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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



portant item ia the cookery of some lands, 

 and are popular in some of the Mediterra- 

 nean districts of Europe. Vestiges of them 

 are found among the remains of feasts in 

 Pompeii, and a hundred thousand dozen of 

 them are still sold in the markets of Mar- 

 seilles every year. They, with holothurias, 

 form important items in the food-consump- 

 tion of China and Japan, where the people 

 rarely see our butcher's-mcat. The holo- 

 thuria-fishery is carried on extensively in 

 Japan from April to August. The " catch " 

 is consumed fresh on the spot, or is pre- 

 pared and packed for the Chinese market. 

 Even the Medusa, which no other animal, so 

 far as is known, will eat, is sought for by 

 the Chinese, and used as a dried and salted 

 meat. 



Advantages of a Binary Arithmetic. — 



Mr. H. Farquhar has been discoursing, be- 

 fore the Philosophical Society of Washing- 

 ton, the advantages of a binary arithmetic, 

 or an arithmetic in which the numbers are 

 expressed in powers of two. In the best 

 binary notation he devised, additions re- 

 quired only three fourths of the lime taken 

 with the ordinary figures. Had the com- 

 puter practiced as many weeks with the 

 new notation as years with the old, the dif- 

 ference would have been much more marked, 

 as it was in fact when one unskilled in arith- 

 metic, to whom the binary notation had just 

 been taught, tried the two additions. A 

 great gain in accuracy was also realized ; 

 and it is believed that a fair degree of skill 

 in arithmetic, with a binary notation, could 

 be acquired by many to whom readiness is 

 impossible under the present system. The 

 only practicable division of arcs and angles, 

 and the most natural division of all things, 

 is by continued bisections. This is shown 

 by the ratio of value in our coins, weights, 

 and capacity measures, and by the prevalent 

 subdivision of lowest nominal units, as of 

 the carpenter's inch into eighths and six- 

 teenths, and of percentages into quarters, 

 etc., in stock quotations. The American 

 coinage is inconvenient in practice, because 

 of the awkward ratio 2i^, which it intro- 

 duces between several pieces; and there 

 would be the same difficulty in a decimal 

 system of weights and measures, should it 

 be imposed upon us. 



Omalia Cliildren. — Miss A. C. Fletcher 

 gave the American Association a pleasing 

 picture of child-life among the Omaha Indi- 

 ans, The little one receives a sacred name, 

 with impressive ceremonies, when it is ten 

 days old, and ia always lovingly attended by 

 its father and mother. The cradle is a flat 

 board, to which the child, laid on its back, 

 is fastened, with bandages which are differ- 

 ent for boys and for girls ; and the jiressure 

 of the board against the head causes a flat- 

 tening of the occiput. The child is kept on 

 the board, with occasional intermissions, in 

 which it is allowed to kick at will, till about 

 the sixth month, when it is put into a ham- 

 mock. The hair is solemnly cut, in styles 

 peculiar to each gens, at three years of age, 

 when the child may be given a new name. 

 Home-life is made pleasant and attractive 

 to the children with toys, games, and story- 

 telling ; and, at a proper age, suitable du- 

 ties are assigned to the youth : the care of 

 the ponies, the use of the bow and arrow, 

 and the like, to the boys ; and the care of 

 the younger children, tilling the ground, 

 dressing the skins, and cooking, in which 

 the maiden must be proficient before she can 

 be considered marriageable, to the girls. 

 Groat respect for woman prevails among 

 the Omahas. 



Chronology of the Fossil Flora. — Mr, 



L. F. Ward, at the American Association, 

 reviewed what is known of the fossil flora 

 of the globe. The two oldest known species 

 ( Oldhamia) have been found in the Cam- 

 brian of Ireland. Of the Lower Silurian, 

 forty-four species are known, chiefly of ma- 

 rine algae ; of the Upper Silurian, thirteen ; 

 of the Devonian, one hundred and eighty- 

 eight, among which ferns predominate ; of 

 the Permo-Carboniferous, nearly two thou- 

 sand species. Cellular cryptogams of some 

 kind lived in the Laurentian, and account 

 for the graptolite beds found in it. The 

 Floridce (marine algae), ferns, horse-tail, 

 and club-moss families, begin in the Lower 

 Silurian ; the last three families had their 

 maximum in the Carboniferous. The coni- 

 fers, which reached their maximum in the 

 Cretaceous, began in the Silurian. The 

 cycads had their origin in the Devonian and 

 Iheir maximum in the Middle Jurassic, 

 Monocotyledons began in the Lower Car- 



