H4 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A scheme of the French Government to 

 encourage the intermarriage of life-convicts 

 in New Caledonia with life-convicts import- 

 ed from the prisons at home is pronounced 

 mischievous by the " Lancet." The purpose 

 is to build up family relations in the inter- 

 est of morality ; but British experience is to 

 the effect that such alliances lead to the 

 multiplication of criminals, and that the real 

 check to crime lies in breaking up and iso- 

 lating the criminal class. Testimony gleaned 

 by M. Louis Barron from the journals of 

 New Caledonia points in the same direction, 

 and forms an instructive commentary on the 

 law of heredity as deduced by Darwin. 



The French fishermen are troubled by 

 the depredations of porpoises, for which they 

 have not succeeded in finding a remedy. 

 An attempt was made to catch them in seine 

 nets, but they jumped out of the snares. 

 They were scared away by guns and torpe- 

 does, but the fish were frightened and dis- 

 appeared with them. They are too numer- 

 ous to be shot one by one in an effective 

 manner. The only thing to be done seems 

 to be for the fishermen to unite and drive 

 them away in crowds ; but this will have to 

 be often repeated. Insurance and payment 

 of damages by the Government are the last 

 measures of relief suggested ; but they, too, 

 are expensive to somebody. 



Vanilla is produced from a species of 

 orchid that attaches itself to walls, trees, 

 and other suitable objects. The plant has a 

 long, fleshy stem, and the leaves are alter- 

 nate, oval, and lanceolate. The flower is of 

 a greenish-white color, and forms axillary 

 spikes. The fruit is a pod, measuring when 

 full grown some ten or twelve inches in 



length and about half an inch in diameter. 

 The quality of the pod can be determined by 

 the presence or non-presence of a crystalline 

 efflorescence called givre, and by its dark 

 chocolate-brown color. The fragrant givre is 

 vanillin, C 8 H 8 3 . The pods also contain va- 

 nillic acid, oily matter, soft resin, sugar, gum, 

 and oxalate of lime. 



A striking example of degeneration in 

 growth is exhibited by the scale that attacks 

 greenhouse and other plants. According to 

 Mr. Bernard Thomas, in "Science Gossip," 

 it is a degenerated female which lives upon 

 the sap of the plant, continuing to increase 

 in size and reproduce its young. These may 

 be found underneath it as minute red bod- 

 ies, just visible to the naked eye, and at this 

 time of their life comparatively active creat- 

 ures ; but they soon settle down and begin 

 to degenerate. Their eyes become indis- 

 tinct, and finally, with their antenna; and 

 legs, shrivel away, the body loses its thick- 

 ness, and they appear as if without life. 



Totems are defined by Mr. J. G. Fraser 

 as " a class of material objects which a sav- 

 age regards with superstitious respect, be- 



lieving that there exists between him and 

 every member of the class an intimate and 

 altogether special relation." They are tribal 

 emblems, family symbols, signals of nation- 

 ality, expressions of religion, bonds of un- 

 ion, and regulators of marriage-laws and of 

 the social institutions. The system of to- 

 tems exists among most primitive peoples, 

 and in similar forms with the North Ameri- 

 can Indians, Australians, South Africans, 

 Arabs, hill tribes of India, Polynesians, and 

 many other peoples. Among a tribe in Co- 

 lombia, where descent is in the female line, 

 it goes so far that if a man happens to cut 

 himself with his own knife, to fall off from 

 his own horse, or to hurt himself in any way, 

 his mother's clan demand blood-money from 

 him for injuring one of their totems. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Prof. Van Quenstedt, of Tubingen, one 

 of the most famous of German paleontolo- 

 gists, died December 21st, at an advanced 

 age. He was the author of a work on the 

 Jura, and of a Handbook of Petrefacten- 

 kunde, or the science of petrifactions. He 

 had an especially profound knowledge of the 

 Lias of Wiirtemberg and its fossils. 



M. Ch. Fievez, assistant in the spectro- 

 scopic department of the Royal Observatory 

 of Brussels, died February 2d, aged forty-five 

 years. He studied first for the military pro- 

 fession, but was invited to the observatory 

 by M. Houzeau, and entered it after studying 

 under Janssen at Meudon. His most impor- 

 tant work was the construction of a chart of 

 the solar spectrum on a larger scale than 

 that of Angstrom. He made a detailed 

 study of the spectrum of carbon, and experi- 

 ments on the behavior of spectral lines un- 

 der the influence of magnetism and of 

 changes of temperature. 



Dr. C. C. Parry, a distinguished Ameri- 

 can botanist, recently died at Davenport, 

 Iowa, aged sixty-seven years. He made val- 

 uable collections of plants, and was an au- 

 thority in the classification of the North 

 American flora. He was for several years a 

 botanist in the* Agricultural Department in 

 Washington. Mount Parry, near Denver, 

 was named after him. 



Prof. Richard Owen, geologist, died from 

 accidental poisoning at his home in New Har- 

 mony, Ind., March 24th. He was a son of the 

 Scotch philanthropist, Robert Owen, and was 

 born in Scotland, January 6, 1810. Having 

 been schooled in Europe and come to the 

 United States, he studied civil engineering in 

 Kentucky, was a Professor of Geology there, 

 served in the United States Survey, was a 

 captain in the Mexican War, was State Ge- 

 ologist for Indiana, professor in Indiana 

 State University, and lieutenant-colonel and 

 colonel in Indiana volunteer regiments. 



