P OP TJLAR MIS CELL ANY. 



139 



their order. The drain upon the earth's 

 stock of coal has hardly begun yet. The 

 known fields of China, still almost un- 

 broken, are supposed to have an area of 

 200,000 square miles ; those of the United 

 States of 193,870; the East Indian fields of 

 35,000 ; the British fields of 9,000 ; Ger- 

 many, France, and Belgium have small 

 fields; one field in Russia covers 13,600 

 square miles ; Japan has coal-fields in fif- 

 teen of its thirty-eight provinces ; Australia 

 has excellent coal to supply the lands of the 

 Pacific. Great Britain consumes coal at 

 the rate of 3'6, the United States of 1*06, 

 Germany of 1*1, France of - 64, Belgium 

 of l - 96, Austro - Hungary of 033 ton per 

 inhabitant. In England about one third of 

 the coal is used in the manufacture of iron 

 and steel, more than one fifth in the large 

 industries, more than one sixth for domes- 

 tic purposes, and the rest is consumed by 

 gas-works, water-works, mines, railways, 

 and steamers. In France, the metallurgical, 

 industrial, and gas works consume 72 per 

 cent., the household 13 per cent., the trans- 

 porting industries 10 per cent., and the 

 mines 4 per cent, of the whole amount. 

 The coal-mines of the world employ about 

 1,100,000 men, viz., 514,500 men in 

 England, 210,000 in Germany, 97,000 in 

 France, 101,000 in Belgium, more than 

 100,000 in the United States, and 63,000 

 in Austro-Hungary. 



Intellee tual Condition of the Savage Ne- 

 gro. M. de Rouvre gives, in the " Bulletin 

 de la Societe de Geographie," a darkly-col- 

 ored view of the mental and moral capacity 

 of the negroes of southern Guinea. The 

 black, he says, has no initiative, and is com- 

 'pletely destitute of metaphysical conception 

 and abstract ideas. The seat of the intel- 

 lectual functions appears to be paralyzed or 

 atrophied ; the comprehension is inert. He 

 receives no impression of the beautiful, of 

 the grand ; feels no love, no other passion 

 than the bestial instinct ; knows no dis- 

 tinction between good and evil, except that 

 which is imposed by the fear of punish- 

 ment. Therefore, he experiences no satis- 

 faction over a good deed, no remorse over a 

 wicked one. His enjoyments lie in eating, 

 drinking, and sleeping. He has no concep- 

 tion of property beyond that of an infant 



that prizes what it has without thinking of 

 its real value, and has no scruples againsl 

 taking what is another's if the notion strikes 

 it. The black, from sheer unintelligence, 

 is unmoved by the sight of our machines. 

 The crew of M. de Rouvre's pirogue, when 

 he visited the frigate Bellona, were taken 

 through the ship and shown it by a quarter- 

 master, but paid more attention to the bis- 

 cuit and rum that were offered them than 

 to any feature of the vessel or its equip- 

 ment. M. de Rouvre showed some of them 

 a photograph of a friend who had a long 

 beard and with whom they were well ac- 

 quainted ; they remarked, after looking at 

 it in every aspect, " You have a very pretty 

 wife in Europe." As a rule, when anything 

 is shown them, they look at the person who 

 points it out rather than at the object, try 

 to divine what he thinks about it, and repeat 

 that. It is impossible to convince them that 

 anything can be different from what it is ; 

 but they regard everything with a mixture 

 of superstition, incapacity, and perversity. 

 They have never thought of digging wells in 

 their towns in time of drought, though they 

 suffer greatly from the want of water, and 

 have often seen how the Europeans provide 

 it in their factories. Some of them have 

 visited Europe, without having received any 

 permanent improvement. One young man 

 went to Paris and learned to speak French 

 and dress in the European style, but re- 

 sumed his natural life as soon as he returned 

 home, reserving only a kind of varnish to 

 cover the duplicity with which an incom- 

 plete education had endowed him. All the 

 traces that were left of his education were 

 an increased power of discovering what was 

 really wicked, and of putting what he had 

 learned to the service of his unrestrained 

 instincts. 



Action of the Different Rays of the 

 Speetrnm. Assuming that the rays of 

 the spectrum vary simply by their wa re- 

 length, or quantitatively, M. Lermantoff, of 

 St. Petersburg, believes it probable that 

 their mode of action on bodies is really the 

 same. The dark heat-rays produce a sen- 

 sible heating of the entire body ; but each 

 superficial molecule that receives directly 

 the energy of the ray is heated much more 

 than the rest of the body, and communi- 



