864 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of Education before the Congress of Educa- 

 tors at the New Orleans Fair in 1885, and 

 has been published in various editions since. 

 The author is now preparing a new edition 

 for the Chicago World's Fair, in which sev- 

 eral of the chapters will be rewritten and 

 other chapters added on Fast Running and 

 The World's Fair itself. 



The Eleventh International Congress of 

 Medicine will meet in Rome, September 24 

 to October 1, 1893, and will be divided into 

 nineteen sections. The price of membership 

 for physicians and men of other professions 

 interested in the labors of the Congress will 

 be five dollars. The official languages of the 

 Congress will be Italian, French, English, 

 and German, and official bulletins of pro- 

 ceedings will be published daily in those 

 languages. Papers and communications for 

 the Congress must be announced by June 

 30th, and abstracts must be sent to the com- 

 mittee by July 31st. Dr. A. Jacobi, 110 

 West Thirty-fourth Street, New York, is 

 chairman of the American Committee of the 

 Congress. 



A paper read before the Society of Arts 

 by F. Seymour Haden, in a temper decidedly 

 not judicial, is devoted to the vindication of 

 earth burial as the best method of disposing 

 of the dead, and to the condemnation of cre- 

 mation as involving the possibility of crimi- 

 nal poisoning passing often undetected by the 

 destruction of all the evidences of it ; while 

 they would be preserved and accessible for a 

 substantially unlimited time under any method 

 of burial. Much of the paper is devoted to 

 showing that burial in destructible casings 

 instead of practically indestructible ones, as 

 under the present system, insures the speedy, 

 harmless restoration of all the elements of 

 the body to their normal condition, and is 

 free from all the objections that may be 

 urged against the present system or against 

 cremation. 



An incident related recently in the Trini- 

 dad Field Naturalists' club goes to indicate 

 that the bite of the tarantula is not especial- 

 ly poisonous. A laborer was badly bitten in 

 the foot, and was much frightened. He was 

 taken to the infirmary, hopping all the way 

 on the other foot ; a fomentation of water 

 and spirits of ammonia was applied, and he 

 was given a dose of ether mixture. He ate 

 his dinner heartily about two hours later, and 

 slept well at night. In the morning he com- 

 plained of no pain, and went to work as usual. 

 No local swelling or inflammation was ob- 

 served, and but little pain at any time. Fright 

 was the only ill effect. 



Prof. Cahn, of Breslau, claims to have 

 found the immediate cause of the spontane- 

 ous combustion of hay in the heat-producing 

 action of a parasitic fungus called Aspergillus 

 fumigatus, a plant already known to be de- 

 structive to the germination of barley by the 



heat it produces. A heat of 95° Fahr. having 

 been already induced by the natural chemical 

 changes, the aspergillus steps in and raises 

 the temperature to 140° Fahr., after which 

 combustion is almost inevitable. 



A theory, founded on the earlier anal- 

 yses, that peach yellows was caused by a de- 

 ficiency of phosphorus and potash, prevailed 

 several years ago, and a treatment with bone 

 phosphate, muriate of potash, and kieserite, 

 based upon it, was in vogue for several years. 

 Analyses made during the last four years, un- 

 der the direction of the Department of Agri- 

 culture, while they agree among themselves, 

 are contradictory of this theory. Experiment- 

 al evidence, derived from opposite modes of 

 treatment of peach trees, presented by Dr. 

 Erwin F. Smith, in a paper on The Chemistry 

 of Peach Yellows, is likewise contradictory 

 of and depreciatory of the value of the treat- 

 ment based upon it ; and the conclusion is 

 declared by Dr. Smith that we are to look for 

 the cause of peach yellows and the means of 

 prevention in a different direction. 



Yawning, which is regarded by most per- 

 sons as merely a sign of weariness or sleepi- 

 ness, is considered by M. Naegeli as a thera- 

 peutic agency. He believes that a series of 

 yawns, with the stretching that accompanies 

 them, would make an excellent morning and 

 evening exercise. The lungs can not fail to 

 be benefited by the inflation they get. 



According to Mr. George A. Allen, the 

 Mohaves believe that the spirits of their 

 dead go up in smoke to the " White Moun- 

 tain " when their bodies are cremated, and 

 that property which is thrown into the flames 

 goes up with them. They also have a belief 

 that all the Mohaves who die and are not cre- 

 mated turn into owls, and when they hear an 

 owl hooting at night they think it is the spirit 

 of some dead Mohave returned. 



The Smithsonian Institution has printed 

 a paper by Dr. J. F. Snyder describing an urn 

 containing incinerated human bones, which 

 was dug out of an ancient mound in Geor- 

 gia. The urn or vase is nearly conical, eleven 

 inches and a half high, and was covered by 

 an inverted bell-shaped vessel fifteen inches 

 and three quarters in height. The ashes 

 nearly half filled the vase, and mingled with 

 them were calcined human teeth and frag- 

 ments of bones. Lying on the surface of 

 these remains were a quantity of wampum 

 and several small pearls that had been pierced 

 for stringing. 



Many farmers in cutting potatoes for 

 planting take care to follow some rule in re- 

 gard to the number of eyes to a piece. Ex- 

 periments made last summer at Purdue Uni- 

 versity Experiment Station show that the 

 number of eyes is immaterial, even eyes that 

 are cut in two sending up plenty of good 

 stalks, but that the weight of the pieces is 

 the important matter. 



