57 6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



certain manufactures in which the alloy was 

 employed. A Latin manuscript of the age 

 of Charlemagne, found in the library of the 

 chapter of the Canons of Luynes, gives a re- 

 ceipt for the " composition of Brindisi" 

 copper, two parts ; lead, one part ; tin, one 

 part. 



Among the interesting objects exhibited 

 at a recent soiree of the Royal Society was 

 a proof-sheet of the Archaeological Survey of 

 Egypt, by Mr. Percy E. Newberry, showing 

 all the successive stages of a wrestling-match 

 between a black and a white man, with more 

 than a hundred different positions recorded. 

 The white man seems in many of the pict- 

 ures to be getting the worst of it. 



A foolish report that the Department of 

 Agriculture contemplated introducing the 

 mongoose to contend with the rodents of the 

 Western plains, so troublesome to farmers 

 with the ultimate result, of course, of taking 

 their place as a nuisance has been denied 

 by the department. 



A new preparation of the potato has 

 been introduced by M. Moulin, the inventor 

 of the potato bread, and is intended chiefly 

 for feeding to cattle. The cleaned potatoes 

 are scraped or crushed ; the pulp is pressed 

 for the extraction of free water; is finely 

 divided ; and is dried with a moderate heat 

 sufficient to give it a pleasant taste without 

 converting the starch into dextrin. The 

 product is called torrefied pulp. It may also 

 be used for human food by making a puree 

 of it, or by making bread of a mixture of it 

 with flour or meal. 



At the last meeting of the American 

 Philosophical Society in Philadelphia reso- 

 lutions wei'e adopted for the celebration in a 

 worthy and becoming manner of the sesqui- 

 centennial anniversary of the society ; and a 

 committee of five members was appointed to 

 make all necessary arrangements for the 

 same. The society celebrated the centennial 

 anniversary of its foundation in 1843, with a 

 series of addresses, meetings, etc., continu- 

 ing from the 25th to the 30th of May. 



The last giraffe in the London Zoological 

 Gardens has recently died, and the institu- 

 tion is, for the first time since 1836, without 

 a living specimen of this animal. It has had 

 in all thirty specimens, of which seventeen 

 were born on the place. The giraffe market 

 is very poorly supplied, and there is but one 

 specimen now for sale in Europe. The 

 giraffe is practically extinct in South Africa, 

 and can not be found within a thousand miles 

 of Cape Town. There are still giraffes in 

 East Africa, but there are no means of catch- 

 ing them. 



The aborigines of the Andaman Islands, 

 a curious and even unique people, are said to 

 be fast disappearing. All of them on two 

 of the islands are dead, and only a few are 



left on a third. Only a small number of 

 children are born, and they die in infancy. 



The Yahgan, one of the three tribes in- 

 habiting Tierra del Fuego, according to Dr. 

 Hyades, live chiefly on fish and mollusks. 

 They also eat any kind of bird they can 

 catch, and are fond of the flesh of the whale, 

 the seal, and the otter. When pressed with 

 hunger they will eat the fox, but never dogs 

 or rats. Fishing is left to the women, while 

 the men hunt. The people have splendid 

 powers of digestion, and assimilate their food 

 so rapidly that they sometimes become fat 

 in the course of a single day. Their huts 

 are made of branches or of the trunks of 

 trees, the interstices being imperfectly filled 

 up with moss or bark, with fragments of 

 canoes, or with seal-skins. In the center is 

 a fire, around which the inmates sleep at 

 night, and at other times, when they have 

 nothing else to do, sit talking and laughing. 

 The Yahgan lose early the attributes of 

 youth, but often retain their vigor to a great 

 age. They are very courageous, and enjoy 

 games that test their physical strength. 



With the exception of certain Eskimo 

 throw-sticks, Mr. Otis T. Mason remarks in 

 Science that all the weapons of the North- 

 western American Indians examined by him 

 are ambidextrous ; and he questions whether 

 outside of the Eskimo area any American 

 aborigines had apparatus that would not fit 

 either hand. 



Among the particular schemes connected 

 with the celebration of the Columbian quadri- 

 centennial is that for a great food exhibition 

 to be held in New York in October, 1892, 

 under the auspices of the Food Manufact- 

 urers' Association. It will include displays 

 of manufactured foods and of products di- 

 rect from the dairy, orchard, and sea, and 

 a special department of dairy products, with 

 daily afternoon and evening concerts. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



The death is reported of August Wilhelm 

 Hoffmann, the eminent German chemist, 

 Professor in the University of Berlin, and 

 author of many discoveries that have contrib- 

 uted to the advancement of the science. A 

 sketch and portrait of him were published in 

 The Popular Science Monthly for April, 1884. 



Henbi Duvetkier, a famous explorer and 

 formerly President of the French Geographi- 

 cal Society, died about the beginning of May. 

 He was born in 1840, and began, when 

 twenty years old, a series of journeys in Al- 

 geria which made him famous. They in- 

 cluded a reconnaissance to El Golea, where 

 no European had ever set foot; southern 

 Constantine and the Tunisian Soudan; the 

 country of the Tuaregs ; and the Chots of 

 southern Tunis. 



