858 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



27tb passed over Japan and the Aleutian 

 Archipelago, and entered the United States 

 October luth. Crossing the Rocky Mountain 

 range, it proceeded through the Northern 

 States and Canada to Labrador and Davis 

 Strait. In the Atlantic it was joined on the 

 1 Sth by another disturbance which had come 

 up from the Atlantic tropics, the junction 

 of the two being followed by a cessation of 

 progressive movement from the lOth to the 

 25th. During this period a severe gale 

 which passed along the southern counties 

 of England on the morning of the 24th — a 

 storm the forecasting of which was shown 

 to be impossible — was formed. Following 

 in the wake of this storm the parent cyclone 

 reached the French coast on the 27th, its 

 advent being marked by violent gales and 

 extensive floods over the whole of Western 

 and Central Europe and Algeria. Passing 

 through France and the Netherlands, the 

 disturbance showed signs of exhaustion, and 

 on November 1st, in the Baltic, it quietly 

 dispersed, after accomplishing a journey of 

 more than sixteen thousand miles in thirty- 

 six days. 



Principles of Holiday Rest. — Writing 

 about "The Misuse of Holidays," Dr. An- 

 drew Wilson remarks that there is a w-iso 

 method of spending our leisure time, as 

 there is a foolish and body-wearing fashion 

 of dealing with it. Rest, in the holiday 

 sense, does not mean absolute inertness, 

 but repose of the faculties, powers, and en- 

 ergies which are ordinarily exerted in our 

 daily associations. It includes and makes 

 allowance for the bringing into play of 

 fresh muscles, new thoughts, and novel ex- 

 periences of men, cities, sports, and sur- 

 roundings at large. To the bringing into 

 play of these new faculties, little used in 

 our usual employments, is added the stimu- 

 lus of the pure air and fresh scenery among 

 which they are exerted. Hence we under- 

 stand that holiday rest implies healthy ac- 

 tivity of powers which, but for the oppor- 

 tunity it affords, would be apt to lie dor- 

 mant and unused. In this view of the ob- 

 ject of rest it would be a thorough mistake 

 for a busy man not an invalid to bury him- 

 self in some dull resort where he will sim- 

 ply languish, without the slightest spark of 

 interest being evoked by his surroundings. 



Equally erroneous is the ordinary hurried 

 " tour," in which we go with a rush from 

 place to place, gulping down novelties as 

 we would bolt a ten-minute railroad-station 

 dinner, without giving ourselves time ade- 

 quately to digest anything and really enjoy 

 it. Young people are apt to abuse their 

 holidays by over-exerling themselves at 

 some particular sport or exercise. " It is 

 difficult to overdo exercise in the case of 

 young and healthy peojjle, but the walking 

 tour may nevertheless be overdone, the cy- 

 cling excursion may be of too extended a 

 nature, and the yachting or boating may be 

 fraught with just a little too much exposure 

 to wind and weather." It is important that 

 the place chosen for spending the holiday 

 be suitable to personal wants and constitu- 

 tion. On these subjects every one has his 

 own taste and his physical and psychical 

 idiosyncrasies, and they should be regarded. 



Symbolism of Arcbitectnral Ornament 

 and Daneing-Girls. — M. Edmond Fuchs haa 

 remarked a connection between the pecul- 

 iarities in the ornamentation of the ancient 

 Cambodian architecture and the mythology 

 of the builders. While the Egyptians and 

 Greeks looked for their types of beauty in 

 geometrical relations and numeiical harmo- 

 nies, the Indians sought them in the repio- 

 duction of living forms. In a balustrade 

 they would represent a serpent stretching 

 itself along perhaps hundreds of yards, with 

 a row of broad-shouldered giants standing 

 at intervals to support it. The form of the 

 same serpent may be found carved on the 

 pediment, its head jutting out at repeated 

 intervals to mark the cornice. The walls of 

 the monuments are covered with bas-reliefs 

 representing theocratic svinbols and inci- 

 dents in the national history ; and they are 

 often pregnant with religious admonitions 

 in the shape of representations of the pun- 

 ishments of hell. In the sacred inclosure 

 of the Angkhor Wat, the Kmer sculptor 

 has employed all his skill in depicting the 

 refinements of the tortures to which guilty 

 souls are condemned. A symbol occurring 

 profusely, and which was imposed on the 

 artists by the essential conditions of Ori- 

 ental life, is that of the dancing-girl, a kind 

 of hieratic character in Indo-China, whose 

 function it was to perpetuate and interpret 



