FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



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dock leaves and storing them in baskets for 

 the cows at milking time, for they will not 

 be milked unless they are fed. The sheep 

 on Soa Island are plucked instead of being 

 sheared, at the time when the wool would 

 naturally be shed, and what wool will not 

 come off in this way is cut off with a pocket 

 knife. When the steamer with Mr Kearton 

 reached the island, no one came down to 

 meet it till the whistle had been blown two 

 or three times. "It was not etiquette to 

 rush down like a parcel of savages," but the 

 people " retire to tidy themselves, and then 

 row out and call in proper form." 



The Island of Sakhalin. — Mr. Benjamin 

 Howard, an English visitor at the recent 

 meeting of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, presented before 

 Section E of that body an interesting ac- 

 count of the great but little-known island of 

 Sakhalin, more generally spelled Saghalien 

 in our geographies. Mr. Howard, however, 

 strongly urged the former spelling, as most 

 correctly representing the name, which is 

 always pronounced by the Russians in three 

 syllables, with the accent on the first. It is 

 now used as a penal colony by the Russian 

 Government, and a more hopelessly remote 

 and inaccessible spot for such a purpose can 

 hardly be found. To it are sent the hardest 

 cases among the Siberian prisoners ; and Mr. 

 Howard spoke of becoming accustomed, dur- 

 ing his stay there, to meeting scarcely any 

 human beings but murderers, except, of 

 course, the guards and officials. The island 

 is extremely inaccessible ; there is no com- 

 merce, and neither inducement nor opportu- 

 nity for vessels to touch there, while much 

 of the coast is ice-bound for a large part of 

 the year. Mr. Howard, who was engaged in 

 some scientific work on the island in the 

 service of the Government, is one of the 

 very few foreigners who have traveled or re- 

 sided there at all. He predicts for Sakhalin, 

 however, a future of considerable importance 

 ultimately, though only after a long period 

 of preliminary development and exploitation 

 as a penal colony, which stage has but lately 

 been begun. It has forest and mining re- 

 sources — among the latter, coal ; the deposits 

 are near the surface, but thus far have been 

 very little examined. He was unable to give 

 any data as to their geological age or actual 



extent; but the Government will no doubt 

 soon make investigations. The most re- 

 markable possibilities, however, are in the 

 line of fisheries, the coasts swarming with 

 fish to an extent that is scarcely credible by 

 one who has not seen them. Mr. Howard 

 said jocosely that he would hardly dare to 

 relate what he had personally witnessed, in 

 view of the usual reputation of " fish stories." 

 The climate is of course rigorous, under the 

 influence of cold northern currents, and 

 markedly in contrast with that of the same 

 latitude on the American side of the Pacific, 

 where the Japan current carries its modify- 

 ing influence as the Gulf Stream does to 

 northern Europe. Some agriculture, how- 

 ever, is possible during the short summer, 

 and the penal colonists have made fair be- 

 ginnings of self-support. He referred fur- 

 ther to a remnant of native Aino population 

 as very interesting from the fact that they 

 have preserved their peculiarities of life and 

 manners, and their purity of stock, much 

 more completely through their isolation than 

 the Ainos of the Japanese Islands, who have 

 been modified more or less by association 

 with the latter people. 



Technical and Popular Names. — In a 



paper criticising the multiplication of local 

 names in geology, Prof. C. E. Keyes distin- 

 guishes between names devised with a eon- 

 scientious desire to better the condition of a 

 science by clothing the new ideas with simple 

 words and those which are the product of a 

 name-making mania. " The first can not be 

 too highly commended, nor the second too 

 deeply deplored." Every progressive science 

 must discard the names that have served 

 their purpose, and must be prepared to re- 

 ceive all of the new ones demanded. The 

 sciences have each two phases, for each of 

 which a terminology is demanded, in one of 

 which the names must be technical and spe- 

 cial, established primarily for the investiga- 

 tor, and in the other general, popular, sim- 

 ple, and free from technical appearance ; but 

 the distinction is rarely made. Those who 

 object to the prevalence of technical names 

 in other sciences seldom reflect that they 

 have them in their own art. Yet if a man 

 of science should desire to familiarize himself 

 with the artisan's work, " he would be, after 

 five minutes' talk with a machinist or elec- 



