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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Rome at a very early period, while a similar 

 liquor still forms the chief beverage of all 

 African nations, being now, as formerly in 

 Egypt, fermented by means of plants. In 

 China and Japan rice was and is used to 

 make wine or beer instead of wheat or bar- 

 ley or American maize. The sour milk or 

 koumiss of the pastoral tribes of Central 

 Asia, and the mead of the ancient Scandi- 

 navians, both reappear among the Kaffirs 

 of South Africa. Palm-wine is used wher- 

 ever palms flourish, but wine of the juice 

 of the grape, although known in very ancient 

 times, seems to have been confined to the 

 civilized races of Western Asia and Egypt, 

 extending later to Greece and Rome. The 

 multitude of wines described by Pliny were, 

 however, in almost all cases flavored with 

 herbs or garden-plants for medicinal pur- 

 poses. The conclusions to be drawn from 

 the history of fermented beverages, as re- 

 corded by travelers, are, that the earliest 

 stimulants were simply leaves and roots 

 chosen by animal instinct, chewed, and 

 found by experience to produce exhilara- 

 tion and strength. The art of distillation, 

 though probably known early in the Chris- 

 tian era, is comparatively modern, and was 

 certainly unknown to savage races until 

 " fire-water " was introduced, to their serious 

 detriment, by Europeans. 



In a paper on the " Shifting of the Earth's 

 Axis," Mr. A. W. Waters pointed out how 

 the unequal distribution of land and sea 

 might be an agent for preventing the move- 

 ments of elevation and depression of the 

 land in one part of the globe balancing 

 those in another, and also showed how simi- 

 lar movements in various localities would 

 differently affect the pole. Any movement, 

 such as submarine elevation, which dis- 

 places water, would spread it over the 

 oceanic area ; and the effect of this would, 

 with the present configuration, be the same 

 as if about one-twelfth of the weight had 

 been added in the northern hemisphere along 

 east longitude 45 44', namely, in a line pass- 

 ing by the entrance of the White Sea, over 

 the Caucasus, and through the middle of 

 Madagascar. As every submarine move- 

 ment would create a force acting in this 

 direction, there seems reasonable ground 

 for thinking that the tendency would be for 



the shifting of the axis to take place near 

 this line. 



Simultaneous Contrast of Colors. An 



incident in the life of Henry IV. of France 

 finds its explanation in an experiment made 

 by Chevreul. While yet Prince of Navarre, 

 Henry IV. was playing dice with two cour- 

 tiers a few days before the massacre of St.- 

 Bartholomew's-day. They saw, or thought 

 they saw, on the dice spots of blood ; and 

 the party broke up in alarm. The phenom- 

 enon is explained by Chevreul by the law 

 of simultaneous contrast of colors, and he 

 illustrates this by experiment as follows : 

 Seat yourself in a room so as to receive on 

 the right side the sun's rays at an angle of 

 20 to 25, the left eye being closed. On a 

 table covered with gray paper and under 

 diffuse light place two hen's-feathers, one 

 black and the other white, distant 0.6 

 to 0.8 metre from the eye. After about 

 two minutes, with the right eye in the sun's 

 beams, the dark feather appears red and 

 the white one emerald-green. After a few 

 seconds the black feather of red color 

 seems edged with green and the white 

 feather seems of a rosy color. Now close 

 the right eye and open the left. The black 

 feather will be black and the white one 

 white. The effect is evidently due to inso- 

 lation : the black feather appears red be- 

 cause it reflects much less light than the 

 white feather. From the law of simultane- 

 ous contrast of colors, the insolated eye 

 seeing the green by white light, the black 

 feather must appear of the complementary 

 color of green, which is red. 



Constitution of the Nebulae. Mr. E. J. 



Stone, in a paper read before the Royal So- 

 ciety, London, attempts to reconcile Hug- 

 gins's discovery of bright lines in the spectra 

 of nebula; with the old view that nebulae are 

 irresolvable stellar clusters. The sun, he 

 remarks, is known to be surrounded by a 

 gaseous envelope of very considerable ex- 

 tent. Similar envelopes must surround the 

 stars generally. Each star, if isolated, 

 would be surrounded with its own gaseous 

 envelope. These gaseous envelopes might, 

 in the case of a cluster, form over the 

 whole, or a part, of the cluster a continuous 

 mass of gas. So long as such a cluster was 



