POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



857 



ing into the kindergarten the instruction 

 should be wholly oral. The children should 

 be led to grasp the idea that each sound is 

 produced by a special shape of the mouth. 

 In learning to put the mouth into the various 

 required shapes they get a control of the 

 muscles of the tongue and other vocal or- 

 gans. Mrs. Burnz gives some further details 

 and suggestions, including the words of a 

 " Vowel Song." 



Au Aqnatie Biological Station in Illinois. 



The Aquatic Biological Station of the Uni- 

 versity of Illinois and the Illinois State 

 Laboratory of Natural History, at Havana, 

 on the Illinois River, is especially devoted 

 to the study of the efPect on the aquatic 

 plant and animal life of a region produced 

 by the periodical overflow and gradual reces- 

 sion of the waters of great rivers, and is be- 

 lieved to be, in some respects, the only sta- 

 tion of its kind in the world. The station, 

 with the river varying in width from live 

 hundred feet to four or five miles, according 

 to the stage of the water and the outlying 

 lakes, is excellently adapted to this purpose. 

 The results of the first season's work are 

 only a beginning, but they dimly reveal a 

 large number of problems for which solu- 

 tions may be sought. Notable contrasts in 

 kind and number appear between animals of 

 the springy shore and lake and those of the 

 muddy intervale, only a few rods away on the 

 other side, between river and lake, and be- 

 tween different lakes contrasts easily com- 

 prehensible, as in the first instance given, 

 where the cool spring water flowing in 

 abundantly is evidently favorable to the gam- 

 merids and aselli swarming there, and some- 

 times peculiarly puzzling, like that between 

 Quiver Lake, on the one hand, whose waters 

 were densely choked in midsummer with a 

 thick growth of aquatic vegetation, but con- 

 tained fewer of the smaller animal forms 

 than the open current of the river, and 

 Thompson's Lake, on the other hand, where 

 the water was relatively clear of aquatic 

 plants, but abounded in rotifers and ento- 

 mostraca. Still more curious was the con- 

 trast between the similarly situated and 

 very similar lakes. Quiver and Matanzas, 

 the waters of one loaded and clogged with 

 plants and swarming with small mollusks 

 and insect larvae, and those of the other with 



hardly a trace of even microscopic vegeta- 

 tion, and with a correspondingly insignificant 

 quantity of animal life. The course of 

 events in a body like one of the station's 

 lakes, with its extreme seasonal vicissitudes, 

 ranging from complete overflow and loss of 

 identity to absolute drying away in now and 

 then an exceptional year, is extremely inter- 

 esting to the cecologist. "The extraordi- 

 nary instability of the system, one predomi- 

 nant and excessively abundant from quickly 

 following another almost to the suppression 

 of its predecessor, and all finally over- 

 whelmed in a common doom, gives to the 

 student an impression of an unhealthy or- 

 ganism, caught in the trap of an unfavorable 

 environment, and hurrying through the 

 stages of a fatal disease. One of the sur- 

 prises of the season was the abundance of 

 life in the main stream, which, as already 

 intimated, sometimes contained a greater 

 abundance of animal forms than most of the 

 lakes connected with it; and another was 

 the relatively small difference between the 

 animals frequenting widely unlike situations 

 in the same body of water." The freshness 

 and fruitfulness of the field were well illus- 

 trated by the large number of new forms 

 found, especially among rotifers, worms, and 

 insect larvae. 



The Valley of Hadraniaat. Mr. Theodore 

 Bent lately gave the Royal Geographical Socie- 

 ty an account of an expedition which he and his 

 wife had made to Hadramaut, a broad valley 

 running for a hundred miles or more parallel 

 to the coast of Arabia, by which the valleys 

 of the plateau discharge their water into the 

 sea at Saihut. Because of the fanaticism of 

 the inhabitants, this main valley had been 

 reached by only one European before Mr. and 

 Mrs. Bent Herr Leo Hirsch, in 1893. Mr. 

 and Mrs. Bent traveled without disguise, and 

 with a large retinue of followers. The coun- 

 try is inhabited by several classes of people : 

 wild tribes of Bedouins, who do all the carry- 

 ing trade, possess large tracts of country, and 

 are a terror ; the Arabs proper, who live in 

 the tonms and cultivate the lands around 

 them ; the Seyyids and Sherifs, the Arabian 

 aristocracy, being descendants of the Prophet 

 and possessing enormous influence ; and the 

 slave population and freed slaves. There is 

 no source of wealth in the country, but great 



