POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



283 



made as easy as possible. " All three 

 agencies combined are making the surface- 

 drainage almost a3 perfect as if a series of 

 impervious roofs covered the land, and all 

 the flow from them were conducted by pipes 

 into one common channel." Consequently, 

 " springs once copious have disappeared ; 

 streams formerly perennial alternately over- 

 flow their banks and run dry. The natural 

 regulators of the streams having been de- 

 stroyed, whenever there is an excessive rain 

 it is rapidly carried into the streams, which, 

 gradually uniting their waters, often con- 

 stitute floods in larger channels which no 

 human appliances can control." Dike3 and 

 levees will check the evil for a time, only to 

 make it greater in the future. The only 

 possible remedy for all these evils is " to 

 hasten as quickly as possible to undo our 

 work and recreate the natural reservoirs we 

 have destroyed. By reforesting the swamps 

 and the higher land which surrounds them 

 and the lakes, " we shall restore them to 

 their proper place in the economy of Na- 

 ture." The lakes should be restored to their 

 former dimensions, and enlarged wherever 

 practicable. A scheme kindred to this is 

 that of creating artificial reservoirs at the 

 sources of rivers, as at the sources of the 

 Ohio in the Alleghany Mountains, by dam- 

 ming up the ravines of the smaller streams. 



Earth-Contraction and Mountains. Mr. 

 William B. Taylor lately read a paper before 

 the Philosophical Society of Washington 

 before which he suggested that the crumpling 

 of the earth's crust, with the formation of 

 mountain-ranges, was a result of modifica- 

 tion in the spheroidity of the globe pro- 

 duced by a change in the length of the 

 day, which change is an effect of the re- 

 tarding action of the tides. It is established, 

 in the author's mind, as beyond a reason- 

 able doubt, that our present day is consider- 

 ably longer than the day of early geological 

 times. Supposing the equatorial radius of 

 the earth to have been once one tenth 

 greater and the polar radius one tenth less 

 than they are now, it is evident that, from 

 the very slow but never-ceasing contraction 

 of the equatorial shell, due to diminution of 

 rotatory motion, " this crust would be sub- 

 ject to an unremitting stress of lateral com- 

 pression as relentless as that from the old 



hypothetic shrinkage of volume by reduc- 

 tion of temperature. Is it not precisely this 

 morphologic contraction whose effects and 

 records are everywhere apparent in the 

 crumpling of the earth's crust ? " On this 

 view the facts may be explained that the 

 circumpolar regions, where the crust has, 

 by the theory, been stretched, are relatively 

 free from mountains or plications, while the 

 intertropical region contains the highest ele- 

 vations. So strongly impressed is Mr. Taylor 

 11 with the inevitable operation and potency 

 of this unquestioned retardation of rotation 

 that, were all traces of any differential action 

 masked and obliterated, he would still hold 

 to it as the one efficient cause to account 

 for the prominent constriction of the crust 

 displayed in every land. But the differen- 

 tial traces of oblateness have not been ob- 

 literated masked though they may be, to 

 some extent, by other perturbations." From 

 various conditions, he adds, " we may infer 

 that in all geological ages the progress of 

 elevation has been in excess of that of 

 degradation by erosion; that in all ages 

 mountain-building has been at a maximum ; 

 that is, that the uplifted heights have been 

 the greatest which the average thickness of 

 the crust at the time was capable of sup- 

 porting ; so that the former has been a 

 constant function of the latter, the ratio 

 being probably not far from one fifth." 

 The increasing maximum of elevation has 

 probably now reached its limit, for both 

 the processes of equatorial contraction and 

 of internal temperature reduction are going 

 on with extreme and lengthening slowness ; 

 " and the whole remaining subsidence of the 

 intertropical oblateness can not exceed five 

 miles, during the vast ages in which the 

 earth's rotation shall be entirely arrested." 



Snake-Poisoning. Dr. G. C. Roy, con- 

 trasting the physiological action of snake- 

 poison and the symptoms of rabies, has 

 made the suggestion that the venom of the 

 cobra might be tried to counteract the mor- 

 bid phenomena of rabies. An interesting 

 compendium of facts respecting snake-poi- 

 sons has been published in Calcutta by Mr. 

 Vincent Richards, from which we learn, 

 among other things, that we have no anti- 

 dote to the poison when it has once fully 

 entered into the system. If the venom can 



