568 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the vineyards, wine-cellars, and wines, whose 

 name, Fafiau, is but little changed from 

 Fufluns, the ancient Etruscan Bacchus, is 

 described as " enchantingly beautiful " and 

 given to good-natured mischief. When the 

 peasants arc gathering grapes, he comes in- 

 visibly and knocks thuir panniers all about ; 

 but if this is taken pleasantly, he replaces 

 everything, and then his ringing laughter is 

 heard. Sometimes he falls in love, and, of 

 course, always woos successfully. Teramo 

 is the spirit of merchants, thieves, messen- 

 gers, and carrier-pigeons, and corresponds 

 with Turnus, the old Etruscan Mercury. 

 Maso or Mas is Mars, not the god of war, 

 but his Etruscan prototype, a god of crops 

 and fertility. Diana preserves to this day 

 her title of queen of the witches. The great 

 mediaeval writers declare that all the Italian 

 witches asserted that they did not worship 

 Satan, but Diana and Herodia. Marcellus of 

 Bordeaux, who was court physician to the 

 Emperor Honorius in the fourth century, 

 collected and recorded a hundred magical 

 cures which he had gathered among old 

 women and peasants. Of these, Mr. Leland 

 by dint of much inquiry had found fifty in 

 practical use, and bad recovered some of them 

 in a more perfect form than that given by 

 Marcellus. Through all this lore there runs 

 the thread that all disorders and ill luck and 

 earthly mischances are caused by witchcraft, 

 and must be cured by Christian saints or 

 heathen sorcerers, of which the latter are 

 preferred. 



Allotropism in Alloys. — In his presiden- 

 tial address before the Chemical Section of 

 the British Association, Prof. Roberts Aus- 

 ten spoke of the consequences of allotropic 

 changes which result in alteration of struct- 

 ure as being very great. The case of the tin 

 regimental buttons which fell into a shape- 

 less heap when exposed to the rigorous win- 

 ter of St. Petersburg is well known. The 

 recent remarkable discovery by Hopkinson, 

 of the changes in the density of nickel- 

 steel (containing twenty-two per cent of 

 nickel) which are produced by cooling to 

 30°, affords another instance. This variety 

 of steel, after being frozen, is readily mag- 

 netizable, although it was not so before ; its 

 density, moreover, is permanently reduced 

 by no less than two per cent by the exposure 



to cold ; and it is startling to contemplate 

 the effect which would be produced by a 

 visit to the arctic regions of a ship of war 

 built in a temperate climate of ordinary 

 steel, and clad with some three thousand 

 tons of such nickel-steel armor ; the shearing 

 which would result from the expansion of 

 the armor by exposure to cold would destroy 

 the ship. The molecular behavior of alloys 

 is, indeed, most interesting. W. Spring has 

 shown, in a long series of investigations, 

 that alloys may be formed at the ordinary 

 temperature, provided that minute particles 

 of the constituent elements are submitted to 

 great pressure. W. Hallock has recently 

 given sti'ong evidence in favor of the view 

 that an alloy can be produced from its con- 

 stituent metals with but slight pressure, if 

 the temperature to which the mass is sub- 

 mitted be above the melting-point of the al- 

 loy, even though it be far below the melting- 

 point of the more easily fusible constituent. 

 A further instance is thus afforded of the 

 fact that a variation of either temperature 

 or pressure will effect the union of solids. 



The Instincts of Cattle. — Many habits of 

 the lower animals can be explained by anal- 

 ogy with our own behavior in similar cir- 

 cumstances and still more with that of sav- 

 age men. Thus the tenderness and ingenu- 

 ity that a cow shows in caring for her calf, 

 and the fierce courage that she displays in 

 its defense against foes from which she 

 would flee if alone, all find their counterparts 

 in human life. Several instincts that are 

 more difficult to account for are discussed 

 by Mr. W. H. Hudson, in a recent number 

 of Longman's Magazine. This writer ac- 

 counts for the angry excitement shown by 

 cattle on the appearance of a red cloth as 

 an outgrowth of curiosity. AVere a red flag 

 displayed in a field by itself, the animals 

 would surround it with every sign of inter- 

 est and curiosity; but should a man drape 

 himself in it, the bolder would attack him, 

 not on account of the color, but because the 

 man had drawn their attention irresistibly to 

 himself. In regard to the unerring detec- 

 tion by cattle of the spot where blood has 

 been spilled, the furious fighting over it by 

 the stronger males, the strange anxiety of 

 the whole herd to survey it, and above all 

 the weird horror expressed in the discordant 



