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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



distinguish their own cocoons from another 

 spider's, or from a pith ball of the same 

 size ; and one of them even accepted a lead 

 shot over which the covering of a cocoon had 

 been stretched. In the sense of sight, they 

 had great difficulty in finding their cocoons, 

 even when removed from them only three 

 quarters of an inch, and performed long and 

 tortuous routes before they reached them ; 

 but in other matters they showed that they 

 could see well enough. The trouble about 

 the cocoons arose from the fact that the 

 spiders never see them when carrying them, 

 and therefore did not know them by sight, 

 but depended on touch to identify them. 

 The color sense appeared to be fairly well 

 developed, with a very decided preference 

 for red. The authors do not believe that 

 spiders feign death. Epeirids drop and lie 

 still for a time, but that is because, if they 

 run about, they have difficulty in finding the 

 thread that leads back to their web. Other 

 spiders keep still, if at all, only for a few 

 moments, but not long enough to give an ap- 

 pearance of death. Darwin's explanation is, 

 therefore, correct, that the habit of lying 

 motionless is the result of natural selection, 

 and has been acquired by different species 

 in different degrees, according to its useful- 

 ness in their various modes of life. 



A Patriarchal Estate. A patriarchal 

 system of management is on trial on the es- 

 tate of five thousand acres of Baron Raimondo 

 Franchetti at Canedole, Mantua, Italy. Ma- 

 chinery and manures are liberally employed. 

 Nobody pays any rent. The parish priest, 

 schoolmaster, and doctor are employed and 

 maintained by the proprietor. Sixty children 

 are fed and looked after during the day in 

 the Kindergarten, to and from which they 

 are conveyed in an omnibus. The buildings 

 are grouped, at the Corte de Canedole, around 

 a square of fifteen thousand square yards 

 area, with the master's house facing the en- 

 trance, and the steward's and other farm offi- 

 cers' dwellings, and the workshops, stables, 

 barns, etc., near at hand. The whole is sur- 

 rounded by deep canals flushed with running 

 water, and flanked by avenues of plane-trees. 

 Watchmen go their rounds at night. Work- 

 hours arc regulated by the sound of the bell ; 

 strict discipline is enforced ; the upper hands 

 Bet the example of steady and serious work, 



and grand balls are occasionally given by 

 the baroness in the court-yard to all the peas- 

 ants. It is not known how profitable the 

 experiment has been, but it has not been a 

 failure. 



The Daman Factor in SInms. Mr. Fred- 

 erick Greenwood, in a discussion in the 

 "Nineteenth Century" of the problem of 

 " Misery in Great Cities," maintains that the 

 slums and squalid dens that abound in parts 

 of London and other enormous cities 

 " correspond far more than most kind souls 

 are willing to perceive to the measure of de- 

 pravity and weakness of the human mind ; 

 and at the same time to the proportion of in- 

 capables in a state of society which does not 

 allow its incapables to perish." Every vil- 

 lage and town has its bad spots and its cen- 

 ters of degraded population, corresponding 

 in extent with its size ; and it is only the 

 vast extent of the mischief in London, com- 

 mensurate with the dimensions of the city, 

 and the appalling magnitude of the prob- 

 lems which it suggests, that excite so much 

 commiseration and alarm. Hence it may be 

 concluded that any local and spasmodic ef- 

 forts to ameliorate the evils that exist are 

 destined to only a very limited success, and 

 that permanent advantage is likely to accrue 

 only from measures that tend to raise the 

 general social condition. 



Inheritance of Acquired Habit. In il- 

 lustration of the hereditary transmission of 

 characteristics acquired by habit, Prof. M. 

 M. Hartog relates in " Nature " the case of 

 a person who is unequally myopic in his 

 eyes, and very astigmatic in the left one. 

 On account of the bad images given by this 

 eye for near objects, he was compelled in 

 childhood to mask it, and acquired the habit 

 when writing of leaning his head on the left 

 arm, so as to blind it, or of resting the left 

 temple and eye on the hand, with the elbow 

 on the table. After putting on spectacles, 

 when fifteen years old, he lost the habit of 

 leaning. His two children, while they have 

 not inherited the congenital defect, being 

 emmetropic in both eyes, have received his 

 acquired habit, and have to be watched to 

 keep them from hiding the left eye when 

 writing. A somewhat similar case of inher- 

 itance of acquired habit is related by J. 



