POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



57i 



sarily confined to the molting periods, the 

 stages of growth coincide with the stages of 

 change in organization, and there is none of 

 the indefiniteness which often characterizes 

 the different larval stages of animals with a 

 more continuous metomorphosis. On the 

 contrary, the nature of each change is as 

 sharply defined and as characteristic as the 

 structure of the adult itself. As the molt- 

 ing period is frequently a time of inactivi- 

 ty, the animal may then undergo profound 

 changes without inconvenience, and the suc- 

 cessive steps in the metamorphosis of an 

 arthropod are not only well marked but often 

 very profound as well. 



The Bantn. — More than thirty-five years 

 have elapsed since the term Bantu has been 

 applied to a large and widespread family of 

 African languages ; but it is little known ex- 

 cept to specialists. There is no Bantu coun- 

 try, no nation of that name ; the word has 

 become an ethnographical but hardly a geo- 

 graphical expression. And yet, after a little 

 explanation, says The Athenaeum, it will be 

 found so pregnant of meaning, so express- 

 ive of the hundred and more languages to 

 which it applies, that it is not likely ever to 

 be superseded. Bantu is the plural of 

 rrm-nlu, the general term for a human being 

 common, with hardly any modification, to 

 the languages spoken throughout South Af- 

 rica, "from the Keiskamma River to the 

 equator on the east, and from Walfish Bay 

 to the Old Kalabar River on the fifth paral- 

 lel of north latitude in the west " — that is, to 

 the whole of the southern half of that vast 

 continent, with the sole exception of the ter- 

 ritories occupied by the Hottentot and Bush- 

 man tribes. The term Bantu, it should be 

 added, is mainly used by the natives when 

 speaking of themselves in contradistinction 

 to white people. One of the various charac- 

 teristics of these languages is to mark the 

 grammatical categories almost exclusively by 

 prefixes ; and another to regulate the build- 

 ing up of sentences by certain laws of al- 

 literation, the so-called " concords." It is, 

 moreover, a remarkable fact that there is 

 common to all these languages a great re- 

 semblance, not only of grammatical forms, 

 but also of words, and, to a certain extent, 

 of idioms, so that it is in some cases difficult 

 to decide whether any two languages, though 



separated by wide tracts of country, do not 

 actually stand in the relation of mere dia- 

 lects. Indeed, as to closeness of kinship, 

 the Bantu languages can far more fitly be 

 compared to the Neo Latin or Slavonic than 

 to the Indo-European languages. There are 

 on the northwestern confines of the Bantu 

 field, and beyond, a number of languages 

 somewhat akin to the Bantu, to which Mr. 

 Torrend, in his Comparative Grammar of the 

 South African Bantu Languages, assigns the 

 name of semi-Bantu. They stand in the 

 same relation to the Bantu as the Melanesian 

 languages do to the Malayo-Polynesian. 



Intemperance in Cycling. — Noticing some 

 recent extraordinary achievements in cycling 

 — such as the conveyance of a dispatch from 

 Chicago to New York in one hundred and 

 eight hours and the covering of four hundred 

 and thirteen miles in twenty-four hours — The 

 Lancet inquires into the cost of such ex- 

 ploits, and answers : " The cost to the rider 

 is, we say at once, altogether unwarrantable, 

 for during the twenty-four hours in which a 

 rider is occupied in covering four hundred 

 miles his heart knows no rest from full ac- 

 tivity, and the elastic coat of every artery in 

 his body is in full tension. In some instances 

 such is the tension that the man literally pro- 

 pels himself in what may be called blindness. 

 His legs work automatically and his course is 

 directed in a manner very little different. 

 When a bicyclist was unfortunately killed 

 from an accident caused by fast riding, a 

 witness said, on oath, that the rider was go- 

 ing so fast and was so intent on the race he 

 did not hear witness until it was too late, that 

 is to say, until he got within two yards of a 

 cart into which he ran, when he altered his 

 whole position, called out ' Oh ! ' and coming 

 into collision received the fatal injury. In 

 another instance, where one of the long and 

 sleepless rides was carried out, the rider was 

 seized with vomiting, which never ceased 

 during the whole of the effort. He, too, lost 

 the guiding power of his senses, and for some 

 miles tugged on as if he were blind, tearing 

 away, in fact, in a kind of trance, his higher 

 nervous centers paralyzed and his body re- 

 taining its life and mere animal power, held 

 living by the respiratory center and the heart, 

 they also being taxed to the very extremity 

 of danger." Young men may occasionally do 



