POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



569 



tar, or Manakji, the son of Kavasji, the car- 

 penter. At the age of about seven years, 

 the child receives the investiture of the holy 

 shirt and girdle, accompanied with ceremo- 

 nies calculated to impress him with the so- 

 lemnity of the act, among which is his recital 

 of the confession of faith in the Zoroastrian 

 religion. The sadarah, or holy shirt, is a 

 light, short muslin garment, worn next to 

 the body ; the kosti, or holy girdle, is a thin 

 woolen cord of seventy-two threads, passed 

 thrice round the waist and tied with four 

 knots. The wearer, in tying the first knot, 

 declares his belief in the doctrine of the one 

 God, and at the second knot his faith in Zo- 

 roaster as the true prophet. In tying the 

 last knot he says, "Perform good actions 

 and abstain from evil ones." It is his duty, 

 as soon as he has risen from sleep, to put 

 on his kosti, wash his hands, and put wood 

 on the fire. The astrologer has no place in 

 the ceremony of investiture, but he presides 

 over the arrangement of marriages, which 

 take place early and usually between near 

 relatives. The betrothal, the astrologer hav- 

 ing pronounced the signs favorable, is made 

 complete by the mere exchange between the 

 parents of new dresses for the boy and girl. 



Origin of Cancer. Dr. H. Percy Dunn, 

 of the West London Hospital, who has 

 given attention to the study of cancer and 

 the investigation of the causes of its in- 

 crease in civilized countries, controverts the 

 opinion that the disease is hereditary. The 

 fact is admitted that cancer appears fre- 

 quently consecutively in certain families, 

 but this is not considered sufficient of itself 

 to constitute an hereditary quality, while all 

 the other characteristics of hereditary dis- 

 ease are absent. It fails to fulfill Quatre- 

 fages's definition of the hereditary quality, of 

 becoming an agent of variation, and trans- 

 mitting and accumulating the modifying ac- 

 tions of the conditions of life. But, while 

 cancer is not transmissible as a disease, the 

 predisposition to it may be inherited. The 

 term predisposition is vague and hard to 

 define, but may be described generally as 

 " the shadow of a disease, as a disease with- 

 out its substance the reflection, as it were, 

 in the offspring, distinct from the repetition 

 of the morbid types common to one or both 

 parents." The strongest element in the pro- 



duction of cancer is age, and it is most like- 

 ly to appear between the thirty-fifth or for- 

 tieth and the sixtieth years. The disease 

 may also be regarded as climatic or racial, 

 prevailing most in the English climate and 

 among the English people. It prevails most 

 largely among women, and of them most 

 with those who have had children. It is so 

 prominently a nervous disease that Dr. Dunn 

 gives his assent to the opinion that it may 

 be and often is provoked by nervous shock. 

 He, therefore, recognizes the expediency of 

 preventing persons of middle age from be- 

 ing exposed to such shocks. In this rela- 

 tion to the nervous system, which is so try- 

 ing in our busy age, is perhaps to be found 

 the reason of the rapidly accelerated in- 

 crease of cancer which has been lately re- 

 marked upon in England. 



The King-Crab in New Waters. Quite 

 a sensation was stirred up among the fisher- 

 men of San Francisco on the 26th of May 

 by the discovery of what was supposed to 

 be a new crustacean. The creature was 

 taken in the waters off the Farallone Islands 

 by Captain Camilio, who was fishing there 

 in his smack. When seen by some mem- 

 bers of the United States Geological Sur- 

 vey, the " new crab " proved to be an old 

 acquaintance, the Limulus Polyphemus, so 

 common in the waters of the Eastern coast, 

 where it is known as the king-crab on ac- 

 count of its great size, and the horse-foot 

 crab because of its form. The living genus 

 Limulus, if we reject two doubtful forms, 

 has but three species our own L. Polyphe- 

 mus, the L. moluccamts of the Spice Islands, 

 and L. roiundicaudus of the Chinese and the 

 Japanese waters. Geologically considered, 

 this strange creature has the highest an- 

 tiquity of any of the crustaceans. And its 

 place in nature is a problem of profound 

 difficulty. Dr. Samuel Lockwood, so long 

 ago as 1869, showed that in form the larval 

 Limulus was identical with the trilobite. 

 Since then embryological and anatomical 

 study has shown that the animal is not a 

 crab, and it is now even doubtful which it 

 favors most, the position of an aquatic 

 scorpion or an aquatic arachnidan; for it 

 really seems to have structural elements of 

 both the spider and the scorpion. It is also 

 interesting to know that, while the trilobite 



