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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



stances were regarded as volcanoes were 

 merely extensive fires of stone-coal, Musch- 

 ketoff maintained, in 1876, that there was 

 no recent volcano in the country except, 

 perhaps, Mount Baishan. Two years later 

 General Kolpakoffsky endeavored to solve 

 the question relative to that mountain, but 

 his expedition failed to reach it. Last 

 year he had better success, and a dispatch 

 was read from him at the meeting of the 

 Russian Geographical Society, on October 

 29th, stating that he had found the apparent 

 volcanic phenomena there also to be caused 

 by a stone-coal fire, that had been burning 

 so long a time that no one could tell when 

 it had begun. Opposite to Baishan is 

 Mount Kiuntag, where the fire has ceased. 

 The slopes of Baishan are marked with 

 holes from which smoke and sulphurous 

 gases stream out, and the fire in the interior 

 is attended with a great noise. The ques- 

 tion of the existence of volcanoes in Central 

 Asia appears to be decided in the negative 

 by this report, which also strengthens the 

 theory that the action of volcanoes is chiefly 

 due to water ; for the supposed volcanoes in 

 the interior of Asia, now known not to exist, 

 afforded the only exceptions to the rule that 

 all volcanoes arc situated near large masses 

 of water. 



Reversion of Domesticated Animals to 

 the Wild State. The Hon. J. D. Caton has 

 been taking some notes, during a sojourn in 

 the Sandwich Islands, on the tendency of 

 domesticated animals, when left to go wild, 

 to revert to the habits, forms, and colors of 

 their wild ancestors. " With the exception 

 of the goose and the duck, nearly all the ani- 

 mals which have been introduced into the 

 islands, as well as those which were then 

 held in domestication, have reverted to the 

 wild state. Among them are the ox, the 

 horse, the goat, the sheep, the hog, the dog, 

 the cat, the turkey, the peacock, and the 

 barn-yard fowl. The greatest physical de- 

 generacy was observed in the wild horse and 

 the wild sheep. The latter arc small, gaunt, 

 and long-legged, with a scant and coarse 

 pelage. The ox, in about seventy -five years, 

 while it has not changed much in color and 

 form, has become wild and wary, and very 

 fleet in running over the lava in the mount- 

 ainous rcjioiis which it selects as its home. 



The wild goats are very numerous, cautious, 

 and difficult to approach, and are mostly 

 white, but some are party-colored. The hog 

 in a single generation "changes in form, 

 color, and habit, from the staid and quiet 

 porker to the fleet and fierce wild boar " ; 

 and one imported boar is told of that 

 changed immediately after escaping from a 

 ranch, and became as wild and fleet almost as 

 a deer, with a thin body and arched back, and 

 legs that appeared to be much longer, while 

 he more slowly assumed the dark, sandy 

 color of the wild boar. Turkeys also began 

 quickly to take on the color and shape of 

 the wild turkey. Wild barn-yard fowls fifty 

 years after escaping, occupying an exten- 

 sive elevated or mountainous wooded coun- 

 try, are the most wild and wary animals in 

 the district, have a faculty of disappearing 

 without noise at daylight, after having made 

 the forest vocal with the crowing of the 

 cocks, and have diminished in size, and be- 

 come of a uniform buff-color. Judge Caton 

 announces his conclusion in the " American 

 Naturalist," in which his notes are published, 

 that the tendency common to most animals 

 to return to the wild habit, the form, and 

 the coloring of the original species, is pos- 

 sibly strongest in those cases where the 

 animal has been most recently reclaimed 

 from the wild state, or where the change 

 produced by domestication has been most 

 rapid. 



Safety on Suburban Railroads. Two 



recent railway accidents have forcibly di- 

 rected attention to the necessity of provid- 

 ing more efficient means of protecting pas- 

 sengers who have to travel on lines whose 

 trains run with excessive frequency, as on 

 the suburban railways of large cities. A 

 train on one of the London railways and a 

 train on the Hudson River Railroad were 

 stopped casually the first in a tunnel, the 

 other at the end of a curved cut. The sig- 

 nals failed to be given to following trains, 

 which came along in less than five minutes. 

 In both cases hind cars were destroyed, and 

 several persons were killed, and others 

 sixty in the London accident hurt. The 

 blame in both cases is attached to the sig- 

 nals or the signal-men. No system of sig- 

 nals can be devised that will be infallible^ 

 but those we have can be made better and 



