P OP ULAR MIS CELL ANY 



717 



the method of using them may be vastly im- 

 proved. The frequency of trains can not 

 be diminished, but will have to be increased 

 as the number of suburbans who do busi- 

 ness in the cities increases. The only cer- 

 tain means of obtaining greater security 

 seems to lie in increasing the number of 

 ways out of the city ; and, as there is a limit 

 to the number of new railroads that can be 

 built in such places, the way out may at 

 last have to be sought in introducing steam 

 tramways and steam-carriages on common 

 roads. The London " Spectator " says that 

 the present prohibition of these two forms 

 of locomotion is " so absolute and so un- 

 reasoning as to operate as a direct check 

 upon invention." 



Spontaneous Combustion of Coal. Sev- 

 enty cases of spontaneous combustion of coal 

 are recorded as having taken place among 

 31,116 ships in 1SV4. The combustion may 

 go on so slowly that the rise of temperature 

 will amount to only a few degrees, and prob- 

 ably always occurs where coal is heaped up in 

 large quantities. Mr. W. Mattieu Williams 

 has been led to the conclusion, by experi- 

 ments in distilling inflammable hydrocarbon 

 from cannel-slack, that it takes place in some 

 degree in all cases where coal is exposed to 

 the atmosphere. The yield of gas, which 

 was at first good, continuously diminished, 

 and at last became ruinously small, the slack 

 at the bottom of the heaps being little bet- 

 ter than coke. Soon after this, the railway 

 to the colliery siding took fire under the rails 

 from the oxidation and heating of the slack 

 with which it was ballasted. The loss from 

 this oxidation is greater in fine coal than 

 when the mineral is in large lumps, because 

 a greater proportion of surface is exposed. 

 The liability to slow combustion varies with 

 the quality of the coal, and is greatest in 

 " brassy " coal, or coal that contains pyrites. 



Egyptian Marriage and Animal-Wor- 

 ship. M. Revillout has been struck, in ex- 

 amining some ancient Egyptian marriage 

 settlements, with the predominance which 

 was given to the wife in the family. In a 

 deed of the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, 

 the groom, describing himself as the son of 

 Pchelkons, " whose mother is Tahret," saith 

 unto the woman Tarreteus, daughter of 



Relon, whose mother is Tarreteus, " I have 

 accepted thee as my wife," and afterward) 

 "I will cstabli.-h thee as my wife." The 

 preliminary " acceptance " mentioned here 

 was a marriage for a year of probation, like 

 the "hand-fasting" for a year, with power 

 at the end of the year to break the contract, 

 that used to prevail among the Highlanders 

 of Scotland, and analogies to which may be 

 found among some other people. An im- 

 portant point to be noted in the deed is the 

 naming of the mothers of both contracting 

 parties as a fact which, in itself, demon- 

 strates the importance of the woman in the 

 family, and as a survival of the time when 

 family names were derived, not from the 

 father, but from the mother. After accept- 

 ing and establishing the woman as his wife, 

 the man, among other things, promised to 

 pay certain damages if he should take an- 

 other wife, and gave the woman a kind of 

 mortgage on all his property. Thus, in an- 

 other deed, one Petoupra assigned to his 

 wife, Neshorpchrat, " not only his house and 

 all his landed property, present and future, 

 but likewise his silver and copper money, 

 his title-deeds and documents concerning his 

 property. ... He leaves himself absolutely 

 nothing " ; and the only clause in his favor 

 was, that his wife should provide for him 

 while he lived, and pay for his funeral lit- 

 urgies, and for embalming his body when 

 he died. This is not a singular instance. 

 The Egyptian bridegroom, moreover, took 

 his wife's name, and the sons, instead of 

 being called after their fathers, were desig- 

 nated by the names of their mothers. A 

 writer in the " Saturday Review " regards 

 this custom, in connection with animal-wor- 

 ship, as originating in the same principle. 

 The worship of animals, while nearly uni- 

 versal as a whole, was local as to each sa- 

 cred animal. An animal that was worshiped 

 in one place was hunted down in another, 

 all over the country. These animals were 

 probably originally selected and made pecul- 

 iar to distinguish the families and stocks of 

 the people, like the totems of our Indians, 

 and the corresponding customs among the 

 Australians and some African races. " There 

 is scarcely a quarter of the globe where the 

 tribes of contemporary savages are not di- 

 vided into stocks, each of which, like the 

 Egyptians, reveres a sacred animal or plant, 



