572 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



eluded fifty-eight local unions or groups, and 

 about twenty-three hundred members. 



Development of the Mammalian Foot. 



Professor E. D. Cope has suggested as a 

 result of his studies of the feet of the mam- 

 malia, that the reduction in the number of 

 toes in the ungulates " is due to the elonga- 

 tion of those which slightly exceeded the 

 others in length, in consequence of the 

 greater number of strains and impacts re- 

 ceived by them in rapid progression, and 

 the complementary loss of material avail- 

 able for the growth of the smaller ones. 

 This is rendered probable from the fact that 

 the types with reduced digits are dwellers 

 on dry land in both orders, and those that 

 have more numerous digits are inhabitants 

 of swamps and mud." The cloven-footed ani- 

 mals were mud-dwellers, as a few of them 

 still are, and larger than the whole-footed 

 ungulates; and "the mechanical effect of 

 walking in the mud is to spread the toes 

 equally on opposite sides of the middle line. 

 This would encourage the equal develop- 

 ment of the digits on each side of the mid- 

 dle line, as in the cloven-footed types." On 

 the other hand, in progression on hard 

 ground, the longest toe (the third) will re- 

 ceive the greatest amount of shock from 

 contact with the earth, and there is every 

 reason to believe that shocks, if not exces- 

 sive, encourage growth in the direction of 

 the force applied. The hinge between the 

 first and second series of tarsal bones in 

 cloven feet is also supposed to be the re- 

 sult of strains endured in walking in mud. 

 The variations in the degree of development 

 of the trochlea, or the prominences forming 

 the tongues of the tongue-and-groove artic- 

 ulations, in different mammalia, also^ seem 

 to be dependent on the amount and kind of 

 strain to which the limbs are subjected. 



The Archaeological Congress at Tiflis. 



A very interesting Archaeological Congress 

 was recently held at Tiflis, which was at- 

 tended by about eight hundred persons, 

 nearly all from Russia and the Caucasus. 

 Prof essor Virchow was the most conspicuous 

 foreign delegate. Collections of stone and 

 bronze antiquities and Georgian ornaments 

 were exhibited from Russia, Kuban, and Os- 

 setia, where great numbers of bronze imple- 

 ments, carved hatchets with spiral, zigzag, 



and animal ornaments, and religious objects 

 belon'dn"' to some unknown worship, have 

 been found in recent years. Count Ouvaroff 

 made a communication on remains of the 

 stone period human skeletons, with stone 

 and bone implements, perforated teeth of ani- 

 mals, and as many as two hundred jade (ne- 

 phrite) hatchets, the first jade implements 

 observed in graves in Russia, which had 

 been found on the bank of the Angara River, 

 near Irkutsk. In the discussion concerning 

 jade that followed the reading of this paper, 

 M. Mousbketoff described the great mono- 

 lith of jade over the grave of Tamerlane 

 at Samarcand, which is IS feet long, 15 

 foot wide, 1-2 foot high, and weighs about 

 eighteen hundred pounds, or more than 

 twice as much as the largest pieces of ne- 

 phrite that have been found in bowlders. 

 Professor Samokoff gave an account of his 

 finds in the graves near Pyatigorsk, in the 

 Caucasus. He excavated about two hun- 

 dred graves belonging to the stone, bronze, 

 and iron periods, and found in the larger 

 graves bronze and stone implements, bones 

 of sheep, and several split human bones 

 that did not belong to skeletons. His con- 

 clusion that the Caucasians of the bronze 

 age were anthropophagists was not con- 

 curred in by the majority of the Congress. 

 Professor Virchow gave a lecture on the 

 chief problems of the ethnology and archae- 

 ology of the Caucasus. On the current 

 opinion that the Caucasus was the highway 

 for populations coming from Asia to Eu- 

 rope, he expressed some doubts whether the 

 Caucasian passes could have been crossed 

 by whole tribes at a time when communica- 

 tions were so difficult, and the ice-cover- 

 ing descended lower than now. It would 

 bemost important, therefore, to ascertain 

 whether the first inhabitants of the Cau- 

 casus came from the north or from the 

 south. He considered that the civiliza- 

 tion which the antiquities found in Ossetia 

 represent was far more recent than that dis- 

 covered by Dr. Schliemann at Troy. 



Acoustics in Arcliitectnre. Mr. A. F. 

 Oakey, the architect of the Cincinnati Music 

 Hall, gives some valuable suggestions on 

 " Acoustics in Architecture " in " Van Xos- 

 trand's Engineering Magazine." The most 

 essential requisite to a good music hall or 



