NOTES. 



575 



and insects play in the tales of the gcds and 

 heroes, than the fact that they were already 

 accredited in popular superstition with the 

 powers which they display in the stories. 

 Seeing how many of the European peasantry 

 still construct mythologies in an old-fash- 

 ioned way, and chng to the old views in 

 spite of science, we should have less diffi- 

 culty in believing that the Greeks and Hin- 

 doos originally proceeded in the same fash- 

 ion, without that constant reference to the 

 struggle between light and darkness which 

 some writers ascribe to them. 



NOTES. 



The Entomological Club of the American 

 Association will meet at 9 a. m., August 15, 

 1888, in the High-School building in the city 

 of Cleveland. As Cleveland is quite centrally 

 located, this will be very convenient both for 

 Canadian and United States entomologists. 

 We may therefore expect an unusually large 

 and interesting meeting. All who expect to 

 present papers should send notice of their 

 subjects to A. J. Cook, Secretary, Agricult- 

 ural College, Mich. 



The meeting of the British Association 

 is to be held at Bath, beginning September 

 5th. The sectional presidents will be Prof. 

 Schuster in Mathematics, Prof. Tilden in 

 Chemistry, Prof. Boyd Dawkins in Geology, 

 Mr. Thiselton Dyer in Biology, Colonel Sir 

 C. W. Wilson in Geography, Lord BramwcU 

 in Economic Science and Statistics, Mr. W. 

 H. Preece in Mechanical Science, and Gen- 

 eral Pitt-Rivers in Anthropology. 



The College of Engineering, of the Im- 

 perial University of Japan, graduated nine- 

 teen students in 188'7 — a number which the 

 president thought, in view of the facilities 

 for study offered, ought to be and would be 

 much exceeded this year. There were four 

 graduates from the College of Science. It 

 appears that the people of Japan have not 

 yet realized what promising careers are open 

 to their young men in science. The small 

 numbers which the scientific departments of 

 the university are graduating are insufficient 

 to meet the demands, which are increasing 

 year by year, for the services of scientific 

 men who shall further the national progress. 

 Meanwhile, it is impossible to fill many va- 

 cant positions in the offices of the Imperial 

 Government, and in various local govern- 

 ments and schools, where such graduates 

 are needed. 



Dr. Ludwig Wolf reports that the Ba- 

 luba, of Central Africa, do not see any 

 wrong in selling their wives and children, 

 but that they make a difference between do- 

 mestic slaves and slaves for export. A Ba- 



luba chief, with whom he expostulated, 

 listened quietly to his arguments, and then 

 told him, rather in confidence, that they sold 

 only their troublesome wives out of the 

 country, never the good ones. Dr. Wolf saw 

 in the slave-market at Mukenge a distin- 

 guished-looking old fellow who had been a 

 chief. During his reign he was continually 

 fighting with the neighboring tribes, and 

 many of his subjects were killed in battle. 

 At last his people began to grumble, and 

 decided quietly to sell their own chief into 

 slavery, as the best way to get rid of him, 

 and to live for the future in peace. They 

 sold him for ten goats, which were killed, 

 and the meat distributed as a compensation 

 among the relatives of those who had died 

 in the frequent battles of their chief. 



Mr. J. A. Scott, of Ann Arbor, Mich., 

 has had a pleasant experience in tree cul- 

 tivation during his life of eighty years. 

 He can point to trees in Connecticut, now 

 two feet in diameter, which he planted when 

 a boy. His present home is shaded with a 

 grove of maples which he planted. He al- 

 lows squirrels to frequent the place, and 

 encourages them to stay. They bring nuts, 

 some of which find their way to the ground 

 and grow ; and thereby the maples are be- 

 coming interspersed with nut-bearing trees, 

 which are already from six to twelve inches 

 in diameter. 



A CONTRIBUTOR to " Land and Water " 

 mentions having shot in the Crimea bustards 

 which came to the shore over the water 

 from the southward, and alighted very wea- 

 ry. The circumstances indicated that they 

 had flown across the Black Sea, and con- 

 firmation of this belief was given by finding 

 in their crops a species of dwarf bean which 

 was not known to grow nearer the Crimea 

 than upon the hill-sides of Asia Minor, around 

 Brusa, almost three hundred miles distant. 

 He also took in the hand several quails, very 

 much exhausted, which had apparently come 

 direct from the sea. 



Earthquake recorders have been so ad- 

 justed at the observatories in Japan as to 

 give correct graphic representations of the 

 movements undergone by a point on the soil 

 during the progress of a shock. The result- 

 ant figure exhibits a series of twists and 

 wriggles of the most complicated kind, so 

 that the path pursued by the point might be, 

 as it has been, compared to the form taken 

 by a tangled string when thrown down in a 

 heap. Prof. Sekiya, of the University of 

 Tokio, has decipheied one of these tangles, 

 and has made a model of seventy-two sec- 

 onds of it in wire, in which the line of the 

 curve of motion is distinctly designated for 

 each second. The model, ten times the size 

 of the graphic representation, is divided, to 

 save confusion of the eye and mind of the 

 student, into three sections, which are sepa- 

 rately mounted, but fixed on a common table. 



