POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



63? 



females lay their eggs for another brood of 

 larvae. The Anthrenus once introduced into 

 a house quickly infests it in every part. 

 Thus, in a house at Cold Spring, New York, 

 which had remained shut up for twelve 

 months, they "took complete possession 

 from the cellar to the attic, in every nook 

 and crevice of the floors, under matting and 

 carpets, behind pictures, eating everything 

 in their way." No effectual means of com- 

 bating this insect pest has yet been discov- 

 ered ; they are said to " grow fat " on cam- 

 phor, pepper, tobacco, turpentine, carbolic 

 acid, and the other ordinary applications. 



The Earthquake-Scare in North Caro- 

 lina. Bald Mountain, in Western North 

 Carolina, forming part of the Blue Ridge of 

 the Alleghanies, has for two or three years 

 been receiving a good deal of attention in 

 the newspapers. Rumbling noises have 

 now and then been heard in the mountain, 

 and these were by the people of the sur- 

 rounding country taken to be conclusive 

 evidences of volcanic action. As is usual 

 in such cases, these actual phenomena were 

 magnified enormously by the popular im- 

 agination, and to them were added others 

 which had no objective existence. Prof. 

 Clarke, of the University of Cincinnati, 

 having devoted the early days of his sum- 

 mer vacation this year to investigating 

 the causes of these rumblings, declares, in 

 a letter to the New York Tribune, that 

 " Bald Mountain is no more an earthquake 

 centre than is Central Park," and that " it 

 is merely a locality in which some large 

 rock-slides of an exceedingly gradual char- 

 acter are going on." Nevertheless, the 

 mountain is an object well worthy of study. 

 It forms one side of a pass through the 

 Blue Ridge, Chimney Rock forming the 

 other. While the latter mountain is made 

 up of smooth sheets of what appears to be 

 gneiss, Bald Mountain is all over cracked 

 and fissured, the fissures in some places 

 forming large caves. The recent disturb- 

 ances have chiefly affected a low spur of the 

 mountain, rising about one thousand feet 

 above the valley. From below the appear- 

 ance is as if the whole side of the spur was 

 sliding down. 



Prof. Clarke first climbed up the side 

 of this spur to a cave which had been 



discovered a very short time previously. 

 Here he found himself below a precipitous 

 mass of rock two or three hundred feet 

 high, at the foot of which immense numbers 

 of fallen bowlders had formed crevices and 

 caves innumerable. But the new cave was 

 the largest of all. The floor of the cave 

 was everywhere covered with fallen rocks. 

 The newspaper accounts tell of powerful 

 " currents of ice-cold air " issuing from 

 the caverns ; but Prof. Clarke found no 

 strong currents, and a difference of only 

 four degrees of temperature between the 

 inside and the outside air. The "smoke 

 of the Bald Mountain volcano " is not smoke 

 at all, but fine dust formed by the grind- 

 ing and clashing of the rocks. Prof. 

 Clarke next visited " the Crack," a crevice 

 very probably of quite recent origin. This 

 is merely a rent in the rock about one hun- 

 dred feet in length, seventy-five in depth, 

 and nowhere over ten in width. The ex- 

 planation given of these cracks and the 

 noises is found in the geological constitu- 

 tion of the mountain, which is built up of 

 sheets of an easily decomposable gneiss, 

 inclined at a slight angle and sliding down- 

 ward. These sheets of gneiss are full of 

 cracks running at approximately right an- 

 gles to the pseudo-stratification. The caves 

 are merely spaces which have been left 

 when an upper sheet of rock has slidden 

 off and become inclined against a lower. 

 Nowhere is any sign of volcanic action to 

 be seen. As for earthquakes, the sur- 

 rounding country is as free from them as 

 any other in the whole country. Prof. 

 Clarke accounts as follows for the rum- 

 bling noises : The rocks, as we have seen, 

 are cracked across their stratification. 

 When a large sheet of gneiss is gradually 

 sliding down, there comes eventually upon 

 some part of it a strain sufficient to produce 

 a fracture. This breaking is, of course, 

 attended by a noise, to which the immense 

 caves and crevices serve as resounding 

 chambers. 



Material Resources of European Russia. 



Russia in Europe, considered with regard 

 to its economic products, may be divided 

 into five distinct zones or regions, viz. : 

 Starting from the north, the tundras, the for- 

 est and agricultural regions (forming three 



