NOTES. 



H3 



758 words. Passing to an analysis of this 

 " mental community," it becomes clear that 

 it is greatest at the beginning of the list ; 

 that is, the habit was shown to be to write 

 first the most common words, and, when 

 these are exhausted, the more unusual ones. 

 The lists of words drawn up by women were 

 much more like one another than those 

 written by the men. The women used only 

 1,123 different words, the men 1,376; the 

 women wrote only 520 words occurring but 

 once in the lists, the men 746. The lists also 

 indicate the relative prominence of differ- 

 ent classes of ideas and objects in the minds 

 of the writers. The five best represented 

 classes are names of animals, articles of 

 dress, proper names, actions, and imple- 

 ments and utensils. The women contrib- 

 uted most largely to the class of articles of 

 dress, having given 224 words in it, while 

 the men wrote only 129. They showed 

 equal favoritism for articles of food, in 

 which they wrote 179 words to 53 by the 

 men. The men showed fondness for im- 

 plements and utensils, names of animals, 

 and abstract terms. Among the links by 

 which one word seemed to suggest its suc- 

 cessor were associations by sound and com- 

 munity of classification. In five hundred 

 mentions of the twenty words most fre- 

 quently recurring, the word preceding the 

 given word was the same in 111 cases, and 

 the word following it in 145 cases. 



NOTES. 



According to the investigations of an 

 Indian student of the Hindoo folk lore, pub- 

 lished at Lucknow, it is believed that if a 

 person is drowned, struck by lightning, bit- 

 ten by a snake, or poisoned, or loses his life 

 by any accident or by suicide, he goes in- 

 stantly to hell. If he dies naturally on a 

 bed or a roof, he becomes a bhut, or evil 

 spirit ; and with this belief care is taken on 

 the approach of death to move the person 

 carefully on to the floor. The earth is be- 

 lieved to be resting on the horns of a cow 

 and the raised trunks of eight elephants, 

 called difffjai, or " elephants supporting the 

 regions," and each of the cardinal and sub- 

 cardinal points of the compass has its ap- 

 propriate guardian. An eclipse is sup- 

 posed to be produced by the occasional swal- 

 lowing up of the sun or moon by the severed 

 head of Rihu, son of a demon family, who 

 was decapitated by Vishnu for disguising 

 himself as a god and drinking nectar. 



The new system of railway fares intro- 

 duced in Austria and Hungary, as has been 

 shown by Prof. E. J. James, gives the Aus- 

 trian Empire the cheapest railway fares in 

 the world. Under it the usual fare for third- 

 class passengers is about six and a half 

 mills a mile, or $6.50 for a thousand-mile 

 trip. Commutation rates for local service 

 are still lower. Thus workmen can travel 

 to and from work on the railroad for two 

 cents a trip, up to six miles ; four cents up 

 to twelve miles ; six cents up to eighteen 

 miles ; eight cents up to twenty-four miles ; 

 and ten cents up to thirty miles. Yearly 

 tickets good for thirty-mile trips are sold for 

 $17.40. These rates have proved profitable 

 to the railways, and under them the traffic 

 has increased so rapidly that the accommo- 

 dations are taxed to the uttermost. The 

 system is commended to the attention of 

 American railway managers. 



The bush country of the South Island, 

 New Zealand; is troubled by a periodical visi- 

 tation of rats (Mus maorium), which appear 

 in the spring every four years. They are 

 considerably different in size and general ap- 

 pearance from the common brown rat, being 

 less fierce in appearance, and weighing, in 

 full-grown specimens, only about two ounces. 

 They are slow and awkward in movement on 

 the ground, but quite at home and extremely 

 active in climbing trees. These they ascend 

 with the nimbleness of flies, running out 

 with amazing quickness to the very tips of 

 the branches. Hence, when pursued, they 

 invariably make for trees if any are in reach, 

 or, if not, for anything that will take them 

 from the ground as when a rat, disturbed 

 by a plow, ran up the horse - reins which 

 were dragging on the ground. They betray 

 themselves, when startled, by their cry an 

 indiscretion of which the common rat is 

 rarely guilty. 



Attention is called by L. W. Wiggles 

 worth to the use of a squirrel's tail as a 

 steering and balancing organ during its leaps 

 through the air. A squirrel was observed 

 by a friend of the author's, in leaping from 

 the height of thirty-three feet to the ground, 

 to cause itself, by curving its tail strongly 

 to one side just before alighting, to swerve 

 in its course, and so avoid some hard sub- 

 stance on which it would otherwise have 

 fallen. 



Experiments are being made in European 

 navies with captive balloons as points of ob- 

 servation. From one sent up from a French 

 ironclad, ships and the details of the neigh- 

 boring coast could be seen, in clear weather, 

 for twenty or twenty-five miles. With silk 

 as the material of the cable by which it is 

 held, the balloon could rise in calm weather 

 to a height of four hundred yards. The sub- 

 ject has attracted the attention of the naval 

 authorities in Germany and England. 



