5 i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a rooting, as the soil is covered to a depth of ten to twenty inches 

 with loose, decaying leaves. Beyond all doubt, the cinchonas might 

 be successfully cultivated in their native country, especially in the ex- 

 hausted forests ; but the natives show no enterprise, and foreigners 

 receive no encouragement from the governments to attempt it. Two 

 Germans have recently made a venture at cultivating cinchonas near 

 the city of La Paz, Bolivia, but as yet the plants are not sufficiently 

 developed to determine the results. 



The almost continuous revolutions and wars in those South Ameri- 

 can countries so unsettle everything as to render investments hazard- 

 ous ; the roads and ports are sometimes blockaded for months, pre- 

 venting the importation of goods or shipment of barks, often entailing 

 heavy losses upon the dealers. 



In case of war or revolution, every Indian peon is subject to mili- 

 tary duty, and, if required, is forced to enter the army ; sometimes it 

 is impossible to obtain sufficient cascarilleros to make it pay to enter 

 the forests ; hence it is that political troubles in those countries so 

 greatly influence the price of bark and quinine. 



The efforts of the Dutch and British Governments in taking ener- 

 getic and extensive measures, by establishing vast plantations of cin- 

 chona-trees in their eastern colonies, to insure against the possibility 

 of the world's bark-supply becoming exhausted, are therefore of para- 

 mount importance ; and it is a matter of general concern and gratifi- 

 cation that their experiments are proving from year to year more suc- 

 cessful, yielding an excellent, ever-increasing supply of bark, mostly 

 rich in valuable cinchona alkaloids. 



TYPES OF THE NUBIAN PACE. 



PROFESSOR A. KIRCHHOFF has published, in the "Trans- 

 actions of the Geographical Society of Halle," an interesting 

 description of a party of Nubians who came to that city with the 

 caravan of Messrs. Rice and Hagenbeck. The traveler Marno, in his 

 "Journey into the Egyptian Equatorial Provinces and in Kordofan," 

 gives a flattering account of the handsome forms and features of the 

 youth of the nomadic people of those provinces, with the faces of the 

 boys so fine and soft that one might be made to doubt whether they 

 may not be girls. These handsome traits disappear as the youth 

 grow older, and give way to repulsive ones, especially among the wo- 

 men. One of the most striking peculiarities among the men of the 

 Bishareen and Hadendoah is their manner of wearing the hair. After 

 being worked up into a great tuft on top of the head, it is smeared as 

 thickly as possible with tallow, which, melting under the warmth of 



