572 



THE rUFULAK SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



peoples are not mentioned in the older Baby- 

 lonian cuneiform inscriptions, and are first 

 spoken of in the Assyrian inscriptions of 

 the ninth century b. c. A second Aryan 

 emigration to Asia followed across the Hel- 

 lespont. After making a detailed examina- 

 tion of the Aryan stocks and their supposed 

 emigrations, Dr. Fligier concludes that their 

 linguistic unity does not by any means con- 

 stitute an anthropological unity : the Asiatic 

 Aryans have partly lost their Aryan type, 

 and the European Aryans present two quite 

 distinct types. 



Observations of the Last Solar Eclipse. 



The solar eclipse of May 19th has been 

 the subject of a number of communications 

 to the French Academy of Sciences. M. 

 Janssen spoke in terms of admiration of the 

 photographs of all the phases of the phe- 

 nomenon which were obtained by means of 

 the photographic revolver. A very laconic 

 notice of the observations made during 

 totality by Messrs. Trepied, Lockyer, Thol- 

 lon, and Tacchini, was sent by telegraph. 

 The Egyptian Government gave exceptional 

 facilities to the observers. Photographs of 

 the corona and its spectrum were obtained, 

 the latter exhibiting the lines of potassium 

 and hydrogen. The observers at the same 

 time noticed a comet which was visible to 

 the naked eye in the immediate vicinity of 

 the sun. At Lyons M. Andre and his aids 

 saw between the edge of the moon and the 

 outline of the sun-spots which it was ap- 

 proaching, the development of the gray lig- 

 ament that has been noticed between the 

 edge of the sun and the circumference of 

 the planets crossing its disk. The popular 

 observatory of the Trocadero, in Paris, on 

 the day of the eclipse, put four telescopes, 

 as many opera-glasses, and blackened glass- 

 es, at the service of the public. About a 

 hundred persons were present as early as 

 six o'clock in the morning. Each instru- 

 ment was in charge of an assistant, whose 

 duty it was to help the public to see the 

 phenomenon. One of the assistants made 

 a projection apparatus of his telescope, and 

 threw an image of the eclipse and of nu- 

 merous solar spots upon a screen, where it 

 could easily be looked at by fifteen persons 

 at once. It was thus made possible to ex- 

 amine with the microscope the details of a 



considerable number of spots, and to see 

 the black profiles of the lunar mountains 

 designed on the illuminated image of the 

 sun. Several drawings of the solar spots 

 and the eclipse were taken. 



An Insect-lodging Flower. M. Treub 

 has made a study in Java of the Discidia 

 Rafflesia, a curious plant which lives upon 

 trees without touching the ground. It pro- 

 duces urns in the shape of jars open at 

 the top, and containing within a system of 

 branched roots. After showing that these 

 formations are produced by the folding of 

 a leaf upon itself in such a manner that its 

 lower face corresponds with the interior 

 face of the urn, M. Treub inquires what 

 may be the office of the organs. The fact 

 that the interior of the urn is lined with a 

 waxy coating precludes the idea that it 

 can directly serve a carnivorous purpose. 

 Against this, too, are the facts alleged by M. 

 Treub, that ants which are found in the urn 

 are always very lively and generally very 

 numerous ; that they come out of the urn 

 as easily as they go into it ; and that they 

 swarm in it to such an extent that the roots 

 suffer from them, and the radicels are eaten 

 or are very weak. These insects, then, seem 

 rather to devour the discidia than to serve 

 it as food. M. Treub concludes that "the 

 urns of the discidia are of no use to it as 

 traps for insects. The plant is not in any 

 sense carnivorous. Instead of falling into 

 an ambuscade, the ants that enter an urn 

 find there a lodging that suits them marvel- 

 ously. The principal, if not the sole, func- 

 tion of the urn is to collect, or, in a lesser 

 degree, to save water." M. Treub shows 

 further that the water in the urns is gen- 

 erally rain-water, more rarely transpired 

 water, that may perhaps be afterward re- 

 absorbed by the plant. 



Calculating the Area of the United States. 



Mr. F. Y. Carpenter, C. E., has explained 

 in " Van Nostrand's Engineering Magazine " 

 the difficulties which are encountered in 

 making an accurate computation of the area 

 of a large country like the United States, 

 having irregular boundary-lines. The prin- 

 cipal difficulty arises from the indetermi- 

 nateness of the expression, " our territorial 

 outline." The place, even, of the sea-line 



