NOTES. 



863 



shot a bullfinch by going into the hedge, 

 finding a rabbit, and bringing it to him. An- 

 other dog, which knew tame ducks and that 

 they were not hunted, but had no acquaint- 

 ance with wild ones, was much disgusted 

 when its master shot a teal, believing he had 

 made a mistake, and would have nothing to 

 do with the game. " He behaved in exactly 

 the same way when we shot a black rabbit ; 

 nothing would persuade him that it was not 

 a cat ; and he would do no serious work for 

 the rest of the day." The writer tells also 

 of dogs that thought it beneath their dignity 

 to chase rats, except when their masters 

 were engaged in the sport ; and he speaks 

 of the very obvious dislike of dogs to be 

 laughed at. 



Suicidal Ingenuity. — A curious list and 

 description of ingenious methods which in- 

 sane patients with suicidal tendencies have 

 adopted for disposing of themselves is given 

 by Dr. H. Sutherland in a paper on the pre- 

 vention of suicide in the insane. Patients 

 with suicidal tendencies should be put under 

 surveillance and constant attendance at once. 

 Care must be taken against all imaginable 

 and even some unimagined things with which 

 they might contrive to kill themselves — 

 medicines, pills, lotions, and plasters, and the 

 patients' taking the prescribed doses, should 

 be looked after, lest they by some craft accu- 

 mulate a quantity sufficient to kill and take 

 it all at once ; keys, razors, knives and forks, 

 fire-irons, even brooms, broken glass, and 

 crockery, should be kept out of their hands ; 

 and nails, wires, ropes, sash-lines, bell-pulls, 

 tapes, and string, lest they hang themselves. 

 Even a piece of slate pencil or an old spoon 

 may be used for the purpose of strangula- 

 tion, by being attached to a string and then 

 pushed through a keyhole and pulled taut. 

 Patients working at their trades require con- 

 stant watching and daily examination, for 

 their tools and materials may be made to af- 

 ford facilities for killing themselves. In fact, 

 the ingenuity of these people can be matched 

 only by ingenious vigilance and alertness. 



Camphor. — The camphor tree, according 

 to the United States consular report from 

 Osaka, Japan, is a tree of the laurel family 

 growing in southern Japan, the wood of 

 which is valuable in ship-building. It grows 



in mountainous regions far from the sea. It 

 is a well-proportioned, handsome evergreen, 

 its elliptical, slightly dentate leaf turning a 

 lighter color for one or two months in the 

 spring. The berries grow in bunches. The 

 tree is cut down for the collection of the 

 camphor, but the law requires that it be re- 

 placed by another. It is then cut up into 

 chips and steamed. The camphor and oil 

 extracted by the steaming are passed through 

 a connecting tube into a second receiver, and 

 thence into a third, which is divided into two 

 compartments, one above the other. These 

 compartments are separated by a perforated 

 partition, which gives passage to the water 

 and the oil, while the camphor is deposited 

 on a layer of straw provided for it. It is 

 then separated from the straw and prepared 

 for sale. The oil which is drawn out from 

 the lower compartment is used for illumi- 

 nation. 



NOTES. 



The ethnographic exhibit at the Chicago 

 Fair will be partly within the main building 

 and partly outdoors — the collections being 

 within and other features without. The 

 American department will include specimens 

 of native tribes living their usual life and 

 engaged in their usual occupations ; relief 

 maps of the most famous earthworks of the 

 Mississippi Valley ; models of the mysterious 

 structures of Yucatan and Central America, 

 with casts of the hieroglyphics ; Peruvian 

 mummies ; palaeolithic implements and relics 

 of the mound-builders ; photographs of 

 mounds and ruins from Alaska to Tierra del 

 Fuego; illustrations of primitive religions, 

 games, and folk lore ; and numismatic, zo- 

 ological, geographical, and natural history 

 collections in general. Arrangements are 

 being made to have the State historical ex- 

 hibits placed in this department. 



Since noticing Mr. Edward Atkinson's 

 book on The Science of Nutrition, we have 

 received a good many letters asking where 

 the work can be obtained, information that 

 we were unable to give when the notice was 

 printed. We can now state that Messrs. 

 Damrell & Upham, 283 Washington Street, 

 Boston, are the publishers, and the price of 

 the book is fifty cents. 



An address on The Railroad in Education, 

 delivered by Prof. Alexander Hogg, of Fort 

 Worth, at the Texas Teachers' Association, 

 in 1883, attracted attention at once by the 

 breadth of its views and the novel sugges- 

 tions it embodied. It was delivered again — 

 rewritten — by request of the Commissioner 



