reduced to seventeen. De- 

 scent among them is in the female line. A 

 Biloxi can not marry his wife's brother's 

 daughter or his father's wife's sister, wherein 

 they differ from the Sioux, but a Biloxi man 

 can marry his deceased wife's sister, and a 

 Biloxi woman can marry the brother of a 

 deceased husband. They believed that the 

 spirit of a deer revived and went into another 

 body, and this could be repeated thrice ; but 

 when the fourth deer was killed the spirit 

 never revived again. The thunder being is 

 very mysterious and must not be talked 

 about in cloudy weather, but only on a fair 

 day, when thunder stories may be told. 

 When the Biloxi see a humming bird they 

 say that a stranger is coming ; and the hum- 

 ming bird, they believe, always tells the 

 truth. The crackling of the fire is supposed 

 to be a sign of snow or rain, and a nuthatch 

 pecking the house a sign of coming death. 

 If a child tt^ps over a giindstone its growth 

 will be stopped. Snipe must not be killed or 

 eaten, because the bird always gathers deer 

 fat, and is the sister of the thunder being. 



Playing witli Electric Eels. A writer in 

 the London Spectator has described his ex- 

 periences in handling the electric eels in Re- 



gent's Park, the largest of which is about 

 four feet and a half long, and weighs be- 

 tween sixteen and eighteen pounds. " When 

 grasped in the middle of the back, there was 

 just time to realize that it had none of the 

 ' lubricity ' of the common eel when the first 

 shock passed up the arm with a ' flicker,' 

 identical with that which a zigzag flash of 

 lightning leaves upon the eye, and, as it 

 seemed, with equal speed. A second and 

 third felt like a blow on the 'funny-bone,' 

 and the hand and arm were involuntarily 

 thrown back with a jerk which flung the 

 water backward on the pavement and over 

 the keeper, who was kindly assisting in the 

 enterprise. This slight mishap recalled a 

 far less agreeable result of a shock inflicted 

 on a previous inquirer, whose recoiling hand 

 had struck the assistant a severe blow in the 

 face. Unwilling to be baffled by a fish less 

 in size than the salmon which form the 

 common stock of a fishmonger's window, the 

 writer once more endeavored to hold the eel 

 at any cost of personal suffering. But the 

 electric powers were too subtle and per- 

 vading to be denied. The first muscular 

 quiver of the fish was resisted ; but at the 

 second the sense of vibration set up became 

 intolerable, and the enforced release was as 

 rapid and uncontrollable as the first. The 

 smaller eel was neither so vigorous nor so 

 resentful as its fellow ; but though the first 

 and second shocks did not compel the grasp 

 to relax, a third was equally intolerable with 

 that given by the large fish. The electrical 

 power seems to increase rapidly in the heavier 

 eels." The writer thinks that the eel controls 

 at will the power of its electrical discharge. 



The Earliest Man. In his public lecture 

 at Madison, Wis., during the meeting of the 

 American Association, on The Earliest Man, 

 Prof. D. G. Brinton said that science in- 

 clined to the belief that man originated in 

 one spot, and that all others descended from 

 one first pair. Some eminent men of science 

 believed that man was on the earth even in 

 the Tertiary period. What is called the pres- 

 ent period was divided many thousand years 

 ago by the Glacial period ; and it was prob- 

 able that in certain parts of the world man 

 lived during the ice period, which would 

 place the antiquity of the race at least 100,- 

 000 years. Man could not have first appeared 



