576 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



An International Colonial Exhibition is 

 projected to be held next year in Paris. A 

 peculiar feature will be the geographical 

 rather than political character of the group- 

 ing of the sections. Thus, all the West will 

 form one section, India another, and so on. 

 Specimens of all the native populatious are 

 to be brought over and housed as at their 

 homes as is habitually done at the Jardin 

 d 'Accumulation ; and colonial and ethno- 

 graphical congresses are to be held. 



The objection to cremation that it facili- 

 tates poisoning by diminishing the probabili- 

 ties of detection, was dealt with by M. Frede- 

 ric Passy, at a recent meeting of the French 

 Cremation Society. The speaker urged that 

 vegetable poisons vanish rapidly, and, if min- 

 eral poisons are used, most of them can be 

 detected in the ashes. Moreover, there are 

 poisons the presence of which in a human 

 body does not prove that a crime has been 

 committed; and, if cremation is generally 

 adopted, greater care will be taken to de- 

 termine the precise causes of death. 



Lake Urumiah, in Persia, 4,100 feet 

 above the sea, is, according to British Con- 

 sul-General Stewart at Tabriz, the saltest 

 body of water on the earth, being salter than 

 even the Dead Sea. It is eighty-seven miles 

 long and twenty-four miles broad, and con- 

 tains nearly twenty-two per cent of salt. Its 

 northern coasts are incrusted with a border 

 of salt glistening white in the sun. It is 

 said that no living thing can survive in it, 

 but a small species of jelly-fish manages to 

 maintain an existence in its waters. 



According to Mr. Joseph Jibrail, who 

 has been a teacher among them, the most 

 curious beliefs of the Druses are those con- 

 nected with China, which they regard as a 

 holy land, where they will be reborn when 

 they die. Eclipses are supposed to be caused 

 by a dragon eating a piece of the sun or 

 moon. Some of their beliefs recall those of 

 the early Gnostic and Manichaean sects in 

 Syria. 



A curious example of the natural " in- 

 arching " of trees exists in Lawrence County, 

 111. The trunks of two elm trees, standing 

 about twenty feet apart, have met at about 

 the same distance above the ground, where 

 they blend into a symmetrical trunk of large 

 dimensions. The tree is nearly a hundred 

 feet high, and well developed ; and wagons 

 can easily be driven through the great tri- 

 angle which forms their base. 



Mr. Merrifield, a British officer in Te- 

 nasserim, says that the belief that the teeth 

 of the Malays and Siamese are colored by 

 chewing betel mixed with lime is an error. 

 The black color is produced by a special pro- 

 cess employed for the purpose, for no re- 

 spectable Siamese would like to have white 

 dogs' teeth like Chinese, Indians, and Europe- 

 ans. Cocoanut kernel is carefully charred, 



and then worked to a stiff paste with cocoa- 

 nut oil. When carefully and regularly worked 

 over the teeth, this produces the black var- 

 nish which is so much admired. Among 

 some Malay tribes it is considered the proper 

 thing not only to blacken the teeth, but to 

 file them down to points like sharks' teeth. 



The success which has attended the intro- 

 duction from Australia of the Vedalia car- 

 dinalis as a remedy for the Iceria, or fluted 

 orange-scale, is represented by Prof. C. V. 

 Riley as having been phenomenal. It has 

 fixed the attention of entomologists and of 

 fruit-growers and farmers to the method of 

 dealing with injurious insects by multiplying 

 their enemies ; and there is no question but 

 that the cases in which the experiment may 

 be more or less successfully repeated will be 

 numerous. Fears have been expressed lest, 

 after sweeping off the Iceria the Vedalia will 

 perish for want of food, and the Iceria will 

 increase again ; but Prof. Riley thinks that 

 this danger will work its own cure by the 

 laws of balances. If the Iceria increase, the 

 Vedalia will have more food, and will in- 

 crease again, and so the work will go on, as 

 according to nature. 



Water extinguishes fire, not, as the com- 

 mon talk is, by virtue of any incompatibility 

 between the two elements, but partly by the 

 effect of the lowering of the temperature 

 caused by its evaporation, and partly by act- 

 ing as a mechanical extinguisher. Envelop- 

 ing the parts of the body upon which it is 

 thrown, it separates the combustible matter 

 from the atmosphere, and cuts off the supply 

 of oxygen the life of the fire. 



M. Berthelot has been investigating the 

 cause of that peculiar and far from unpleas- 

 ant odor which arises when vegetable soil is 

 moistened. It proves to be produced by a 

 camphor-like substance existing in extremely 

 minute proportions only a few millionths 

 exact analysis of which has not been practi- 

 cable, on account of thejsmall quantity ob- 

 tainable. The author did not find the alco- 

 hol in the soil that M. Muntz claims to have 

 detected there, and regards that found by M. 

 Muntz as only an exceptional product of the 

 spontaneous , fermentation of vegetable de- 

 bris. The new odoriferous body has a similar 

 action with alcohol in producing iodoform. 



Fromentine is the name of a new food- 

 substance which Dr. Dujardin Beaumetz pre- 

 pares by extraction from the embryos of grain 

 seeds. On subjecting the mass obtained by 

 collecting the embryos to a slight cooking, 

 the proportion of albuminoid and nitrogen- 

 ous substances is augmented. The water is 

 evaporated, and the fat is separated by press- 

 ure or solution, when as much as fifty per 

 cent of albuminoid matters and twenty-seven 

 per cent of ternary substances are obtained. 

 The new product contains twice as large a 

 proportion of nitrogen as meat. 



