POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



141 



fore civilization in Europe, but linger 

 through Mohammedan barbarism in Africa. 

 There is abundant evidence of the former 

 existence of these and other large mammals 

 of tropical Africa in France, Germany, and 

 Greece. The original fauna of Africa, of 

 which the lemur is the distinctive type, is 

 still preserved in Madagascar, which once 

 formed part of Africa. The trout is found 

 in all the snow-fed rivers that fall into the 

 sea, but not in Palestine south of the Leba- 

 non, or in Egypt, or the Sahara. The fresh- 

 water salmonoid is a European type often 

 found in the Atlas. There are newts and 

 tailed batrachians in every country round 

 the sea, again excepting Palestine, Egypt, 

 and the Sahara. 



Economic Plants of Colombia. A re- 

 port of the British Foreign Office names a 

 large variety of important economical plants 

 as successfully cultivated in Colombia. The 

 principal crop is maize ; next to it is sugar- 

 cane, which is most used for making sugar, 

 while large quantities of it are employed for 

 making aguardiente and rum in the hot 

 country, and chicha, another drink, in the 

 cold country. The plant ripens in one year 

 in the hot country, and in a year and a half in 

 the cold country. Cacao is largely raised in 

 the hot country on the slopes of the mount- 

 ains, on newly disforested land, at an eleva- 

 tion of from one thousand to three thousand 

 five hundred feet. It is the most paying 

 crop in the country when once established, 

 but very difficult and expensive to take care 

 of in the earlier years of its growth. For 

 planting the upland rice, the ground is " pre- 

 pared " by turning cattle into the field after 

 the first rains to tread up the ground and de- 

 stroy the grasses. They are again turned in 

 and driven round, after the seed has been 

 sown, to tread it into the ground, after 

 which no further attention is paid to the 

 crop till the harvest. The potato forms the 

 chief food of the country. It is very pro- 

 ductive, and is cultivated in two principal 

 varieties the criollas, which are red-skinned, 

 and yellow or orange-colored inside, and the 

 ordinary white potato. It also grows wild in 

 the mountains. The largest and best crops 

 are raised on savannas on the mountain-sides 

 at heights of more than nine thousand feet. 

 The production has greatly decreased since 



the potato disease attacked the crops in 1865. 

 Tobacco is grown on a large scale in four 

 districts and on a small scale all over the 

 country. Other cultivated plants are plant- 

 ains, which form an important food and are 

 very productive ; manioc, which is used as a 

 vegetable or made into bread; vegetable 

 ivory palm ; Carlodovica palmata, from which 

 the Panama hats are made ; coca ; coffee, the 

 production of which is increasing and which 

 is taking the place of cinchona bark as the 

 chief article of export ; American aloe, which 

 grows wild everywhere and is valuable for its 

 fibers ; and cinchona. Pineapples, oranges, 

 mangoes, cherimozas, and other native fruits 

 grow very abundantly and spontaneously, and 

 are so cheap that, except in the immediate 

 neighborhood of a market, few people take 

 the trouble to pick them. 



The Start of a Bird's Flight. The mech- 

 anism of the starting of a bird's flight, as 

 studied by instantaneous photography, is thus 

 described by Professor Marey : " When the 

 bird is not yet in motion, the air which is 

 struck by its wings presents, in the first in- 

 stance, a resistance due to inertia, then en- 

 ters into motion, and flies below the wing 

 without furnishing to it any support. When 

 the bird is at full speed, on the contrary, its 

 wing is supported each moment upon new 

 columns of air, each one of which offers to it 

 the initial resistance due to its inertia. The 

 sum of these resistances presents to the wing 

 a much firmer basis. One might compare a 

 flying bird to a pedestrian who makes great 

 efforts to walk on a shifting sand, and who, 

 in proportion as he advances, finds a soil by 

 degrees firmer, so that he progresses more 

 swiftly and with less fatigue. The increase 

 of the resistance of the air diminishes the ex- 

 penditure of labor ; the strokes of the bird's 

 wing become, in fact, less frequent and less 

 extended. In calm air, a sea-gull which has 

 reached its swiftest expends scarcely the 

 fifth of the labor which it had to put forth at 

 the beginning of its flight. The bird which 

 flies against the wind finds itself in still 

 more favorable conditions, since the masses 

 of air, continually renewing themselves, 

 bring under his wings their resistance of in- 

 ertia. It is, then, the start which forms the 

 most laborious phase of the flight. It has 

 long been observed that birds employ all 



