POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



13? 



exists off Florida, gradually narrowing as it 

 goes north. Off the Carolinas it is forty or 

 fifty miles wide. Near Savannah soundings 

 were made at 1,840 fathoms. The 500 and 

 1,000 fathom lines are very close to the 

 100 fathom line north of CapeHatteras and 

 up to the Georges Bank off Massachusetts. 

 Directly beneath the Gulf Stream is a hard 

 coral limestone, with no loose material. 

 The globigerina begins to appear at Charles- 

 ton going north, and increases in amount. 

 The cold water from the Arctic region flows 

 inside the Gulf Stream off the American 

 coast, and beneath it, falling down a depth 

 of a thousand fathoms. The Bahama sec- 

 tion showed a temperature of 44 at 459 

 fathoms, and washes in through the Wind- 

 ward Islands, south of Cuba, rather than 

 through the Florida Channel. Outside the 

 ridge, between Cuba and Hayti, the temper- 

 ature descended to 36, but the coldest 

 found in the Gulf of Mexico was 39J down 

 to 3,400 fathoms. There is no Gulf Stream 

 in the Gulf of Mexico. 



Indian Marriage Laws. A paper on 

 this subject, read by the Rev. J. Owen Dor- 

 sey before the American Association, notices 

 some remarkable customs in relation to 

 marriage and kinship as prevailing among 

 the Dhegitha Indians, particularly the Oma- 

 has and Poncas. 



When a tribe is hunting it camps, by 

 gentes or nations, in a circle, each gens bear- 

 ing the name of some animal. All the 

 members of one gens are relatives, and mar- 

 riage between members of one gens is abso- 

 lutely forbidden. Membership in a gens is 

 by descent in the male line, not in the 

 female. The relations of a man are de- 

 noted by colors ; for example black, grand- 

 father or grandmother; blue, father or 

 mother. His connections are denoted by 

 mixed colors, such as a pink head and skirt, 

 with light-blue triangle on the body, for 

 sister-in-law. A man can marry his brother's 

 widow, and her children call him father 

 even before their father's death. His sis- 

 ter's children are only nephews and nieces. 

 His mother's sister is always called mother 

 for the same reason, and even his paternal 

 grandfather's brother's son is his father. 

 These, and many other distinctions, show 

 that the terms of relationship are far more 



numerous and complicated with the Omahas 

 than with us. A man may marry any woman 

 belonging to another gens, whether con- 

 nected with him or not ; though marriage 

 into his mother's gens is also forbidden. 

 A man can not marry any woman to whom 

 he is related by the ceremony of the calu- 

 met-dance. Sometimes a man may take the 

 children of his deceased brother without 

 their mother herself. Sometimes the dying 

 husband, knowing that his male kindred 

 are bad, tells his wife to marry out of his 

 gens. If a widower remains single for two, 

 three, or four years, he must remain so for 

 ever. Widows, however, must wait four 

 years before remarrying. The same system 

 prevails among the Iowas, Otos, and Mis- 

 souris. 



Hygiene in House-Walls. Mr. T. R. 



Baker, in a paper read before the American 

 Association, "On the Permeability of the 

 Linimrs of House-Walls to Air," assumed 

 that ordinary wall-paper made the walls of 

 dwellings nearly air-tight. Hygienically con- 

 sidered, the walls of a house should be por- 

 ous, like our clothing, so that our bodies can 

 have through them, as also through our 

 clothing, free intercourse with the external 

 air. Compact wall linings, even if their min- 

 ute pores are open, greatly interfere with this 

 intercourse; but if their pores are closed 

 with water, as when the walls are damp, it is 

 almost completely cut off ; and such linings 

 increase the dampness of walls by prevent- 

 ing their drying in wet weather. The pro- 

 longed dampness also prolongs other evils 

 produced by damp walls; therefore wall- 

 papers and their substitutes should be con- 

 demned, and the old-fashioned whitewashed 

 walls commended. 



Succession of North American Flora. 



Professor J. S. Newberry, describing the 

 evolution of the North American flora, at 

 the meeting of the American Association, 

 said that the first flora was that indicated 

 by the plumbago of the Laurentian forma- 

 tion. The kind of vegetation can not be 

 determined. The second is in the Silurian. 

 The evidence of actual vegetable origin is, 

 however, defective ; the objects may be 

 corals rather than land-plants. The third 

 flora is in the Upper Silurian; the fourth 

 is in the Devonian. Two hundred species 



