P OP ULAR MIS CELL ANY 



123 



black eyes were the rule, the face had 

 gained in length, and the bodily habit, 

 while nothing was lost in point of stature, 

 was more slender and graceful. As the 

 chastity of the women is not to be disputed, 

 and as the colonists intermarry only among 

 themselves Khanikoff found only one case 

 of a Wiirtemberger marrying a Georgian 

 woman the change in the race-characters 

 can be attributed only to the influence of 

 environment. 



Extirpation of Injurious Insects. A 



special meeting of the London Society of 

 Arts was held a few weeks ago, to discuss 

 measures for the extirpation of injurious 

 insects. The paper for the occasion was 

 by Andrew Murray, F. L. S., who advocated 

 government interference as being indispen- 

 sably necessary in the war against insect 

 pests. He spoke of three principal modes 

 of counteracting the ravages of insects, the 

 first being county or district rotation of 

 cropping. Most vegetable-feeding insects 

 subsist on one kind of plant, as wheat, rye, 

 potatoes, etc., and, if we take away their 

 special pabulum, the race dies out. This 

 we do by rotation of crops. The next 

 means of extirpation recommended by Mr. 

 Murray was burning the nidus in which 

 the insect, in whatever stage, passes the 

 winter ; or using some substance, as Paris- 

 green, hellebore, etc. There remains the 

 last refuge of all invaded countries, namely, 

 destroying the resources of the country be- 

 fore the invaders, so that they may perish 

 for the want of food. This, Mr. Murray 

 said, can rarely be necessary, but it would 

 be, he thought, the proper course to follow, 

 should the Colorado beetle gain a footing 

 in England. The larvas of the beetle would 

 probably first appear in some potato-field 

 near Cork, or Londonderry, Liverpool, or 

 Glasgow ; the instant this is perceived, the 

 vines of the potatoes should be cut to the 

 ground, and Paris-green scattered over the 

 field. 



Recent Observations of Stomach-Diges- 

 tion. A man in Paris, having an imperme- 

 able stricture of the gullet, was saved, by 

 the operation of gastrotomy, from death by 

 starvation. The patient's gullet i3 so com- 

 pletely blocked that when a small quantity 



of potassium ferrocyanide in solution is 

 swallowed, no trace of the salt can be de- 

 tected in the stomach; hence the gastric 

 juice is absolutely free from any admixture 

 of saliva. The food is reduced to a pulp 

 and injected by a syringe into the artificial 

 opening in the abdominal wall ; it remains 

 in the stomach for three or four hours ; when 

 milk is introduced, it disappears in from one 

 and a half to two hours. The chyme does not 

 pass gradually, as is commonly supposed, into 

 the small intestine : during the first three 

 hours after its introduction into the stomach 

 its volume does not appear to diminish ; then 

 within about fifteen minutes, the entire mass 

 is driven through the pyloric orifice. At 

 the end of four hours the stomach is near- 

 ly always empty, but hunger does not begin 

 to be felt till two hours later. The mean 

 acidity of the gastric juice, whether pure 

 or mixed with food, is equivalent to about 

 1.7 grain of hydrochloric acid per 1,000, 

 never falling below 0.5, or rising above 3.2 

 grammes. The quantity of liquid present 

 does not seem to exert any influence on the 

 degree of its acidity, which is augmented 

 by wine and alcohol, and lessened by cane- 

 sugar. The gastric juice is more acid while 

 digestion is going on than during the inter- 

 vals of the process ; its acidity seems always 

 to be increased as digestion is drawing to a 

 close. 



Contents of a Utah Mound. In the vi- 

 cinity of Payson, Utah Territory, are six 

 mounds, covering a total area of about 

 twenty acres of ground. One of these 

 mounds was opened last year, and the dis- 

 coveries then made are recorded in a letter 

 published in the Eureka (Nevada) Sentinel. 

 First a skeleton of a man was found, which 

 measured six feet six inches in length. 

 In the right hand was a huge iron weapon, 

 but this crumbled to pieces in handling. 

 There was also found a stone pipe, the stem 

 of which was inserted between the teeth of 

 the. skeleton. Near by was found another 

 skeleton, not quite so large, supposed to be 

 that of a woman. " Close by," writes the 

 correspondent of the Sentinel, ''the floor 

 was covered with a hard cement, to all ap- 

 pearances a part of the solid rock, which, 

 after patient labor and exhaustive work, we 

 succeeded in penetrating, and found it was 



