7i6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



large as a chestnut and free from any for- 

 eign substance is dropped through the tun- 

 nel, and that is lifted up at once. While the 

 ants are still confused, and before any of 

 them can reach the edge of the glass, it is 

 covered with another square like it, which 

 has been surrounded, a short distance from 

 its edge, by a pad of putty. This confines 

 the ants and prevents their being crushed. 

 The two plates of glass are pressed together 

 to within about the thickness of an ant's 

 body, but closer on one side than on the 

 other, so as to hold some tight and leave 

 others free to take such positions as please 

 them. On applying this box of ants to the 

 ear as one would a watch, a regular buzzing 

 may be heard like that of water boiling in an 

 open vessel, and with it some very clear strid- 

 ulations. The ants may be kept alive several 

 hours and even days in this prison if it is 

 not air-tight ; and whenever the ants are ex- 

 cited the stridulations may be heard very 

 numerous and intense. The stridulations 

 are supposed to be produced by rubbing the 

 rough scaly surface of the chitinous covering, 

 which is described as looking, when seen in 

 one direction under the microscope, like the 

 teeth of a saw. 



Ancient I'se of opper. The range of 

 metals and alloys at the disposition of the 

 craftsman is really very wide, but he, never- 

 theless, Prof. Roberts-Austen says, restricts 

 his efforts within narrow limits, and employs 

 but few materials. The pure metals and 

 fine wrought-iron work are seldom used, and 

 have hardly any applications in art indus- 

 tries except when in union with other metals. 

 The two series of alloys which have promi- 

 nence in the history of art metal work are 

 those of copper and tin, the bronzes, and the 

 copper-zinc series the brasses. Xext in im- 

 portance should come the lead-tin alloys the 

 pewters. Of the alloys of the precious metals, 

 the gold-copper, the gold-silver, and the sil- 

 ver-copper are the most important. Taking 

 the bronzes first, the impoi'tant question at 

 once suggests itself whether copper was em- 

 ployed before the general adoption of the 

 alloy of copper and tin in industrial art. 

 Berthelot has given us the analysis of a little 

 Chaldean statuette of a god, now in the 

 Louvre, which is considered to date from 

 4000 B. c, and it proved to be of metallic 



copper. There is also an analysis by Berthe- 

 lot of the scepter of King Pepi I of the sixth 

 Egyptian dynasty. This scepter, believed to 

 be thirty-five hundred or four thousand years 

 old, now in the British Museum, is of pure 

 copper. From the anthropological point of 

 view copper plays an essentially different 

 part in prehistoric culture now from what 

 was assigned to it a short time ago. Whereas 

 it had been assumed that copper periods ex- 

 isted in Europe only in a few localities, finds 

 of it have recently increased to such an ex- 

 tent that the assumption of a special copper 

 age, which was prior to the bronze age and 

 contemporary with the later stone age, seems 

 to archaeologists now inevitable. Many of 

 the objects found in Schliemann's first pre- 

 historic city, Ilios, were of nearly pure cop- 

 per. Other articles in the third city were of 

 bronze. Our knowledge as to the first ap- 

 pearance of bronze has recently received new 

 evidence in a rod found by Dr. W. Flinders 

 Petrie at Meydum, of the fourth Egyptian 

 dynasty, about 3*700 b. c, which proves to 

 be a bronze having about the ratio of nine 

 parts of copper to one of tin, characteristic 

 of far later and even of modern bronzes. 

 Two works in the South Kensington Museum, 

 one Etruscan and the other Greek, afford 

 clear evidence of the introduction of tin into 

 the art of those nations in the fifth century 

 before Christ. The fact that the presence of 

 lead in bronze enabled it to be more easily 

 fused and also to assume a beautiful velvety- 

 brow^n patina was, in the opinion of the au- 

 thor, recognized far earlier than has been 

 supposed. Lead occurs in the analysis of a 

 fragment of Greek bronze of a date about 

 450 B. c. The use of zinc is indicated in the 

 descriptions in detail by Pliny of the vari- 

 ous shades of color presented by bronze. The 

 use of brass, which was common enough in 

 Roman times, does not seem to have pre- 

 vailed in England until William Austen, in 

 1460, made of it the magnificent monument 

 of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. 



Preservation of Virginian Antiquities. 



An Association for the Preservation of Vir- 

 ginian Antiquities was formed in 1888, at the 

 suggestion of ladies of Williamsburg, and 

 chose the wife of Governor Fitzhugh Lee as 

 its first president. Mrs. Lee was succeeded 

 at the expiration of Governor Lee's term by 



