POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



141 



the mass of the water and its equatorial 

 situation, that it is so healthy as it really 

 is. Some of the tributaries of the Amazon 

 are very insalubrious, and life anywhere in 

 them, in any condition, is made miserable 

 by insect pests ; yet Mr. Wells has never 

 met any one, who has had an experience of 

 life on the Amazons, who has not become 

 passionately fond of it. " The glorious vege- 

 tation, the life free from conventionalities, 

 and the brilliant sunlight and warmth, tem- 

 pered by fresh breezes, contain some of the 

 elements of making a paradise," and nu- 

 merous lines of river-steamers afford means 

 of convenient communication. The vegeta- 

 tion of this great valley is essentially different 

 from that of the other two riverine systems. 

 The rich, low-lying lands, subject to annual 

 inundations, frequent rains all the year, and 

 the continual heat, produce a vast wealth 

 of dense tropical verdure, and a forest area 

 greater than can be found in any other part 

 of the globe, intersected by thousands of 

 miles of immense navigable streams, give 

 the region a unique character. Among the 

 valuable vegetable productions, the India- 

 rubber tree figures pre-eminently. It exists 

 in such vast numbers, and the collection 

 of the juice is so very lucrative, that it has 

 attracted to even the most remote rivers 

 thousands of adventurous Brazilians from 

 the adjoining provinces, and it is doing for 

 the Amazons what gold did for Australia 

 and California. 



The Microbe of Malaria. Dr. George 

 M. Sternberg has communicated to the Sci- 

 entific Association of Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity an account of the confirmation, by 

 his own observation, of Laveran's discovery 

 of the germ, or micro-organism, of malaria. 

 Laveran found this microbe in the shape of 

 an amoeboid parasite, in the blood of patients 

 suffering from fever ; and also observed that 

 the germs disappeared from the blood when 

 quinine was administered in effective doses. 

 His observations were confirmed by Richard, 

 in 1882, and by Marchiafara and Celli from 

 their researches in the Santo Spirito Hos- 

 pital of Rome. During a recent visit to 

 Rome, Dr. Sternberg accompanied these 

 gentlemen to the Santo Spirito Hospital, 

 where a most satisfactory demonstration 

 was made to him of the presence and amoe- 



boid movements of the parasite, in blood 

 drawn from the finger of a patient in the 

 first stage of a malarial paroxysm. Marchia- 

 fara and Celli have induced types of inter- 

 mittent fever, in previously healthy per- 

 sons, by injecting into the circulation a 

 small quantity of blood drawn from a mala- 

 rial patient during his fever. The presence 

 of the parasite in the injected blood was 

 demonstrated, and it was found again in the 

 blood of the persons subjected to the experi- 

 ment during the induced intermittent parox- 

 ysms. These paroxysms were arrested, and 

 the parasite disappeared from the blood 

 when quinine was administered. 



Systematic Observations of the Aurora 

 Borealis. No country is more favorably 

 situated for the systematic observation of 

 the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism 

 and the aurora borealis than Norway. Ex- 

 tending from the fifty-eighth to the seventy- 

 first degree of latitude, it reaches farther 

 north than any other inhabited land, and 

 lies nearer to the center of magnetic disturb- 

 ances than any other state of Europe. The 

 maximum zone of the northern lights hangs 

 over the northern and northwestern part of 

 the land. The northern and southern dis- 

 tricts are connected by numerous telegraph 

 lines and through the telephone exchanges 

 of Drontheim and Bergen. Sophus Trom- 

 holt began to organize a system of investi- 

 gations in 18*78, and from September of 

 that year to April, 1879, he recorded 839 

 observations of 154 northern lights. His 

 idea met with favor, and the method of 

 concerted observation has spread since that 

 time to Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, 

 England, Greenland, and Iceland. The ob- 

 servations of the winter of 1879-80 were 

 much more extensive than those of the pre- 

 vious winter, being 1,600 in number of 249 

 auroras at 357 stations. In the winter of 

 1880-81, 5,200 observations were made of 

 about 300 auroras, at 675 stations ; and in 

 the winter of 18S2-'83, 1,500 persons in 

 the North European countries participated 

 in the work. Notices are now regularly 

 transmitted from fifty Swedish and Nor- 

 wegian telegraphic stations of all electrical 

 disturbances, with exact minutes of time, 

 direction, etc. ; observations that are of the 

 more importance, because not a day passes 



