128 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ject being to furnish an exact view of the 

 state of existing knowledge of Greenland 

 and the surrounding seas. 



In Osage County, Kansas, the fruit-trees 

 which had been stripped by the grasshop- 

 pers all put forth leaves again, and many of 

 them bloomed with double flowers ; most 

 of the embryo fruit was double. 



From the researches of Charles Violette 

 on the distribution of the saccharine and 

 saline principles in the beet, it appears that 

 the former increase considerably by arith- 

 metical progression from the collar to the 

 point of the root. The saline constituents 

 do not show a regular variation in quantity 

 from one end of the beet to the other, still 

 the chlorides are more abundant at the col- 

 lar than at the point. 



The Agassiz Memorial Fund has been 

 accepted by the President and Fellows of 

 Harvard College, for the use of the Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology founded in that 

 university by Agassiz. The continuous 

 growth of the museum is thus assured. 



"MuMBo Jumbo " is commonly supposed 

 to be the proper name of an African god ; 

 in reality he is a sort of policeman, an insti- 

 tution peculiar to the Mandingoes on the 

 river Gambia. A traveler in Africa informs 

 us that he is the terror of the Mandingo 

 women, for whose special benefit and disci- 

 pline he has been established. A strong, 

 athletic man, dressed from head to foot in 

 dry plantain-leaves, appears when invoked 

 by an injured husband. He goes through 

 all sorts of antics and pantomime among the 

 assembled villagers, all of whom are there 

 under pain of suspicion. Suddenly he 

 pounces like a tiger upon the offending 

 wife, and thrashes her severely with a long 

 rod with which he is armed. The crowd, 

 especially the women in it, drown her cries 

 with jeers and laughs. In other parts of 

 Africa a similar domestic policeman exists. 



M. d'Ommalius d'Halloy, the distin- 

 guished Belgian geologist, died at Liege, 

 January 15th, at the age of ninety-two years. 

 He was the author of several text-books on 

 geology, as also of numerous memoirs con- 

 tributed to learned societies and scientific 

 periodicals. 



An aquarium-car containing 300,000 

 fishes for California waters was wrecked 

 last year en route, and its living freight pre- 

 cipitated into the Elkhom River. Another 

 attempt at introducing into the streams of 

 the Pacific slope some of the valuable food- 

 fishes of the Atlantic coast was more suc- 

 cessful. Mr. Livingston Stone, of the 

 United States Fish Commission, started 

 from Albany on the 25th of June with 

 about 40,000 young shad. Of these, 5,000 

 were placed in tlie Jordan River, a tribu- 



tary of the Great Salt Lake, and the re- 

 mainder in the Sacramento. 



The monthly report of the Department 

 of Agriculture states that last year the 

 "chinch-bug," which usually restricts its 

 ravages to growing Indian-corn, in Johnson 

 County, Missouri, attacked potato-vines, and 

 even the tobacco-plant. 



In the peat-bogs of Northwestern Ger- 

 many a peat-cutting machine is employed, 

 consisting of a large, flat-bottomed steam- 

 vessel, which, when set to work, is able to 

 cut a canal 20 ft. in breadth and 6 ft. in 

 depth, while proceeding at the rate of from 

 10 to 12 ft. per hour. The soil thus cut 

 out is lifted into the vessel by steam-power, 

 there thoroughly ground, and deposited, by 

 means of a pipe running out of the side of 

 the vessel, on the bank of the canal, where 

 it is subsequently cut into bricks and dried. 

 By this method about 55 tons of very good 

 peat may be manufactured per day. A 

 similar machine is also in use in Canada. 



A MEDICAL officer of the British Xavy 

 recommends that each member of the pro- 

 jected Polar Expedition have fitted to his 

 sacrum a flat spirit-lamp, from which a 

 tube should pass up the spine beneath the 

 clothes to the occiput, so as to maintain 

 the heat of the trunk and vital organs ! 



By invitation of the Senatus Academicus 

 of the University of Edinburgh, Prof. Hux- 

 ley will perform the duties of the chair of 

 Natural History in the coming summer ses- 

 sion, in the jjlace of Prof. Wyville Thomson, 

 who is absent with the Challenger Expedi- 

 tion. 



A QUARTERLY revicw of scientific psy- 

 chology and philosophy will be issued in 

 London in the course of the present year. 

 It will discuss many subjects at present but 

 little attended to in psychological journals, 

 such as language, primitive culture, com- 

 parative psychology, etc. The title of the 

 new periodical will be Alind. 



A MONUMENT is about to be erected in 

 Stockholm to Scheele, the great Swedish 

 chemist, who discovered tartaric acid, chlo- 

 rine, baryta, and glycerine ; he also discov- 

 ered oxygen in 1777 in the course of his own 

 independent researches, though the honor 

 of prior discovery belongs to Priestley. A 

 monument is also to be erected in Brussels, 

 to Quetelet, the illustrious statistician. 



In the Freedmen's Mission Chapel at 

 Green Cove Spring, Florida, a circular saw, 

 about three feet in diameter, serves as a 

 bell to call the people to prayers. The saw 

 is suspended from a rafter, and it is sounded 

 by means of a wooden mallet. This " bell" 

 is heard, in calm weather, at the distance 

 of a mile and a half. 



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