FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



719 



nearly nineteen hundred acres in the Genesee 

 Valley. Its post office and railway station is 

 called Sonyea, an Indian word signifying 

 sunny place. The land is extremely fertile 

 and the district a very beautiful one. There 

 have already been erected some thirty or 

 forty buildings. The colony will be a coun- 

 try village, only differing from others in 

 being composed entirely of epileptics. The 

 butcher, the baker, the grocer, the shoe- 

 maker, the mason, all will be sufferers from 

 this curious disease. About thirty years 

 ago a somewhat similar attempt was made 

 in northern Germany ; it has now developed 

 into one of the most important labor colonies 

 in Europe. The origin and history of this 

 colony, which is called "Bethel," are given 

 in detail in a previous issue of the Monthly. 

 There are one hundred and twenty thousand 

 epileptics in the United States; these unfor- 

 tunates perfectly well able to work, and 

 many of them very competent are debarred 

 from almost evei-y occupation, because of 



their liability to "fits." They are not ad- 

 mitted to the public schools, and are hence 

 much handicapped in getting an education. 

 In fact, about the only places where they are 

 received are insane asylums and poorhouses. 

 There are over a thousand epileptics in alms- 

 houses in New York State. The first work 

 of the Craig Institution will be to remove 

 these from the care of the State; after they 

 are provided for, then outsiders will be ad- 

 mitted. There are no restrictions as to the 

 age of patients, but necessarily no insane epi- 

 leptics will be received. As the patients are 

 received they will be set to work or at study 

 in various ways. They will take care of the 

 farms, gardens, and orchards ; they will plan 

 and build new houses ; in fact, every sort of 

 employment, every sort of recreation, every- 

 thing, in short, that goes to make up the life 

 of a country village will be found in this 

 colony. The resources of the land are such, 

 it is thought, that by judicious management 

 the community can be made seK-sustaining. 



MINOR PAEAGRAPHS. 



Among the singular native customs pre- 

 vaihng in the western division of British 

 New Guinea, the official report mentions that 

 of the woman making the proposal of mar- 

 riage and sending for the man to visit her ; 

 while the sister-in-law of the bride is often 

 given in marriage in exchange, without re- 

 gard to her wishes. The skeletons of dead 

 relatives are sometimes kept in the villages ; 

 the skulls of enemies are preserved as tro- 

 phies ; and occasionally the body of an enemy 

 is cooked and partly eaten. 



Besides the considerable collections of 

 the minerals and fossils of the region in the 

 University Museum and the Deseret Museum, 

 the University of Utah enjoys the advan- 

 tage, in the Deseret Museum, which has 

 been placed in its building, of an extensive 

 series of specimens illustrating the persons 

 and habits of the cUff dwellers and other 

 aboriginal tribes of the region. Besides 

 numerous perfect and fragmentary speci- 

 mens of desiccated remains, this collec- 

 tion comprises many examples of weapons, 

 tools, and domestic workmanship of these 

 early people, which as a whole afford a valu- 

 able record of this phase of American ar- 



chajology. The specimens are arranged with 

 special reference to the requirements of 

 study and teaching. 



The conclusion results from an archaeo- 

 logical exploration of the James River and 

 Potomac River Valleys by Mr. Gerard Fowke 

 that the aboriginal remains between tide- 

 water and the Alleghanies, from Pennsyl- 

 vania to southwestern Virginia, pertain to 

 the tribes who lived or hunted within the 

 territory at the beginning of the seventeenth 

 century. Nothing indicating a more ancient 

 or another race was found ; while the occur- 

 rence of objects which could have been ob- 

 tained only from white traders fixes approxi- 

 mately the date of some burial places, and 

 resemblances in various points necessitate the 

 classification of others as not far removed 

 in time or origin from these. 



From a review of the results of a trans- 

 continental series of gravity measurements 

 by George R. Putnam, Mr. G. K. Gilbert con- 

 cludes that they appear more harmonious 

 when the method of reduction postulates isos- 

 tasy (or hydrostatic equilibrium) than when 

 it postulates high rigidity. Nearly all the 

 local peculiarities of gravity admit of simple 



