P OP ULAR MIS CELL ANY. 



859 



by her poses and mimicry the symbols and 

 sacred legends of the ancient literature, the 

 original myths which, having undergone a 

 series of transformations, have gained a 

 foothold in the popular conception and be- 

 come fairy stories. The myths, the primi- 

 tive forms of which are fixed by the dancing- 

 girls in the Angkhor bas-reliefs, are the 

 same as are represented in legendary form 

 in the royal festivals, and as may be wit- 

 nessed by any visitor at the palace of King 

 Norodom I of Cambodia. While a choir of 

 women chant the legends from the ancient 

 sacred poems, other actors silently feign, in 

 postures religiously prescribed by tradition, 

 the emotions they are supposed to feel and 

 the different phases of the drama repre- 

 sented. Thus, they interpret, by the same 

 attitudes as were engraved upon the stone 

 two thousand years ago, the myths and 

 primitive beliefs that were vital in the imagi- 

 nation of the Aryans when they first entered 

 the peninsula. 



Effects of Cold on Microbes.— Mr. J. J. 



Coleman and Professor J. G. McKendrick 

 have been making experiments on the effects 

 of cold upon microphytes. With a mechan- 

 ical freezer they produced a cold of 80° be- 

 low zero, and lower, to which they exposed 

 putrescible substances for various lengths 

 of time ; then the same substances were ex- 

 posed to the conditions of temperature, etc., 

 under which putrefaction is developed, and 

 the results were observed. The experiments 

 ■were made with meats, fresh and canned, 

 wine, milk, beer, ale, meat-juice, neutral- 

 ized vegetable infusions, putrefying fluids, 

 gelatinous infusions of meat with grape-su- 

 gar, etc., in exposure to cold of from 80" to 

 120° below zero, for from a few hours to a 

 hundred hours or more. The results were 

 in every case substantially the same. The 

 putrefactive process was checked and made 

 slower for a time, but in no case were the mi- 

 cro-organisms so thoroughly destroyed but 

 that putrefaction set in again after a greater 

 or less length of exposure to a temperature 

 favorable to it. The conclusion of the ex- 

 perimenters was that the degree of cold they 

 employed may perhaps be competent to de- 

 stroy living, developed organisms, but not 

 to kill the germs. A cold-blooded animal 

 — a frog — was frozen solid bv a half-hour's 



exposure to a temperature of from —20° to 

 —30', but recovered on being thawed out, 

 while after twenty minutes' exposure to 

 — 100° it failed to recover. A warm-blooded 

 animal — a rabbit — was not frozen by an 

 hour's exposure to —100°, but its bodily tem- 

 perature became reduced from 99° to 43°. 



Democracy In the Bigh-Scbool. — In a 



report on city schools, the late Mr. John D. 

 Philbrick accounts for the rapid growth of 

 public sentiment in favor of the high-school, 

 which has not been confined to any one sec- 

 tion of the country, by observing that these 

 schools naturally find favor in a democratic 

 community, because they are the most truly 

 democratic of all our institutions. "Noth- 

 ing is more common than to see pupils, rep- 

 resenting the extremes in the social scale, 

 sitting side by side in the high-school class- 

 es. I have seen the son of the cultured and 

 wealthy merchant and the son of a very 

 poor immigrant going together from the 

 same class in the grammar-school to the 

 same class in the high-school, the former 

 spending his pocket-money to buy the requi- 

 site outfit of clothes and books for the lat- 

 ter. I have seen young ladies coming from 

 families of the first rank, not only in re- 

 spect to culture and wealth, but also in re- 

 spect to ancestral pretensions, passing the 

 three-years course in the girls' high-school 

 side by side with the daughter of the laborer 

 and the washer-woman. In a suburban town 

 I have seen the daughter of a wealthy manu- 

 facturer procuring by subscription the funds 

 to enable a classmate, the worthy son of a 

 poor Irish farmer, to obtain the clothing 

 needful to make it practicable for him to 

 perform the part assigned him on graduat- 

 ing-day. At this same school on graduating- 

 day I have heard the salutatory address by 

 the daughter of an English immigrant la- 

 borer, who can neither read nor write, and 

 the valedictory by the daughter of the 

 wealthiest capitalist in town, while the most 

 meritorious performance on the occasion 

 was by a sister of the young man referred 

 to. This young man, it may be added, who 

 has been during the five or six years since 

 his graduation most industriously at work 

 on his father's little farm, is an ardent 

 friend of the high-school, and he regards 

 the ' idea that education unfits a man for 



