7H 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is, to form a tent-like covering over it." 

 The Abbe Thiers, in his Traite des Supersti- 

 tions, mentions certain days on which silly 

 people fancied it was wrong to bathe, a no- 

 tion which would never have arisen had not 

 bathing been a common practice. 



The Battersea Home for Dogs. TheBat- 

 tersca Temporary Home for lost and starv- 

 ing dogs took care last year of 24,123 dogs, 

 for 3,613 of which homes were found either 

 new homes or by restoration to their owners. 

 The report says that homeless dogs coming 

 from the London streets were for the most 

 part untrained, ill-bred, deformed, diseased, 

 and half -starved, which, by the necessities of 

 the situation, " found in the lethal chamber 

 a merciful refuge." The muzzling order 

 greatly augmented the number of dogs sent 

 to the home during the latter part of the 

 year, and threatened to overwhelm the re- 

 sources of the institution. The home had 

 prevented the spread of rabies by clearing 

 the streets of the dogs most liable to be bit- 

 ten by rabid animals, and had thus benefited 

 the whole community. A cats' home had 

 been added for the boarding of these ani- 

 mals, and neglected pussies were now found 

 new homes or sent to the lethal chamber. 

 The Duke of Portland who presided at the 

 annual meeting of the society expressed 

 his satisfaction at the personal interest which 

 was shown by the Queen in the work of 

 the home, as was proved by " her interpo- 

 sition to lengthen the time between the in- 

 coming of the dogs and the consequences of 

 no one claiming them " which is a beauti- 

 fully delicate way of phrasing the unpleasant 

 truth. 



The Failure of the Apple Crop of 1890. 



The failure of the apple crop of 1S90 in 

 western New York is accounted for by Prof. 

 L. H. Bailey, of the Cornell Experiment Sta- 

 tion, as a result of the weather, which was 

 exceedingly wet and cool in the spring, then 

 marked by unusually heavy rains, followed 

 by drought. A blight was developed in the 

 foliage of the trees, caused by the growth 

 of the apple-scab fungus. The scab (Fusi- 

 cladium dendriiicum) is found upon the 

 bracts or small leaves attending the flower- 

 cluster, and is frequent upon very small 

 fruits. It is nearly always present, to a 



greater or less extent, upon both leaves and 

 fruit, but it is rarely so destructive to foliage 

 as in the last year. It has increased rapidly 

 in New York of late years, and apples have 

 been unusually scabby. The wet spring 

 afforded it just the conditions for rapid 

 growth. The scab appears to be somewhat 

 worse upon low and undrained lands than 

 upon high and warm elevations, although 

 in the infected regions the latter are never 

 exempt. A closely related species (Fusicla- 

 dium pyriniim), by some regarded as iden- 

 tical with the other, attacks the pear, in 

 fruit and foliage, and probably causes much 

 of the failure in the pear crop. It has a 

 tendency to remain in more or less definite 

 spots, so that pear foliage rarely looks as 

 brown as apple foliage. The injury to trees 

 by the fungus is not vital. It is best coun- 

 teracted by spraying with solutions of car- 

 bonate of copper, beginning before the flow- 

 ers open, and making four or six applica- 

 tions between then and the 1st of August. 

 A solution of copper sulphate, carbonate of 

 soda, and carbonate of ammonia is also rec- 

 ommended. 



Advent of the Ghost Idea. Lady TYelby 

 offered a puzzle to the British Association 

 when she presented the question, which has 

 not been solved, of accounting for the great 

 " break " in human thought which occurs 

 when the "ghost idea," or the thought of 

 another life and the supernatural, comes in. 

 The governing notion of those who regard 

 the human intellect as a result of evolution 

 is that man slowly accumulated experience, 

 and from it, by comparison, by deduction, 

 and by meditation, arrived at last at abstract 

 and non-material thought. He considered 

 the effect of revenge, for example, and its 

 operation on tribal society, till he arrived at 

 the idea of just revenge, or, as we call it, of 

 justice ; and, finally, his horizon ever widen- 

 ing, at the lofty conception that forgiveness 

 might occasionally, or even frequently, be 

 more to the general advantage, or, in other 

 words, might be nobler, and therefore to be 

 adopted. This theory leaves much unex- 

 plained, but it is supported by an array of 

 facts, and will, if accepted, explain many of 

 the phenomena. Much of thought is a re- 

 sult of experience and observation, and more 

 may be ; and it may be possible to extend 



