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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



made there was a slight diminution in the 

 loudness of the tones, but no difficulty was 

 experienced in carrying on conversation. 

 Another change was made, whereby the 

 electrical current was sent to Portland and 

 back by another line to Salem, thus making 

 Salem a terminal station at the end of 

 nearly two hundred miles of wire. The re- 

 sult of this change was, that the tones of 

 the speakers could be heard, but so faintly 

 as to be unintelligible. With electro-mag- 

 nets of a higher resistance, Prof. Bell is 

 confident that the sounds would have been 

 perfectly intelligible, the magnets used, it 

 must be recollected, being only intended 

 for a twenty-mile circuit. 



How to reach the Pole. Captain H. 

 W. Howgate, of the Signal-Office, sees no 

 grounds of discouragement in the failure of 

 Nares's expedition to reach the north- 

 pole. The seasons, he remarks, vary in 

 the arctic circle as markedly as in more 

 temperate latitudes, and in a favorable 

 year the ice of the so-called "Palaeocrys- 

 tic Sea" might be broken up. Captain 

 Howgate would have a party of at least 

 twenty hardy, resolute, and experienced 

 men, with provisions for three years, sta- 

 tioned at some point near the borders of 

 the Polar Sea for instance, where the Dis- 

 covery wintered last year. These men 

 would seize the occasion of the opening of 

 the frozen sea to push on to the pole. At 

 the end of three years the party should be 

 visited, and, if unsuccessful in accomplish- 

 ing the object, should be revictualed and 

 again left to their work. With a good, sub- 

 stantial building, such as could easily be 

 carried on shipboard, they would be as 

 comfortable and safe from atmospheric 

 danger as the men of the Signal Service on 

 the summit of Mount Washington. " A 

 good supply of medicine," adds Captain 

 Howgate, "a skillful surgeon, and such 

 fresh provision as could be found by hunt- 

 ing-parties, would enable them to keep off 

 scurvy, and to maintain as good a sanitary 

 condition as the inhabitants of Godhaven 

 in Greenland. Game was found in fair quan- 

 tities by the Polaris party on the Green- 

 land coast, and by those from the Alert 

 and Discovery on the mainland to the west, 

 especially in the vicinity of the last-named 



vessel, where fifty-four musk-oxen were 

 killed during the season, with quantities of 

 other and smaller game. A seam of good 

 coal was also found by the Discovery's 

 party, which would render the question of 

 fuel a light one, and thus remove one of the 

 greatest difficulties hitherto found by arctic 

 voyagers. Let an expedition be organized 

 to start in the spring of 187*7, and I firmly 

 believe that by 1880 the geography of the 

 polar circle would be definitely settled, and 

 that without loss of life." 



Classification of the Races of Man. The 



distinguished Italian ethnologist, Prof. Man- 

 tegazza, of Florence, in his introduction 

 to Enrico Giglioli's narrative of a voyage 

 round the Globe in the corvette Magenta, 

 learnedly discusses the question of the clas- 

 sification of the races of man. His princi- 

 pal conclusions are that 1. Man is one of 

 the most cosmopolitan and most variable 

 of animals, and hence presents an infinite 

 variety of races, sub-races, and peoples. 2. 

 The number of races is indefinite ; many 

 races are extinct, others are now forming, 

 still others will yet be produced. 3. The 

 farther back we go in history, the larger is 

 the number of races and sub-races, for in 

 early times men less frequently moved away 

 from their native localities and were more 

 isolated from one another than now. 4. At 

 the top and at the bottom of the human 

 genealogical tree the branches and twigs 

 approach one another, so that the most 

 highly -cultured and the least developed 

 races come into mutual contact. The negro 

 developed into a Kaffre approximates to the 

 European, and the European, degraded by 

 cretinism or by hunger, to the Australian or 

 the negro. 5. In general the lowest races 

 are black or dark brown, the middle races 

 somewhat less dark-skinned, and the high- 

 est white or nearly so. 6. In classifying 

 the races of man we must, as far as pos- 

 sible, omit the question of their origin, for 

 the investigation of this origin is the most 

 fruitful source of ethnological errors. 



The American Geographical Society. 



The American Geographical Society was 

 formally installed in its new quarters, No. 

 11 West Twenty-ninth Street, New York, No- 

 vember 28th. For many years this Society 



