NOTES. 



863 



heart-beat, and increases the arterial tension. 

 In times of exertion and fasting it wards off 

 the sense of mental and physical depression 

 and exhaustion. The author has not gained 

 positive results respecting its therapeutic 

 qualities. Its action in purifying water is 

 mechanical, and not more effective than that 

 of other mucilaginous seeds. 



Raining Spiders' Wefts. Falls or show- 

 ers of gossamer spiders' webs have been re- 

 corded in different parts of the world. White 

 describes several in his "Natural History 

 of Selborne." Darwin mentions a shower 

 which he observed from the deck of the 

 Beagle off the mouth of the Rio Plata, when 

 the vessel was sixty miles from land. A 

 general fall of spiders' webs is said to have 

 been noticed a few years ago in some of the 

 towns of Wisconsin, which seemed to come 

 from over the lake. The webs were strong 

 in texture, very white, varied from sixty 

 feet in length to mere specks, and were seen 

 as far up in the air as the power of the eye 

 could reach. The shower may have been 

 due to an unusual excursion of the familiar 

 geometric spider, a species which has the 

 same power as the gossamer of shooting 

 webs that float upon the air, and sometimes 

 serve aa an air-raft for the producer. 



NOTES. 



Thk scientific courses at Indiana Univer- 

 sity, of which our contributor, David Starr 

 Jordan, is president, include departments of 

 physics, with classes in physics proper, phys- 

 ical measurements, and meteorology ; chem- 

 istry, with qualitative and quantitative anal- 

 ysis, special work, and water analysis ; geol- 

 ogy, with mineralogy, topographical geology, 

 and field-work; zoology, with many classes, 

 including theories of evolution, the critical 

 study of Darwin's " Origin of Species," and 

 original research; and botany, with six class- 

 es and advanced and original work in the 

 senior year on a special subject. Since it was 

 opened 3,816 students have been taught in 

 the college departments of the university. 



"Cocoanut day" is celebrated in most 

 parts of India during the full moon in Au- 

 gust. On that day numbers of nuts are 

 thrown into the sea as an offering to the 

 Hindoo god. Occasionally one meets with 

 deformed nuts, consisting of the husks with 

 small nuts having no kernel inside. The na- 

 tives attribute this blighting to the tree-frog, 

 which, by smelling the flower, can prevent 

 the fruit from coming to maturity. 



A curious survival of customs was illus- 

 trated in Lisbon some days after the funeral 

 of the late King Luis of Portugal. A funer- 

 al procession, composed of officers, military, 

 and citizens, marched through the streets to 

 places where platforms covered with black 

 cloth had been erected. Four shields, on 

 which were painted the royal arms, were 

 borne aloft on long staves. On arriving at 

 the platforms, the principal persons took 

 their places upon them ; one of the shield- 

 bearers, advancing to the front and chant- 

 ing, " Weep, Portuguese, for your king, 

 Dom Luis I, is dead," dashed his shield to 

 the ground with such violence that it was 

 shattered. This was repeated at each plat- 

 form, while the bells were tolled during the 

 whole ceremony. The proceedings were 

 closed with a requiem service. 



At the recent annual meeting of the Ra- 

 tional Dress Society, Viscountess Harberton, 

 the president, said that during the past year 

 she had hardly met with any expressions of 

 approval from women with regard to their 

 present system of dress. Most of the re- 

 marks she had heard had been denunciatory 

 of the weight, discomfort, or dragging, or 

 particularly from young women the cold 

 when evening dress was worn. This was 

 cheering, because it marked a growing real- 

 ization of the uncomfortableness of present 

 costumes. In the speaker's opinion, the only 

 hope of reform lay in a radical change to 

 some kind of dress having the clothing for 

 the legs dual ; it should clearly follow the 

 shape of the form it was meant to cover. 



According to Mr. R. Andree, our Indians 

 use rising smoke as a means of giving sig- 

 nals, and have a system of alternately smoth- 

 ering the column and letting it rise freely 

 for transmitting different messages. A sim- 

 ilar method is used in New Guinea and Aus- 

 tralia. The great variety of the messages 

 communicated by drums in the Cameroons 

 and other parts of Africa have been described 

 in the " Monthly." The Gallas, south of 

 Abyssinia, have drums stationed at certain 

 points of the roads leading to the neighbor- 

 ing states, at which watchmen are appointed 

 to sound the alarm in case of threatened in- 

 vasion. In New Guinea the natives learn 

 from the rapidity and rhythm of the blows 

 on drums what is happening whether an 

 attack, death, or a festival. 



The opinion is expressed by Mr. Elliot, 

 in his last Meteorological Report for India, 

 that the period of minimum sun-spots is as- 

 sociated in that country with the largest and 

 most abnormal variations of meteorological 

 conditions and actions. Thus the snow was 

 exceptionally heavy in the northwest Hima- 

 layas in the winters of 1866, 18*76, and 

 1 8*7*7. The most striking and disastrous 

 famines have also occurred near the mini- 

 mum sun-spots, as those of Orissa in 1866, 

 Behar in 1874, and Madras in 18*76-'V7. So, 



