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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and which so dignified and able a body as 

 the Convocation of Canterbury has this 

 year substantially confessed itself unable 

 to solve. It is really more complicated 

 than this ; for the condition among the 

 Mormons is one that has grown up under 

 our own neglect and tolerance, while we 

 might have met it in the beginning and 

 prevented its development if we had had 

 the nerve to do so. 



Inherited Memories. Dr. H. D. Yalin 

 has communicated to " Mind in Nature " 

 (Chicago) some instances in which specific 

 memories appear to have been transmitted 

 by inheritance. He believes that they are 

 the first cases that have been published, for 

 even Ribot confesses to have had but little 

 success in establishing instances of the kind. 

 The most striking case is that of a little girl 

 fifteen months old, the child of a French 

 Canadian father, whose principal traits of 

 character and appearance she seems to have 

 received, and of an American mother of Ger- 

 man descent. She has had only the English 

 and German languages spoken to her; yet 

 the first word she ever spoke when five 

 months old was mouman, the French Ca- 

 nadian form of maman, mother. Her first 

 words of assent and dissent were oui and 

 non French when eisrht months of ajce, 

 " and she does not yet know yes or ya, 

 though she seems to have forgotten oui. 

 "When a year old she was presented with a 

 poodle-dog named Venus, which she called 

 Nanan candy, " one of the very first words 

 that a French child talks." At about the 

 same age she used freelv the words bon, 

 good, and pus, French Canadian for plus, 

 no more. These six French words are the 

 very ones that her father is likely to have 

 exclusively used when a babe. The u of 

 the last word was sounded as in French, as 

 also were the nasal sounds of non and Na- 

 nan, things which her mother could not 

 have done. Inheritance of memorv has 

 been observed in the case of birds, which 

 soon learn to avoid the telegraph-wires, 

 while their young seem equally ready in 

 keeping away from them. Chauncey Wright 

 is quoted as saying of those dreams of 

 strange places and events that often recur 

 to one in his sleep, with the intimation of 

 being familiar though never seen in a wake- 



ful state, that they are inherited memories. 

 Dr. Valin also relates of his own personal 

 experience : " My mother was brought up 

 and educated in a most romantic country 

 village, which she revisited a few months 

 before I was born. The first time I visited 

 it I remembered vividly having been there 

 before. In fact, I could tell at that time 

 what next would follow in the scenery, and 

 I argued with my relatives who were deny- 

 ing my former knowledge of that place ; my 

 mother having died when I was about nine 

 months old, and I had not had any descrip- 

 tion of it from any one, or conversed with 

 any one in regard to the village scenery." 

 A little girl in Burlington, Vermont, with 

 whose family Dr. Valin at one time resided, 

 "had inherited so good a memory of an 

 uncle, whose funeral had been attended by 

 her mother not long before this little girl's 

 birth, that she could give a full description 

 of him, and knew his picture at once the 

 first time that she ever saw it." Some of 

 these cases may have been maternal im- 

 pressions, but the first one was undoubtedly 

 one of inherited memory. 



Alnm as a Water-Clarifier. According 

 to a paper by Professor P. P. Austin, of the 

 New Jersey State Scientific School, exten- 

 sive use has been made in late years of 

 alum in the processes of purifying water, 

 sewage, etc. It is not improbable, the au- 

 thor says, that, aside from its effect in pre- 

 cipitating matter mechanically by envelop- 

 ment within the precipitating basic aluminic 

 sulphate, the alum exerts a coagulative ac- 

 tion on the albuminous substances in the 

 water, rendering them insoluble, and thus 

 causing their precipitation perhaps the . 

 same or similar effect that alum produces 

 in the tanning of leather. Alum has the 

 great advantage that it is cheap, can be ob- 

 tained everywhere, and is not highly poison- 

 ous. The larger the amount of alum added 

 to the water the more quickly will the sepa- 

 ration take place ; the smaller the amount 

 added, the longer will the water have to 

 stand before a clarification will be effected. 

 Again, large bodies of water will be pre- 

 cipitated by smaller amounts of alum than 

 one would infer from experiments on a 

 small scale, as the mechanical action of the 

 precipitant here, in enveloping and carrying 



