NOTES. 



287 



are brought under strict discipline, and obey 

 their keeper's call with extraordinary intelli- 

 gence. The mandarin duck, a smaller variety, 

 is reared for its beauty, and is prized as an 

 embellishment to the artificial lakes with 

 which the grounds of the wealthy are adorned. 

 By virtue of their repute for conjugal fidelity 

 a pair of them are introduced into wedding 

 processions. The eggs, preserved by a pe- 

 culiar process, after which they will keep for 

 several years, form an important part of 

 mandarin dinners. Geese, pure white, and of 

 great size and majestic carriage like that of 

 the swan, are bred ; turkeys for foreigners 

 and gold and silver pheasants are raised, and 

 the cormorant is domesticated and trained to 

 a wonderful degree of intelligence for fish- 

 ing. The birds are taken out on the lakes 

 and rivers in a small boat, one man to every 

 ten or twelve cormorants. They stand perched 

 on the sides of the boat, and at a word from 

 the man they scatter on the water and begin to 

 look for their game. They dive for the fish, 

 and then rise to the surface with the catch in 

 their bills, when they are called back to the 

 boat by the fisherman. As docile as dogs, they 

 swim to their master and are taken into the 

 boat, when they lay down their prey and again 

 resume their labor. The use of incubators 

 in hatching eggs has been known and prac- 

 ticed in China for several hundred years, as 

 it was also in ancient Egypt. The apparatus 

 is described as very primitive ; but the men 

 engaged in the business know exactly the day 

 when the young ducks or chickens will come 

 forth, and are prepared to receive them. 



NOTES. 



It is the habit of centipeds to carry 

 their young, clasped by means of their legs, 

 to all parts of the under side of the body, 

 though generally the young are clustered in 

 dense masses. When the young are thus 

 bunched together the body is coiled upon it- 

 self at that part ; and the contrast between 

 a centiped in this position, says Mr. J. J. 

 Quelch, who describes the centiped's method 

 in Nature, and a scorpion carrying her young 

 upon her back, just as a small opossum 

 does, is a very marked one. 



The snmpitans or blowpipes of the Ja- 

 kuns living on the Serting River in the sul- 

 tanate of Johore are manufactured from a 

 very long-jointed, straight variety of bamboo, 

 which is generally carved and traced with 



many rude devices. The darts consist of 

 thin splinters of wood about a foot long, 

 having a plug of pith at the blunt end. The 

 point is as sharp as a needle, and is covered 

 with a black, resinous substance, which is 

 in many cases extremely poisonous. Mon- 

 keys and other small animals die from its 

 effects almost immediately ; on man and the 

 larger animals its action is less rapid, but 

 quite as deadly. The poison is known to 

 the Malays as ipoh. 



An active discussion was had in the Brit- 

 ish Association on the question of the cri- 

 terion by which a flint should be regarded as 

 the work of man or of Nature. With regard 

 to the ruder forms of what some extreme 

 anthropologists include among palaeolithic 

 implements opinion was much divided ; as it 

 was also on the point as to how far the posi- 

 tion in which such implements, even when 

 recognized as artificial, are found can be ac- 

 cepted as an indication of their age. The 

 moral suggested by the discussion is that 

 many flints have been accepted as the handi- 

 work of man on the most inadequate evi- 

 dence, and that there is still much doubt as 

 to whether man existed in the British islands 

 in preglacial times. 



Photographic records taken with the aid 

 of the capillary electrometer of electric cur- 

 rents produced by speaking into the tele- 

 phone were exhibited by Mr. Burch in the 

 British Association. The letter z produced 

 a complicated curve in which oscillations of 

 current lasting only one three-thousandth of 

 a second were visible with a lens. The 

 speaker said that the electromotive force 

 produced in using the ordinary telephone 

 amounts to about one tenth of a volt ; but 

 with emphatic syllables it may rise high 

 enough to produce electrolysis. 



The question whether the intensity of the 

 radiation of heat by the sun is affected by its 

 condition as to spots has been studied by M. 

 R. Savelief, of Kiev, in the light of observa- 

 tions made in the spring and the fall of the 

 years 1890, 1891, and 1892. The results 

 point to an affirmative answer, the radiation 

 being greater as the sun-spot activity aug- 

 ments. A variation in one series of the ex- 

 pei'iments is interpreted as indicating that 

 the increase is dependent, not so much on 

 the absolute number of the spots as upon the 

 intensity of their evolution ; or it may mean 

 that it is immediately consecutive on their 

 diminution. 



The meeting of the British Association at 

 Oxford was attended by 2,311 persons, sev- 

 eral hundred more than attended last year's 

 meeting; and the receipts were 2,175. Ap- 

 propriations of 1,100, or about 100 more 

 than usual, were made for grants for research. 

 The committee of recommendations proposed 

 that Section D be called zoology instead of 

 biology ; that a separate section be consti- 



