568 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



objects was m m / a watch, plate, and the 

 moon were mem, a large round dish or table 

 was mum, and the stars were mim mim mim ; 

 an ordinary chair was lakail, a great arm- 

 chair lukull, and a little doll's chair Weill. 

 The Rev. J. C. Ball, a distinguished philolo- 

 gist, and his young brother, when six or 

 eight years old, had names of their own de- 

 vising for their tools and toys. Mary How- 

 itt's elder sister, Anna, did not learn to talk 

 till she was four years old ; and even then, 

 having but few words, the children had to 

 coin their own. To sneeze was okis-how a 

 sound, she thinks, one of their parents must 

 have made in sneezing. By a similar ono- 

 matopoeia, an American child called cat mea ; 

 in another child's vocabulary, the extraor- 

 dinary trisyllable shindikik designated that 

 animal. The association of ideas and ex- 

 tension of meaning are often very suggest- 

 ive viz., migno-migno water, wash, bath ; 

 waia waiar black, darkness, negro. It is 

 interesting, Mrs. Crane adds, to note the 

 continued use of Mr. Stillman's boy's own 

 name for water as a means of identifying 

 the acquired Italian aqua for the same 

 object, as frequently happens with adults 

 struggling to express themselves in a for- 

 eign tongue. Reduplication seems also to 

 characterize these child -languages like those 

 of some savage tribes, and plurals are 

 formed by repetition. 



Botany in the Harvard Museum. The 



provisions for the permanent display of the 

 botanical section of the Harvard University 

 Museum are nearly complete, and will be 

 unusually comprehensive. The exhibition 

 is planned to contain both dry and alco- 

 holic preparations, representing nearly all 

 the botanical regions. The genera of North 

 America will be most completely illustrated, 

 while the principal groups from other parts 

 of the world will be properly related to 

 them in accordance with an educational 

 plan. The illustration of the economic plants 

 of this country will be extended through all 

 the stages of development, and will be a 

 prominent feature. A unique feature in the 

 department of imitative specimens will be 

 the collection of glass models, which have 

 been prepared after a secret method by Herr 

 Blaschka. They exhibit the whole micro- 

 scopic structure with the different phases of 



growth accurately in details, and in some 

 cases very largely magnified. The collection 

 has also been given a set of duplicates from 

 Columbia College representing the South 

 American collection of Dr. Morony. The 

 exhibition-rooms will be connected by pas- 

 sage-ways with those of the Zoological Mu- 

 seum on one side and the mineralogical sec- 

 tion on the other side, and this in turn will 

 be connected with the proposed corner-piece 

 extending to the Peabody Museum ; so that 

 there will be a quadrangle with an unbroken 

 circuit through those parts of the University 

 Museum which are planned for public ex- 

 hi bition. 



Resources of Honduras. Mr. W. Pilcher 

 gave to the British Association the results 

 of his observations in Honduras during 

 three months when he traveled on mule- 

 back over a thousand miles, chiefly through 

 that part of the country lying on the 

 Pacific slope of the Cordilleras. On the 

 Guayape and Jalun Rivers, in Olancho, the 

 gold-washing provides an easy living for 

 the natives. At the old Spanish mines of 

 Opoteca and Yuscaran the mining camps of 

 the Americans and Germans are at full 

 work. Tropical vegetation abounds in the 

 beautiful and fertile valleys and plateaus, 

 and coffee, rice, maize, sugar-cane, bananas, 

 plantains, guavas, oranges, lemons, and other 

 fruits are continuously produced without 

 fear of frost or adverse seasons. Herds of 

 cattle and native horses are scattered over 

 the country, and Honduras, with its natural 

 advantages and its proximity to New Or- 

 leans, presents good opportunities to the 

 foreign settler for the successful employ- 

 ment of his capital in the raising of cattle 

 and the production of the fruits of the 

 country. 



Prof. Brooks's Studies in Oyster-culture. 



Prof. H. Newell Martin refers the begin- 

 ning of the scientific culture of the oyster 

 to a paper by Prof. Brooks, which appeared 

 in the first number of the Studies from the 

 Biological Laboratory of Johns Hopkins 

 University, " On the Development from the 

 Eggs of a Certain Mollusk." It was followed 

 in the next year by a treatise on the devel- 

 opment of some fresh-water mollusca ; and 

 during the same year another member of 



