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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



made of stone, bone, and shell. Specimens 

 of polished stone and pottery testify to a 

 reasonably-developed skill ; but in the Tren- 

 ton gravels and a few other localities, genu- 

 ine palaeolithic remains have been found, 

 putting man in America at a date coeval with 

 the close of the Glacial epoch, if not earlier. 

 Vast antiquity is further proved by the ex- 

 tensive dissemination of maize and tobacco, 

 and by the existence of about two hundred 

 radically different languages, both of which 

 must have required long periods of time in 

 development. The American race is dis- 

 tinctively a race by itself, and appears so 

 in the oldest crania from the Quaternary. 



The Food of American Workmen. In 



his American Association paper on "Food 

 of Workingmen and its Relations to Work 

 Done," Professor L. 0. Atwater said that 

 statistics of the dietaries of considerable 

 numbers of Americans, mostly of the work- 

 ing-classes, show that their food is ample in 

 amount, and includes large proportions of 

 meat. Chemical examinations of the dieta- 

 ries showed them to be richer in actual nu- 

 tritive material and potential energy than 

 even the large quantities would imply. This 

 is because they contain so great proportions 

 of meat and other nitrogenous and fatty sub- 

 stances. Comparing the standard of diet 

 prevailing among the workingmen of Mas- 

 sachusetts with that of Germany, it is shown 

 that laborers in Massachusetts average just 

 about one half more than the German stand- 

 ard requires. It thus appears that the food 

 of the American laboring-man is much more 

 nutritious on the average than that of his 

 European competitors. It is also shown 

 that he turns off much more work than the 

 European workingman. He is better paid, 

 better housed, better clothed, and better fed 

 than the European. He has better oppor- 

 tunities for self-development, more to stim- 

 ulate his ambition, and more hope of reward 

 if his work is efficient. These factors are all 

 connected, but the explanation of his supe- 

 rior capacity for work is to be found largely 

 in his superior nourishment. 



Optimistic and Pessimistic Diseases. 



Dr. Charles Porter Hart read a paper in the 

 American Association " On the Correction 

 of Certain Mental and Bodily Conditions in 

 Man," the burden of which was to indicate 



that diseases located above the diaphragm 

 are optimistic in their tendencies, while 

 those below the diaphragm are pessimistic. 

 His attention was first called to the subject 

 by a patient who, suffering from an abdom- 

 inal disease which seemed to produce a men- 

 tal aberration, possessed most decidedly pes- 

 simistic views. Upon every subject that 

 could be suggested social, governmental, 

 or religious his views were of a markedly 

 gloomy character. According to the table 

 of disease-tendencies which the author has 

 constructed, chest-diseases give buoyancy to 

 the system, abdominal diseases are depress- 

 ing, and diseases of a constitutional and 

 chronic character, like rheumatism, malaria, 

 and dropsy, are equally pessimistic and opti- 

 mistic. 



The Physical Aspect of Economics. Mr. 



P. Geddes, in a British Association paper 

 on "The Physical Aspect of Economics," 

 said that the present isolation of economic 

 from physical and biological studies, in spite 

 of the clear dependence of the social sciences 

 on the preliminary one, was to be accounted 

 for, not on rational but simply on tempora- 

 ry grounds that of the pressure of detailed 

 labor upon every specialist. Yet, the sci- 

 ences were needed on every hand. The 

 population question was a strictly biological 

 one. So, too, was that of competition, and 

 even of individualism versus socialism, which 

 largely came down to a dispute between the 

 advocates of natural and artificial selection 

 respectively. The popular idea of progress, 

 as lying essentially in the quantity of wealth 

 and in the number of population, needed 

 thorough replacement of the scientific one 

 that of the improved average individual 

 quality of the organisms composing the so- 

 ciety, and of the material surroundings upon 

 which their evolution depended. 



The Falls of the Orange River. Mr. G. 



A. Farini, who has recently made a journey 

 across the Kalahari Desert in South Africa, 

 succeeded in seeing and photographing the 

 falls of the Orange River, which he was 

 told could not be done. " We had," he 

 says, "to swim rapids, climb rocks, and de- 

 scend precipices by ropes in order to take 

 the views. The river is broken up into 

 many streams by huge rocks and bowlders, 

 some of them rejoining to form the main 



