86o 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



athletes siiperf5eded the prizes of intrinsic 

 value offered in heroic times. Wreaths of 

 laurel, myrtle, vine leaves, or flowers, were 

 commonly worn at symposia, and are thus 

 represented on vases. A few such wreaths 

 have been found preserved in E^crpt. The 

 manufacture of garlands is depicted in sev- 

 eral Pompeiian pictures. Gold crowns were 

 frequently modeled in the form of leaves. 

 Other materials for wreaths were wool and 

 artificial leaves and flowers of horn or silk. 

 Much may be learned about wreaths in the 

 writings of Theophrastus, Plutarch, Pliny, 

 Atheuaeus, and Gellius, and from inscriptions. 



Scenery of Spilzbergen. Sir William M. 

 Conway and his companions found Spitz- 

 bergen, of which they were the first ex- 

 plorers, a very different country from what 

 it was supposed to be. The general impres- 

 sion was that a continuous ice cap would be 

 found, and they expected it; but "in place 

 of a frozen surface they met with crevassed 

 sloppy glaciers, surrounded by miles of 

 quaking bogs and innumerable watercourses" 

 a perpetual thaw produced by the perpet- 

 ual day of a brief arctic summer, in a region 

 emerging, as it were, from a glacial epoch. 

 Of course, the opposite conditions of relent- 

 less ice prevail in winter. Why should men 

 be attracted to such countries, as arctic ex- 

 plorers who have gone once seem to be time 

 and again ? Sir William gives one of the rea- 

 sons. " The arctic glory," he says, " is a thing 

 apart, wilder, rarer, and no less superb than 

 the glory of any other region of this beauti- 

 ful world. Here man has no place, and there 

 is no sign ot his handiwork. Nature com- 

 pletes her own intentions unhelped and un- 

 hindered by him. Such pure suows no Al- 

 pine height presents, nor such pale blue 

 skies, nor that marvelous, remote, opalescent 

 sea with its white flocks and its yet more 

 distant shores. No Alpine outlook pene- 

 trates through such atmosphere, so mellow, 

 80 rich." There are days, the reviewer of 

 Sir William's book in the Athenaeum adds 

 rare days^-of glorious cloud effects, when 

 faint mists, delicate and gray, brood on the 

 fiords and almost obliterate the bases of the 

 hills, leaving their tops to stand out clear 

 against a sky mottled with brilliant flocks of 

 cloudlets. The beauties of Spitzhergen are 

 found not as in true mountain rejrious in the 



forms of the hills, but in the atmospheric 

 colors and effects. The landscapes have the 

 charm of breadth, of horizontal lines, rather 

 than any sublimity or picturesqueness. " The 

 whole country," says Sir William, " is inter- 

 esting from a scientific point of view because 

 of the rapidity with which its surface is 

 being modeled into such forms as were im- 

 pressed in glacial times on the more temper- 

 ate and inhabited parts of northern Europe." 



Dancing Ostriches. The execution of a 

 kind of waltz is described by Mr. S. C. Cron- 

 right Schreiner as a common practice among 

 ostriches. When there are a number of 

 them, they will start off in the morning and, 

 after running a few hundred yards, will stop, 

 and with raised wings will whirl rapidly 

 round till they are stujiefied, or perhaps 

 break a leg. The males pose also before 

 fighting and to make their court. They 

 kneel on their ankles, opening their wings, 

 and balancing themselves alternately for- 

 ward and backward or to one side or the 

 other, while the neck is stretched on a level 

 with the back and the head strikes the sides, 

 now on the right, now on the left, while the 

 feathers are brij-tiing. The bird appears at 

 this time so absorbed in its occupation as to 

 forget all that is going on around him, and can 

 be approached and caught. The male alone 

 utters a cry, which sounds much like an ef- 

 fort to speak with the mouth shut tight. 

 The omnivorous qualities of the ostrich 

 have hardly been exaggerated. It swallows 

 oranges, small turtles, fowls, kittens, and 

 bones. Mr. Schreiner tells of one swallow- 

 ing also a box of peaches, tennis balls, sev- 

 eral yards of fencing wire, and half a dozen 

 cartridges. One followed the workmen and 

 picked up the wire as they cut it. Most 

 frequently the ostrich does not swallow each 

 dainty separately, but collects several in its 

 throat and then swallows them all at once. 

 Sometimes it is strangled. Its windpipe is 

 then cut, the obstacle taken out, and the 

 wound sewed up, when all goes well again. 



Gypsnm in Kansas. The gypsum depos- 

 its of Kansas are described by Mr. G. P. 

 Grimsley in the Kansas University Quarterly 

 as occurring in a belt that trends northeast- 

 southwest across the State, two hundred and 

 thirty miles long, while the bed of exposed 



