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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Agassiz to be in a better state of preserva- 

 tion, and their localities more accurately 

 noted, than is the Case with any similar 

 collection he has seen. To give an idea 

 of the magnitude of the Challenger collec- 

 tions, he says that if a single individual, 

 possessing the knowledge of the eighteen or 

 twenty specialists in whose hands they are 

 to be placed, were to work them up, he 

 would require from seventy to seventy-five 

 years of hard work to bring out the results 

 which the careful study of the different de- 

 partments ought to yield. At the same time 

 Prof. Agassiz observes that little that is 

 new has been added by the Challenger Ex- 

 pedition to the deep-sea fauna as developed 

 by the American and English Expeditions 

 of 1866 and 1869. Seasoning from these 

 premises, "we may safely say that while 

 any new expeditions will undoubtedly clear 

 up many of the points left doubtful by the 

 Challenger, and may carry out special lines 

 of investigation only partly sketched out, 

 yet we can hardly expect them to do more 

 than fill out the grand outlines laid down 

 by the great English Expedition." 



Preservation of lee in the Siek-Room. 



Dr. Gamgee, in the Lancet, suggests a good 

 method of preserving ice in small quantity 

 for a considerable time at the bedside of a 

 sick person. His practice is to cut a piece 

 of flannel about nine inches square, and se- 

 cure it by ligature round the mouth of an or- 

 dinary tumbler, so as to leave a cup-shaped 

 depression of flannel within the tumbler to 

 about half its depth. In the flannel cup 

 so constructed pieces of ice may be pre- 

 served many hours, all the longer if a piece 

 of flannel from four to five inches square 

 be used as a loose cover to the iee-cups. 

 Cheap flannel, with comparatively open 

 meshes, is preferable, as the water easily 

 drains through it, and the ice is thus kept 

 quite dry. When good flannel with close 

 texture is employed, a small hole must be 

 made iu the bottom of the flannel cup, other- 

 wise it holds the water, and facilitates the 

 melting of the ice. In a room with a tem- 

 perature of 60 Eahr., Dr. Gamgee made the 

 following experiments with four tumblers, 

 placing in each two ounces of ice broken 

 into small pieces. In tumbler No. 1 the 

 ice was loose. It had all melted in two 

 hours and fifty-five minutes. In tumbler 



No. 2 the ice was suspended in the tumbler 

 in a cup made, as above described, of good 

 Welsh flannel. In five hours and a quar- 

 ter the flannel cup was more than half filled 

 with water, with some pieces of ice floating 

 in it; in another hour and a quarter the 

 flannel cup was nearly filled with water, and 

 no ice remained. In tumbler No. 3 the ice 

 was suspended in a flannel cup made in the 

 same manner and of the same material as 

 in No. 2 ; but in No. 3 a hole capable of 

 admitting a quill pen had been made in the 

 bottom of the flannel cup, with the effect 

 of protracting the total liquefaction of the 

 ice to a period of eight hours and three- 

 quarters. In tumbler No. 4 the ice was 

 placed in a flannel cup made, as above de- 

 scribed, of cheap, open flannel, which al- 

 lowed the water to drain through very read- 

 ily. Ten hours and ten minutes elapsed 

 before all this ice had melted. 



Grote's Theory of the Peopling of Amer- 

 iea. Prof. Grote's theory of the original 

 peopling of America, as stated in recent 

 papers, is that the original inhabitants 

 came from Asia by way of the north dur- 

 ing the latter part of the Miocene or ear- 

 lier part of the Pliocene, and that this Ter- 

 tiary population spread to the south along 

 the mountainous backbone of the two 

 Americas ; that, on the advent of the 

 Glacial epoch, the people then living in 

 the extreme north were modified by the 

 change in climate and were brought down 

 by the ice and followed it back again to the 

 arctic circle, and that the present repre- 

 sentatives of glacial man are the Esqui- 

 maux. Through a study of migrations 

 Prof. Grote comes to the conclusion that 

 the ice must have acted as a barrier to 

 further communication between the two 

 continents of Asia and North America, and 

 consequently that the civilizations of Cen- 

 tral America and of the mound-builders are 

 indigenous. Grote concludes that the the- 

 ory of an accidental migration from Asia 

 during the Quaternary cannot be supported 

 in view of recently-ascertained facts. In a 

 letter dated February 11, 187*7, Captain E. 

 L. Berthoud (of the School of Mines at 

 Golden, Colorado), who has studied the ge- 

 ology and archaeology of the West since 

 1859, writes that Grote's theory "solves 

 many knotty points in the antiquities and 



