POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



283 



been caused by the fact that most of the 

 tribes seemed to have arrived from the 

 West Indian Islands and the Orinoco, and 

 to have followed one another to the interior, 

 where each tribe took charge of a river, 

 while almost impenetrable forests inter- 

 vened between their settlements. In an- 

 swer to a question, Mr. Im Thurm stated 

 that, though stone implements were made, 

 they were not used for any practical pur- 

 pose, and that there was no trace of their 

 having been used in any religious service. 

 They were made as curiosities, lie found 

 no trace among the red-men of any acknowl- 

 edgment of a higher power. 



Origin of tlie Whale. — Professor Flower 

 remarked, pertinently to a description by 

 Dr. Struthers in the Biological Section of 

 the British Association, of the Tay whale, 

 that the whale carried its pedigree on its 

 own body and in every part of its structure. 

 It had been thought that mammals might 

 have passed through an aquatic and marine 

 stage before they came to the land. But 

 observations of the anatomy of the whale 

 showed that this could not have been the 

 case. There could be no question whatever 

 that the whale had been derived from a 

 four-footed animal. It was a characteristic 

 of a mammal to have a hairy covering. 

 Whales were at one time thought to be an 

 exception, but it was shown, in almost ev- 

 ery one that had been examined, that at 

 some period of its life it must have had a 

 rudimentary covering, which was generally 

 found in the neighborhood of the upper 

 lip ; that covering was functionless and 

 often lost before birth. j\nothcr remark- 

 able feature was the teeth. All these 

 whales were furnished with a set of teeth, 

 rudimentary but complete, and not charac- ' 

 teristic of the fish, but of a more complete- ' 

 ly developed land mammal. These teeth j 

 entirely vanished at an early period, some- 

 times before birth ; and they were entirely 

 functionless. 



Insect Habits. — Sir John Lubbock con- 

 tributed to the recent meeting of the Brit- 

 ish Association a paper on some recent ob- 

 servations on the habits of ants, bees, and 

 wasps. One of the most interesting points 

 connected with the economy of ants was 



the manner in which they recognized their 

 friends. Not only would the ants in any 

 nest, however large, distinguish between 

 their own companions and other ants be- 

 longing to the same species, but this had 

 been shown to happen even after a separa- 

 tion of more than a year. Mr. McCook had 

 thought the faculty was due to scent, but Sir 

 John deduced reasons for believing it to be 

 otherwise. As regarded the longevity of 

 ants, he had two which he had kept ever 

 since 1874. They were then full grown, 

 and must therefore be twelve years old. 

 They were both queens and continued to lay 

 eggs, showing no signs of age, excepting, 

 perhaps, that they were a little stiff in the 

 joints. His experiments did not confirm 

 the idea that these insects had any sense of 

 direction, except perhaps in the same sense 

 in which we might be said to have one. In 

 continuation of previous experiments, Sir 

 John had taken forty ants, fed them with 

 honey, and put them down on a gravel path 

 fifty yards from their nest. They wandered 

 about in all directions, and it was obvious 

 that they had no idea which was the right 

 way home. 



Prolongation of Local Anesthesia. — 



The discovery has been made by Dr. J. 

 Leonard Corning, of New York, that local 

 anesthesia produced by the subcutaneous 

 injection of the hydrochlorate of cocaine 

 may be prolonged by annulling the local 

 circulation. The results of three experi- 

 ments, described by Dr. Corning in the " New 

 York Medical Journal," were to show, first, 

 that simple arrest of the circulation in the 

 part, shortly after injection of the anaes- 

 thetic, is sufficient to intensify and prolong 

 the anaesthesia ; second, that if the injection 

 is made after exsanguination and compres- 

 sion, there is little diffusion of the anaes- 

 thetic, and consequently a commensurate 

 diminution in the number of nerve-filaments 

 exposed to the influence of the solution; 

 and, third, that, if the injection is made a 

 few moments before exsanguination and the 

 application of the tourniquet, a sufficient 

 amount of Saturation of tissue is obtained 

 to expose a large number of nerve-filaments 

 to the influence of the anaesthetic ; and yet, 

 if the delay is not too long, there is no 

 danger of diluting or dissipating the solu- 



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