568 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



colza oil or kerosene is burned. Gaslight, 

 finally, creates, in proportion to the light de- 

 veloped, less disagreeable heat and is less un- 

 healthful when proper ventilation of rooms 

 is provided than candles or oil lamps. Among 

 other purposes to which gas has in recent 

 years been applied, Mr. Gerhardt mentions 

 its use in warming rooms, heating sadirons, 

 and heating water ; in roasting, baking, 

 steaming, frying, boiling, and broiling. It 

 is adopted as fuel to drive small domes- 

 tic motors, for various industrial purposes ; 

 and it is employed for artificial ventilation 

 conducted by means of gas jets burning in 

 exhaust flues, or by the use of sun-burners. 

 Much has been said about the injurious in- 

 fluence of gaslight upon health ; of the vitia- 

 tion of the atmosjjhere of rooms ; and of the 

 destructive effects of gas, when imperfectly 

 consumed, upon the furniture and decora- 

 tions of a room, and the smoking up of ceil- 

 ings and walls. But notwithstanding the 

 rapid development of electric lighting, and 

 notwithstanding the recent return in dwell- 

 ings to the use of oil lamps, and of exten- 

 sive and costly paraffin and wax candles, the 

 use of gas in dwelling houses, offices, and 

 stores is undoubtedly so convenient and com- 

 paratively safe that for many years to come 

 it will constitute the chief means of artificial 

 illumination. 



Are CivilizMl Kajes Superior ? Proud 

 of his wonderful achievements, civilized 

 man looks down upon the humbler members 

 of mankind, lie has conquered the forces 

 of Nature and compelled them to serve him. 

 He has transformed inhospitable forests into 

 fertile fields. The mountain fastnesses are 

 yielding their treasures to his demands. The 

 fierce animals which were obstructing his 

 progress are being exterminated, while others 

 which are useful to him are made to increase 

 a thousandfold. The waves of the ocean 

 carry him from land to land, and towering 

 mountain ranges set him no bounds. His 

 genius has molded ineit matters into power- 

 ful machines, wjiich wait a touch of his hand 

 to serve his manifold demands. What won- 

 der, asked Dr. Franz Boaz, in his address 

 before the Anthropological Section of the 

 American Association, that he pities a peo- 

 ple who have not succeeded in subduing Na- 

 ture, who labor to eke an existence out of 



the products of the wilderness ; who hear 

 with trembling the roar of wild animals ; 

 who remain restricted by ocean, rivet, or 

 mountains, and who strive to secnre the ne- 

 cessaries of life with the help of few and sim- 

 ple instruments ? What wonder if civilized 

 man considers himself a being of higher or- 

 der than primitive man? If it is claimed 

 that the white race represents a higher type 

 than all others ? When we analyze this as- 

 sumption it will soon be found that the 

 superiority of the civilization of the white 

 race is not a sufficient basis for it. As the 

 civilization is higher, we assume that the 

 aptitude for civilization is also higher, and 

 as the aptitude for civilization presumably 

 depends upon the perfection of the mechan- 

 ism of body and mind, the inference is drawn 

 that the white race represents the highest 

 type of perfection. In this conclusion, which 

 is reached through a comparison of the social 

 status of civilized man and primitive man, 

 the achievement and the aptitude for achieve- 

 ment have been confounded. Furthermore, 

 as the white race is the civilized race, every 

 deviation from the white type is considered 

 a characteristic of the lower type. That 

 these two errors underlie our judgments of 

 races can easily be shown by the fact that, 

 other conditions being equal, a race is al- 

 ways described as the lower the more funda- 

 mentally it differs from the white race. 



The Problems of Arflijeological Relics. 



The purpose of Mr. Gerard Fowke's Notes on 

 the Archaiology of Ohio is to present in a 

 compact form conclusions based upon a care- 

 ful study of the earthworks and the relics 

 associated with them ; embodying a sum- 

 mary of the results reached by all who have 

 been engaged in the investigation. The very 

 wide range of forms and relics as is shown 

 by the authoi" the diversity of material, and 

 their unlikeuess to almost everything belong- 

 ing to the present inhabitants, have caused 

 some misapprehension or confusion as to 

 their probable uses. This is especially the 

 case with the great number of objects whose 

 manufacture may be considered the outcome 

 of aesthetic or religious ideas. They are 

 made of nearly all the different kinds of 

 shell, bone, metal, and stone, especially slate 

 and steatite, accessible to their fabricators. 

 Under such names as gorgets, crescents, 



