284 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ligent practice of industrial art improve 

 their social status. Little by little the heads 

 of business houses have drawn into their 

 locality a large number of families from the 

 rural districts, and in the mountains, at one 

 thousand metres altitude, and on the plains 

 where only the abundant pasturage affords a 

 means of livelihood for the native, towns 

 have risen rapidly for instance, Chaux de 

 Fonds, Locle, and Saint-Imier. Thus, the sys- 

 tem of collective industry, with work at the 

 domestic hearth, has formed several genera- 

 tions of watch-makers. But, for thirty years, 

 competition, and particularly American com- 

 petition, has necessitated the erection of 

 works with mechanical appliances. 



The Sources of Gntta Percha. Of the 



various kinds of gutta-percha, only those pro- 

 duced by trees of the old genus Iso?iandra, 

 now sunk in Dichopsis, are available for use 

 as insulators of cables. Their natural habi- 

 tat is exclusively in the Malayan region. The 

 destruction of this zone of forests proceeds 

 rapidly. The natives cut every available tree, 

 and repeat the process as fast as the plants 

 spring up again. The scanty plantations 

 started in the East Indies are, moreover, not 

 formed of the best species, but of those 

 which yield an inferior product. The best 

 species has, in fact, become excessively rare, 

 but is still in existence. Its adult represent- 

 atives were yet propagating themselves in 

 1887 at the Chasserian estate in the ravines 

 of the ancient forest of Boukett Tinah, in the 

 center of Singapore. When M. Serullas, of 

 Paris, found the spot in 1887, gutta-collect- 

 ing had ceased for thirty years. 



The Kanjntis. The Kanjutis, of Hunza, 

 the robber tribe of the Pamir table-land, in- 

 habit the deeply cut valley which runs from 

 the apex of central Asia, where the Hindu- 

 Kush and Himalaya systems meet, and the 

 water-shed between eastern and western Asia 

 joins that between northern and southern 

 Asia. Captain Tounghusband found them 

 to be small, well-built, hardy, determined, 

 though not fierce-looking men, wearing long 

 black curls, which gave them a very wild 

 appearance. Perhaps the most remarkable 

 feature about them is their capacity for en- 

 durance. " They issue from their strong- 

 holds on their raiding expeditions, and cover 



often two hundred miles of mountainous and 

 uninhabited country, entirely on foot, and 

 carry their own supplies for the whole dis- 

 tance on their backs ; and I have known 

 cases of men carrying news of my move- 

 ments to their chief in an incredibly short 

 time. Dressed in long cloaks of thick, home- 

 made woolen material, they sleep out in the 

 open in the most intense cold, and yet live 

 upon almost nothing. They are also very 

 avaricious, although they know and care little 

 for money ; but they covet goods greedily." 



A Stronghold of Birds. The Bird Rocks, 

 or Three Islands of Birds, near Newfound- 

 land, were so resorted to by gannets in Au- 

 dubon's time that their tops seemed covered 

 with snow. The birds were then much used 

 for bait, and Audubon's captain told him 

 that his boat's crew had once killed six hun- 

 dred and forty of them in an hour, with no 

 better weapons than sticks. Up to 1860 

 they covered the tops of the rocks and many 

 of the ledges on the sides. The erection of 

 a lighthouse on the Great Rock, in 1870, was 

 followed by a rapid decrease in numbers. 

 In 1881 Mr. Brewster found the birds on 

 the Great Rock confined to the ledges along 

 the sides, while the Little Rock was still 

 densely populated. In 1887 not a gannet 

 was raised on the Little Rock, although a 

 few were breeding on the pillar of rock 

 adjacent to it. The murres, razor-bills, and 

 puffins, Mr. Frederick A. Lucas believes, have 

 probably suffered somewhat less than their 

 more conspicuous comrades, although even 

 among them the decrease must have been 

 very great. Still, their smaller size, and con- 

 sequent ability to breed in crevices of the 

 rocks and on ledges too narrow to accommo- 

 date a bulky gannet, has been of great serv- 

 ice to them ; while the razor-bill also seems 

 to be learning by experience the desirability 

 of putting an egg out of sight whenever 

 practicable. The puffins find safety in their 

 burrowing habits, and breed extensively in 

 the decomposed sandstone at the northeast- 

 ern portion of the Great Rock, as well as un- 

 der the overhanging inaccessible ledges of the 

 northern side of the Little Rock. The little 

 rocky pillar already mentioned is well occu- 

 pied by birds of various species, and, owing 

 to the difficulty of scaling the rock, the little 

 colony is fairly secure. But, from its size, 



