284 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pear slightly limp and lose their gloss. 

 Leaves wilted in the dark were much 

 less dangerous. 



Dr. Brinton's Contributions to 

 American Linguistics. — At the sug- 

 gestion of the late James Constantine 

 Pilling, Dr. D. G. Brinton has prepared 

 an analytical survey of his contribu- 

 tions in the field of American linguistics, 

 which have now extended over forty 

 years. The list includes seventy-one 

 titles of books and papers, of which six- 

 teen are classed as general articles and 

 works. The first four of these are oc- 

 cupied with the inquiry whether the 

 native American languages, as a group, 

 have peculiar morphological traits that 

 justify their classification as one of the 

 great divisions of human speech. Dr. 

 Brinton finds a feature — incorporation — 

 which, under the form polysynthesis, is 

 present in a marked degree in nearly 

 all of them. Another paper shows that 

 the various alleged affiliations between 

 American and Asiatic tongues are wholly 

 unfounded, and another pleads for more 

 attention to American languages. A 

 volume of nearly four hundred pages 

 — The American Race — was the first at- 

 tempt at a systematic classification of 

 all the tribes of North, Central, and 

 South America on the basis of lan- 

 guage. It defines seventy-nine linguis- 

 tic stocks in North America and sixty- 

 one in South America, pertaining to 

 nearly sixteen hundred tribes. Other 

 volumes in the list include writings, pi'ef- 

 erably on secular subjects, by natives 

 in their own languages. One contains 

 a list of native American authors, and 

 notices some of their works. Another 

 vindicates the claim of native American 

 poetry to recognition. These works 

 were followed by the Library of Aborigi- 

 nal American Literature, of which eight 

 considerable volumes were published, 

 each containing a work wholly of na- 

 tive inspiration, in a native tongue, with 

 a translation, notes, etc. Fourteen other 

 publications relate to North American 

 languages north of Mexico, thirty-two 

 to Mexican and Central American lan- 

 guages, and ten to South American and 

 Antillean languages. Many of these ar- 

 ticles were collected in 1800 and pub- 

 lished in a volume entitled Essays of an 

 Americanist. It was arranged in four 

 parts, relating respectively to Ethnol- 



ogy and Archaeology, Mythology and 

 folklore. Graphic Systems and Litera- 

 ture, and Linguistics. The value of Dr. 

 Brinton's labors will be realized by all 

 persons who know how rapidly things 

 purely native American are passing 

 away. 



Metallic Alloys of Rich Colors. — 

 A remarkable alloy of gold seventy- 

 eight parts and aluminum twenty-two 

 parts, discovered by Messrs. Roberts- 

 Austen and Hunt, has a characteristic 

 purple color which can not be imitated; 

 for if the designated proportions of the 

 constituents are varied from, the base is 

 entirely changed. The compound lacks 

 somewhat in the qualities of resistance 

 and malleability. The color is abnor- 

 mal in that it partakes of none of the 

 color features of its constituents, as is 

 the case in most combinations of metals. 

 Thus, the colors of copper alloyed with 

 zinc or tin pass gradually from red to 

 white, according to the proportions of 

 the constituent metals. In the union of 

 two metals of white or bluish-white col- 

 or, like zinc, tin, silver, and aluminum, 

 the color of the alloys is not perceptibly 

 different from that of the components — 

 that is, it continues white. The purple 

 of the gold aluminum alloy is not, how- 

 ever, the only exception to this rule. 

 xMuminum gives highly colored com- 

 pounds with several other metals, even 

 when the second metal is clearly white. 

 In the experiments of Charles Marcot, of 

 Geneva, in alloying aluminum with plat- 

 inum, palladium, nickel, and cobalt, 

 combination took place abruptly at I'ed 

 heat, with the development of an in- 

 tense temperature and a partial com- 

 bination of the aluminum; and when 

 platinum is the second metal, an explo- 

 sion is liable to occur. An alloy of sev- 

 enty-two parts of platinum and twenty- 

 eight of aluminum had a bright golden 

 or yellow color, which varied under 

 slight changes in the proportions of the 

 elements to violet green or coppery red. 

 The alloy is hard and brittle and of 

 crystalline structure. The yellow form 

 is stable, while the other forms decom- 

 pose in a short time. An alloy of sev- 

 enty-two parts palladium and twenty- 

 eight aluminum is of fine coppery rose 

 color, crystalline texture, hard and brit- 

 tle, and suffers no change with time. 

 An alloy of from seventy-five to eighty 



