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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



And in this repayment his relatives were 

 expected to aid bim ; they were deemed, in 

 fact, his sureties. Thus a thrifty and as- 

 piring burgher who, at one of these gift- 

 feasts, had emptied all his chests of their 

 accumulated stores, and had left himself 

 and his family apparently destitute, could 

 comfortably reflect, as he saw his visitors 

 depart in their well-laden canoes, that he 

 had not only greatly increased his reputa- 

 tion, but had at the same time invested all 

 his means at high interest, on excellent se- 

 curity, and was now, in fact, one of the 

 wealthiest as well as most esteemed mem- 

 bers of the community. 



An Overlooked Mode of Icelierg Forma- 

 tion. — To the familiar explanation of the for- 

 mation of icebergs must be added another. 

 Mr. Israel C. Russell, in recounting his ex- 

 pedition to Mount St. Elias, says that the 

 foot of a glacier extends out under the mud- 

 dy water, sometimes for a thousand feet or 

 more, in front of the visible part of the 

 ice-clifEs. When this extension of the ice- 

 foot has reached the point where the buoy- 

 ancy of the ice at the bottom exceeds its 

 strength, huge pieces break off and rise to 

 the surface. The sudden appearance of 

 these masses of ice is always startling. 

 " At first it seems," says Mr. Russell, " as if 

 some huge sea-monster had risen from the 

 deep and was lashing the waters into foam." 

 Soon it can be seen that a blue island has 

 appeared above the surface, carrying up 

 hundreds of tons of water, which flows down 

 its sides in cataracts of foam. The frag- 

 ments which rise from the bottom in this 

 manner are usually larger than those broken 

 from the faces of the ice-cliffs, sometimes 

 measuring two hundred or three hundred 

 feet in diameter. Their size and the sudden- 

 ness with which they rise would insure cer- 

 tain destruction of a vessel venturing too 

 near the treacherous ice-walls.. 



Artificial Globular Lightning.— M. Plant6 

 has used his secondary batteries to repro- 

 duce on a small scale the phenomenon of 

 globular lightning. M. von Lepel has 

 shown that it can be obtained also by means 

 of static electricity given by an induction 

 machine. When two small copper wires 

 from the poles of a strong machine are held 



at a certain distance from the opposite faces 

 of a plate of mica, ebonite, or glass, small 

 luminous red balls will be seen moving here 

 and there, at times slowly, at others rapidly, 

 and sometimes in a stationary position. The 

 most remarkable effects are got with a plate 

 of glass or disk of paper rubbed with par- 

 afiine. M. von Lepel believes that the vehicles 

 of the luminous phenomena are small par- 

 ticles of liquid or dust. A slight current of 

 air will remove the spherules, which "will 

 disappear faintly whistling. The experi- 

 menter remarks, further, that the phenomena 

 are of weak tension. When this is increased, 

 the luminous balls arc no longer obtained, 

 but instead of them the ordinary spark-dis- 

 charge. 



Contamination of Graveyard Soil. — As a 



part of the inquiry as to whether the soil of 

 graveyards is hable to become infectious and 

 dangerous. Dr. Justin Karlinski, of Kon- 

 jica, Herzegovina, has undertaken to deter- 

 mine whether the organs of the body under- 

 go any change in temperature during the 

 natural process of decomposition after burial 

 in the earth, and especially whether any dif- 

 ference appears in the case of infected sub- 

 jects. His results show that the putrefac- 

 tive process is invariably accompanied by a 

 rise of temperature above that of the soil 

 around, and that the rise is higher when the 

 parts examined have been taken from bodies 

 that have succumbed to infectious diseases 

 than from other bodies. He found that 

 typhoid bacilli may retain their vitality in 

 the decomposing spleen for three months, 

 and are annihilated only by rapid putrefac- 

 tion. The author says that he had pre- 

 viously shown that typhoid bacilli could re- 

 tain their vitality for five months in soil, 

 but that if the earth were thoroughly satu- 

 rated with rain-water they are destroyed in 

 from seven to fourteen days. The part 

 played by the soil in the origin of epidemics 

 should not, he thinks, be underestimated, 

 since typhoid bacilli can exist in water only 

 for a comparatively short time. 



Melanesian Ghosts. — According to Dr. R. 

 H. Codington, in his studies of their An- 

 thropology and Folk Lore, the Melanesians 

 have no conception of the devil as an evil 

 spirit, but are possessed by the belief in a 



