NOTES. 



7^9 



actually becomes more abundant as popu- 

 lation increases in any district ; and, if ver- 

 satility in habits or adaptiveness can be 

 taken as a measure of intelligence, this poor 

 armadillo, a survival of the past, so old on 

 the earth as to have existed contemporane- 

 ously with the glyptodon, is the superior of 

 the large-brained cats and canines." 



Destruction of Qnail and the Plagne of 

 LotnstSt The great and fearful increase of 

 locusts in Algeria is ascribed by the French 

 journal I? Eleveur to wholesale destruction 

 of quail by sportsmen. It is estimated that 

 a quail consumes daily from fifty to sixty 

 grammes of food, and that twenty tiny lo- 

 custs of the size of a hemp-seed go to a 

 gramme. Hence one quail may destroy daily 

 1,000 locusts, or from 20,000 to 25,000 dur- 

 ing the period when the insects are small 

 enough to be swallowed by it. The Tunisian 

 sportsmen who on the 8th of May of last 

 year shipped off 50,000 quails to France are, 

 then, in a great measure to blame for 150,- 

 000,000 locusts less than usual having been 

 destroyed by those birds during the year. 



NOTES. 



The portrait of William Bartram, referred 

 to in the Popular Miscellany department last 

 month, is inserted as the frontispiece of this 

 number of the Monthly. A sketch of John 

 and William Bartram appeared in our num- 

 ber for April, 1892. 



A curious series of experiments on the 

 hereditary transmission of mutilations has 

 been made by Dr. C. G. Lockwood. By the 

 in-and-in breeding of white mice for ninety- 

 six generations he obtained a larger and finer 

 animal than the original pair. Da order to 

 breed their tails off, he selected a pair and 

 putting them in a cage by themselves and 

 clipping their tails he got a breed of tailless 

 mice in the seventh generation. Then, by 

 taking one with a tail and one without a tail, 

 and alternating the sexes in each generation, 

 he finally again got a breed of all-tail mice. 



It results from the researches of Mr. C. 

 M. Pleyte, of the Ethnological Museum at 

 Amsterdam, that the use of the sumpitan, or 

 blow-pipe, and of the bow, is separated by a 

 line corresponding with that which distin- 

 guishes between the western and the eastern 

 branches of the Malayo-Polynesian languages. 

 The sumpitan is found nowhere to the east 

 and the bow only sporadically to the west of 

 the boundary. It is ingeniously argued that 

 the blow-pipe was the primitive instrument, 



from the fact that it survives as a toy where 

 it has ceased to be a weapon. 



The debate on the fitness of aluminum 

 to be used in food- vessels is continued, with 

 the report of the experiments of M. Balland. 

 He discredits the representation that it is too 

 readily corroded by many food-substances, 

 and finds that air, water, wine, beer, cider, 

 coffee, milk, oil, butter, fat, etc., saliva, and 

 other substances have less action upon it than 

 on such metals as copper, lead, zinc, and tin. 

 Vinegar and sea-salt attack it, but not vio- 

 lently enough to make its use hazardous. 



The works of Prof. Wilhelm Weber, the 

 physicist, are to be published by the Royal 

 Society of Science at Gottingen. 



The optically inactive form of tartaric 

 acid, known as racemic acid, has been ob- 

 tained by M. Gensesse as an eventual prod- 

 uct of the action on glyoxalic acid an acid 

 found in gooseberries, grapes, and other 

 fruits with nascent hydrogen liberated from 

 a mixture of zinc-dust and acetic acid. 



A fund, called the De Laincel fund, has 

 been dedicated to the promotion of the study 

 of the graphic system of the ancient Mayas, 

 by collecting vocabularies and obtaining re- 

 productions of the mural inscriptions of Cen- 

 tral America and of their manuscripts. The 

 work will be carried on under the direction 

 of a committee of recognized qualifications ; 

 and the explorations will be directed by Dr. 

 Hilborne T. Cresson, of Philadelphia, an ex- 

 perienced ethnologist and a Maya student. 



A novel view of the puma, or panther, 

 as it is commonly called, is taken by Mr. W. 

 H. Hudson, in his Naturalist in La Plata, who 

 insists that it never attacks man except in 

 self-defense. In the Pampas, where it is 

 common, the gaucho confidently sleeps on the 

 ground, although he knows that pumas are 

 close by; and it is said that a child may 

 sleep on the plain unprotected in equal se- 

 curity. This is not on account of fear or 

 dislike of man, but of an apparent cat-like 

 fondness for being near him. The gauchos 

 call the animal "the friend of man." 



Interest in stilt - walking concerning 

 which we published an illustrated article sev- 

 eral months ago has been revived by a stilt- 

 walking match which was contested on the 

 27th of May last, under the auspices of the 

 journal La Gironde, of Bordeaux, France. 

 The course, from Bordeaux to Biarritz, 257 

 kilometres, was passed over by the victorious 

 contestant in 55"30 hours, or at an average 

 speed of 4'650 kilometres per hour. This is 

 not much if any better than could be done 

 by an ordinary walking-match pedestrian. 



Remains of a mammoth and other pre- 

 historic animals have been found in Endsleigh 

 Street, London, at a depth of twenty-two feet 

 below the surface. They include two tusks 

 nine or ten feet long, one of which is two 



