FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



571 



as its effects were assumed to be more last- 

 ing than they really are ; but we have now 

 to deal with altogether changed conditions. 

 Where infant vaccination is fairly well main- 

 tained, as it has been in Middlesbrough, it is 

 the adults who have not been revaecinated 

 who are now the chief source of danger — a 

 danger which can only be avoided by invest- 

 ing every young person with the same degree 

 of protection which we have for the last half 

 century conferred upon the greater portion 

 of our infant population." 



The Eskimo Lamp. — Mr. Walter Hough, 

 in The American Anthropologist for April, 

 gives an interesting account of the Eskimo 

 lamp, which is, it seems, the most important 

 utensil of the latter's household. There are 

 many drawbacks to the spread of a people 

 into arctic regions — the cold, the long nights, 

 the hardships of travel, scarcity of wood, 

 and, paradoxical as it may seem, the diffi- 

 culty of obtaining drinking water. This lat- 

 ter drawback is the most serious of all, and 

 were it not for the Eskimo's lamp would 

 have effectually prevented his settlement in 

 arctic regions. The typical Eskimo lamp is 

 a shallow dish of soapstone with the outline 

 of the gibbous moon. It has hollowed out 

 on the upper surface a reservoir to contain 

 oil. The rear is curved and bounded by a 

 low wall. The reservoir slopes gradually up 

 to the edge upon which the wick is laid. 

 This edge is straight. The wick is of moss, 

 rubbed to powder between the hands, and 

 carefully laid in a thin line along the wick 

 edge of the lamp. The oil in the reservoir 

 stands just at the lower margin of the wick. 

 The flame is about two inches high, and is 

 clear and smokeless if the wick is properly 

 cared for. The oil is supplied by blubber 

 melted by the heat of the lamp. With this 

 contrivance the Eskimo lights and heats his 

 house, cooks his food, and melts snow for 

 his drinking water. The lamp is peculiarly 

 the possession of the women. Each head of 

 a family must have a lamp, though two or 

 more families may live in the same hut. 

 The Eskimos have no phrase expressing a 

 greater degree of misery than " a woman 

 without a lamp." After the death of a 

 woman her lamp is placed upon her grave. 

 The lamp is only useful with fats of high 

 fuel value, such as are furnished by fish 



and seals. The wick line is found to in- 

 crease in length toward the north, fn south- 

 ern Alaska this edge is about two inches 

 long, while at Point Barrow, the most north- 

 erly point of Alaska, it is from seventeen to 

 thirty-six inches in width. In fact, this vari- 

 ation is so uniform that by examining the 

 wick edge a fairly close estimate of the lati- 

 tude in which a lamp originated can be 

 made. 



Poporatcpetl, — Popocatepetl, " the smok- 

 ing mountain," and Ixtaccihuatl, " the white 

 woman," are the highest peaks of a moun- 

 tain range or sierra about sixty miles in 

 length and eighteen in breadth, called the 

 Sierra Nevada, or Snowy Sierra of Ahualco, 

 which constitutes a barrier separating the 

 valley of Puebla from the valley of Mexico. 

 Communication is had between the valleys 

 by a saddle-shaped pass, the lowest point of 

 which is twelve thousand one hundred and 

 eighteen feet high. Popocatepetl, the fourth 

 highest mountain in North America, is a vol- 

 cano with a snow-capped lava cone, which is 

 now in the solfatara state, emitting only 

 steam and sulphur. It is frequently as- 

 cended, although it is between seventeen 

 thousand and eighteen thousand feet high, 

 and rises about five thousand feet above the 

 snow line. One of the grandest mountains 

 of the continent and presenting a magnifi- 

 cent aspect from every point of view, its 

 pride has been sadly mortified by its having 

 been reduced to be a sulphur mine. The 

 sulphur, which is obtained from the crater, is 

 mined in June and July, those months being 

 chosen with reference to the quantity of 

 snow, which is then sufficient to allow of 

 making a smooth trough on which the sul- 

 phur can be slid from the crater to the 

 ranch of Tlamacas, five thousand feet below. 

 The general features of the ascent, as Dr. 

 0. C. Farrington describes his achievement 

 of it in February, 1896, in the Bulletin of 

 the Field Columbian Museum, are not strik- 

 ingly different from those presented in the 

 ascent of other not extremely difficult snow 

 mountains. The lower slopes of the snow are 

 broken up by long tongues of exposed sand 

 on which the climbing was comparatively 

 easy, but in the last stages every step had to 

 be cut in the ice. The ice and ashes are 

 very destructive to leather, so that a single 



