576 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is inferior ; and the manner of laying the 

 taxes, which in Germany and Austria bear 

 upon the fabrication, and stimulate it to de- 

 vices to improve the yield, while in France 

 they bear upon the consumption, and tend 

 to discourage it. 



A bark containing quinine and quini* 

 dine, and currently known as Cuprea cin- 

 chona, imported from Colombia, has re- 

 cently had a sale in England comparable to 

 the entire amount of the importation of 

 cinchona - bark from all other countries. 

 The affinities of the tree which produces it, 

 hitherto unknown, have been traced out by 

 M. Triana, who has found that the bark is 

 chiefly derived from two species of Remijia, 

 a genus of which no species was previously 

 known to contain quinine. Seeds of the 

 Remijia have been received, and are in cul- 

 tivation at Malvern House, Sydenham. The 

 tree is likely to prove valuable for cultiva- 

 tion in countries where malarial fevers 

 abound. It grows at an elevation of from 

 six hundred to thirty-three hundred feet 

 above the sea, where even red cinchona will 

 not flourish. 



The census report on fire-arms and ammu- 

 nition lays stress on the advantage of the 

 "interchangeable system" of manufactur- 

 ing, or the system by which any single part 

 is made to fit into any machine of the same 

 class, and its influence in the development 

 of industries. Two of our great industries, 

 agriculture and manufactures, now depend 

 largely upon this system, which is of Ameri- 

 can origin, and has reached its greatest de- 

 velopment in our country. Its introduction 

 has reduced waste and effected economy in 

 production. By it the manufacturer is able 

 to furnish machines of all kinds at reason- 

 able cost, repairs are made easy and cheap ; 

 and agricultural processes, by the aid of 

 generally available machinery, have become 

 greatly extended. One of the direct results 

 of the system has been a great improvement 

 in the strength, durability, and working per- 

 formances of the machines made. 



M. Torcapel describes a formation of 

 basalt rich in pyroxene and very hard, and 

 more than six hundred feet thick, at Au- 

 benas, in Ardeche, France, under which the 

 washings of the river Rhone have exposed 

 a succession of beds of tufa, volcanic mud, 

 and decomposed basalt containing teeth and 

 bones of mammals which have been as- 

 signed by M. Gaudry to the Upper Mio- 

 cene. The situation of the fossils and the 

 superincumbence of the basalt leave no 

 doubt that the animals to which the bones 

 belonged were contemporaneous with the 

 eruption and its victims. The date of the 

 latter and that of the basaltic eruptions, the 

 outflows of which cover a large portion of 

 the central plateau of France, may there- 



fore be referred to the period named. M. 

 Gaudry remarks that these conclusions 

 agree with those reached by M. Earners in 

 the Cantal. 



M. L. Clemandot has given the name of 

 tempering by compression to a new method 

 of treating metals, particularly steel, which 

 consists in heating the metal to a cherry- 

 red, and then putting it under a strong 

 pressure, and keeping it there till it is 

 cooled. 



The fifth in the series of " Saturday 

 Lectures," in the National Museum at Wash- 

 ington, for 1882, was by Professor Riley, 

 and gave " Little-Known Facts about Weil- 

 Known Animals," in the form of a popular 

 account of the life-history of the oyster 

 and his enemies, the star-fish, the shore- 

 crab, the common frog, the house-fly, para- 

 sitism, the mosquito, and the earth-worm. " 



The report of the census shows that, in 

 the whole United States, 14,462,431 acres of 

 land are devoted to the cultivation of cot- 

 ton, and that the total product of the coun- 

 try is 5,1*76,414 bales, or -,- % of a bale per 

 acre ; Georgia gives the largest extent of 

 land to the cultivation of the staple, 2,617,- 

 138 acres ; Mississippi produces the largest 

 quantity, 955,808 bales ; and Louisiana gives 

 the largest return per acre, 0*59 bale. 



Mr. William Morris Davis has made, 

 in " Appalachia," an interesting study of 

 " The Little Mountains east of the Catskills." 

 These mountains, which rise only one or two 

 hundred feet above the plain, and are about 

 two miles wide, have a complicated structure 

 and " a charmingly picturesque surface, and 

 in tracing out their continual changes one 

 encounters problems of great variety and 

 beauty. The belt they occupy " is not great 

 in quantity but very varied in quality." 

 Their rocks, of the Hudson River and Low- 

 er Helderberg groups, are adorned with nu- 

 merous fossils ; and they afford examples of 

 the six types of surface form as determined 

 by folded, stratified rocks ; both mountains 

 and valleys of monoclinal, anticlinal, and 

 synclinal structure. The whole system ex- 

 hibits the Appalachian character of increase 

 of variety and abruptness of change from 

 east to west. 



TnE United States produces, according 

 to the reports of the census, 44,113,495 

 bushels of barlev, 11, 817,32*7 of buckwheat, 

 1,754,861,535 of Indian corn, 407,859,999 

 of oats, 19,831,595 of rye, and 459,479,505 

 of wheat. Of the several States, California 

 produces the most barley, 12,579,561 bush- 

 els ; New York the most buckwheat, 4,461,- 

 200 bushels ; Illinois the most corn (325,- 

 792,481 bushels), oats (63,189,200 bushels), 

 and wheat (51,110,502 bushels); and Penn- 

 sylvania the most rye, 3,683,621 bushels. 



