66z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the other extreme, we have the Feejeeans, Abyssinians, ancient Mex- 

 icans. 



Derived from trophy-taking, and developing with the development 

 of the militant type, it is to be anticipated that mutilations decrease 

 as fast as the societies consolidated by militancy become less militant, 

 and disappear as the industrial type of structure evolves. That they 

 do so European history at large may be assigned in proof. And it is 

 significant that in our own society, now predominantly industrial, 

 such slight mutilations as continue are connected with that regulative 

 part of the organization which militancy has bequeathed : there sur- 

 vive only the now-meaningless tattooings of sailors, the branding of 

 deserters, and the cropping of the heads of felons. 



-- 



THE EUCALYPTUS IN THE FUTUEE. 



By Professor SAMUEL LOCKWOOD. 



A LITERARY venture of our boyhood comes upon us like the 

 aroma of tropical fruit eaten for the first time. . An uncle had 

 given his eight-year-old favorite a silver sixpence. Never before had 

 the youngling possessed so much money in his own right. Soon the 

 young capitalist found himself confronting the shop-window of the 

 nearest stationer, where his eyes became riveted to a little book 

 " Life and Voyages of La Perouse," price sixpence. The book was 

 eagerly bought, and it proved an exciting morceau. This same Jean 

 Francois de Galaup, Count de la Perouse, when about thirty-seven 

 years old, served in the American Revolution. In 1782 he led a small 

 fleet into Hudson Bay, and destroyed the English trading-post. But 

 Louis XVI. found that, while he had been helping to wrest the 

 colonies from Great Britain, she was adding to herself new glory, 

 and vast territories, by the discoveries of her great navigator, Cap- 

 tain Cook. So the French monarch dispatched La Perouse, with two 

 ships, on a mission of exploration in the Pacific. Neither the bold 

 navigator nor any of his men saw home again. The last known of 

 the expedition was from a letter written by La Perouse at Botany 

 Bay, February 7, 1788. Three years after, a French squadron was 

 sent to search for the great voyageur, but in vain. With this expedi- 

 tion went as naturalist the famous botanist La Billardiere. In Tas- 

 mania he found the most extraordinary arboreal flora he had ever 

 seen. Especially wonderful for number and size was one tree, to 

 which he gave the generic name Eucalyptus, meaning " well-covered," 

 alluding to the singular form of the flower-bud, which has on it an 

 operculum or cover not unlike the lid of a tiny sugar-bowl (see the 

 object between the flower and the fruit at foot of Fig. 3). Thus the 



