POPULAR MISCELLANY, 



855 



him as the most feasible way for securing a 

 provision of heavy ordnance is, for the Gov- 

 ernment to make arrangements for obtain- 

 ing a supply of tempered steel from private 

 industries, and provide for the fabrication 

 of the guns — that is, for the machining and 

 assembling of the parts, and the sighting of 

 the guns — in its own factories, of which 

 there should be two, one for the army and 

 one for the navy. For this purpose appro- 

 priations should be made immediately for 

 the purchase of steel, so that manufacturers 

 may prepare to furnish it. 



Scorpion-Lore verified. — A correspond- 

 ent of " Land and Water," who has lived in 

 Jamaica, has verified some of the curious 

 stories that are told about scorpions. Hav- 

 ing found one of these creatures among some 

 old papers, he tried the experiment of blow- 

 ing upon it, to test the verity of the tradi- 

 tion that a scorpion will not move under 

 such circumstances. Somewhat to the experi- 

 menter's astonishment, the animal stopped 

 at once, and flattened himself close to 

 the paper on which he had been running, 

 and would not move even when he was 

 prodded with a pencil, or the paper to which 

 he clung was shaken. As soon as the blow- 

 ing was discontinued, the scorpion advanced 

 cautiously, only to stop again at the slight- 

 est breath. Another experiment was made 

 with regard to the readiness of scorpions to 

 sting themselves to death. A circle of burn- 

 ing sticks was laid three yards in diameter, 

 and the scorpion was placed in the center of 

 it. The fire was not so hot but that the tem- 

 perature was endurable within a few inches 

 of it, and the center of the circle was cool. 

 The scorpion made several desperate efforts 

 to escape, and finding it could not, " retired 

 almost into the exact center of the circle, 

 and there in a tragic manner raised his tail 

 till the sting or spur was close to his head, 

 gave himself two deliberate prods in the 

 back of his neck, and thus miserably per- 

 ished by his own hand." An accidental ob- 

 servation enabled the writer to verify the 

 story that the young of scorpions live upon 

 the back of their mother. While he was 

 playing billiards, something fell from the 

 roof of the building upon the table. It 

 proved to be a female scorpion, and from it 

 ran away in every direction a number of 



perfectly formed scorpions, about a quarter 

 of an inch long, of which thirty-eight were 

 killed. The mother was in the throes of 

 death, her body having been entirely eaten 

 away by the brood. The negro attendant of 

 the billiard-room said that the young scor- 

 pions always lived thus at the expense of 

 their mother's life. 



Local Variations in Thermometers. — 



Mr. H. A. Paul has called attention to dis- 

 crepancies in the observations of tempera- 

 tures which can not be covered by the ordi- 

 nary precautions in the exposure and read- 

 ing of thermometers, nor even by those more 

 carefully devised ones recommended by Mr. 

 IT. A. Hazen, of the Signal-Service Office, in 

 his recent paper on " Thermometer Expos- 

 ure." According to Professor T. C. Menden- 

 hall, of the Ohio State Weather Service, " the 

 means of the thermometrical readings of the 

 twenty State Service stations on the nights of 

 the 21st and 25th of January, 1884, differed 

 by respectively 12-4° and 14''7° Fahr. from 

 those of the four Signal-Service stations. At 

 Columbus a difference of 27° appeared be- 

 tween the reading of a thermometer on the 

 north side of a stone building, and that of 

 the State Service instrument in an open lot 

 three miles distant. This circumstance in- 

 dicates that the true minimum can not be 

 got in a city or to the leeward of it when 

 a moderate breeze is blowing. It may be 

 questioned also whether exposure near the 

 ground, where the conditions must vary with 

 the local character of the surface, can be 

 relied upon as a measure of the average 

 state of the atmosphere for a few hundred 

 or a few thousand feet overhead. Hence a 

 plan of exposure on high, open scaffoldings 

 would be highly desirable. At any rate, me- 

 teorological stations, especially those of the 

 Signal Service, which is engaged in predict- 

 ing the weather conditions for large areas, 

 will have to be moved into the country, and 

 probably to moderately elevated points, be- 

 fore the best results can be obtained." 



The Great Bore of the Amazon. — Mr. 



John C. Branner, formerly of the Imperial 

 Geological Commission of Brazil, has pub- 

 lished a paper on the pororoca, or bore, of 

 the Amazon, a manifestation of force pecul- 

 iar to the northern division of the mouth of 



