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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



water, exercise an influence in producing a 

 certain type; for example, the nut-brown 

 skin of natives of Lower Egypt. This is so, 

 but the direction in which the influence 

 works is frequently misunderstood. The 

 result is more probably brought about by 

 natural selection than by the modification in 

 a given direction of the individual units of 

 successive generations. Thus the negroes, 

 though coming in numerously and inter- 

 marrying with the Egyptians, gain no 

 ground, because the climate of the Delta is 

 unfavorable to them, and they die of pul- 

 monary disease within a few generations. 

 Again, Europeans and strangers to the 

 country generally suffer and die from ty- 

 phoid fever in vastly greater proportions 

 than the natives." 



Magnifying Glasses in Antiqnity. Proba- 

 bly the earliest mention of magnifying glasses 

 is quoted by Mr. Henry G. Hanks, in the Pa- 

 pers of the Astronomical Society of the Pa- 

 cific, from the Vanity of Arts and Sciences of 

 Henry Cornelius Agrippa, of the early part 

 of the sixteenth century, where it is said : 

 " So we read, as Ccelius in his ancient writ- 

 ings relates, that one Hostius, a person of an 

 obscene life, made a sort of glasses that made 

 the object seem far greater than it was ; so 

 that one finger should seem to exceed the 

 whole arm, both in bigness and thickness." 

 There is difficulty in fixing the date of Coelius, 

 but he probably lived before Livy ; and Hos- 

 tius was a still more ancient personage. 



Funeral Customs in New Guinea. The 



death of a chief recently gave the Rev. S. B. 

 Fellows, one of the Wesleyan missionaries in 

 New Guinea, an opportunity of observing the 

 native funeral ceremonies, which are some- 

 what similar to those of the Maories. From 

 the time of death until burial, the corpse 

 lies on the floor of the house, with no other 

 covering than it had in life. In the present 

 case a man, a near relative, was seen lying 

 across the corpse, which he hugged and 

 stroked, with loud crying and bitter sobbing. 

 The women kept up an unceasing wailing and 

 crying, signs of a grief which seemed genu- 

 ine enough. The virtues of this chief were 

 chanted as the mourners repeated again and 

 again the names of the islands he had 

 visited in his canoe, the amount of food he 



had brought home, the fish and pigs he had 

 caught, etc. Large fires were kept burning 

 underneath and round the house during the 

 night to scare away the " debil debil." On 

 the morning of the second day after death, 

 the body, wrapped in rough mats, was buried 

 soon after sunrise, without any rites ; and on 

 that day a feast was made for the friends 

 and mourners. An old cocoanut palm, of 

 great value, is cut down, and the leaves are 

 used for the roof of the small house that is 

 built over the grave. At the funeral of a 

 woman a yam was placed on each side of 

 the head, and a native cooking -pot with the 

 bottom knocked out was put on the head 

 cap-fashion. A dish of cooked food is 

 passed up and down the corpse before it is 

 covered ; and an annual offering is made at 

 the grave. The soul of the dead person, 

 called barnaqum, is supposed to linger near 

 the body until it is buried ; then it quietly 

 takes its departure, by way of the mountains 

 of Misima, for a place deep down in the 

 earth, called tuma. Souls are permitted to 

 revisit the earth, when their presence is 

 made known by a peculiar low whistle. 

 After remaining in tuma for a long time, 

 they undergo a change similar to the death 

 of the body, and are then transmigrated to 

 the bodies of infants yet unborn. 



Development of Exotic Gardening. 



Charlemagne is called, according to the Gar- 

 tenlaube, the first aesthetic gardener in west- 

 ern Europe ; for he it was who took pains 

 to transplant into German gardens the use- 

 ful and ornamental plants that grew wild in 

 the woods and the fields, and to introduce 

 those which flourished beyond the Alps. As 

 men increased in good living and their 

 tastes became refined, they were not satisfied 

 with useful plants alone, and the gardens of 

 the more wealthy were adorned with the 

 choicest ornamental and fancied plants of 

 the East. The proverb, " Gardens are visit- 

 ing-cards ; what they are shows what their 

 owner is," is illustrated in the history of the 

 development of the German garden, which 

 is really a chapter in the history of civiliza- 

 tion. With great extension of trade in the 

 beginning of the sixteenth century, rich ac- 

 quisitions were made to gardens from all 

 foreign countries a process of growth 

 which has not yet ceased, but seems to be 



