43° 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



hours, and be fairly warm after seven 

 hours. Some of the hot water can be given 

 to the injured person to drink, with the 

 addition of beef-extract, spirits, cocoa, etc. 

 lie mentions also a particular pattern of 

 kerosene stable-lamp, which, if placed inside 

 a covered ambulance-wagon, would materially 

 raise the temperature of the interior. 



Boys' Color-Knowledge.— Some test ex- 

 aminations recently made in one of the Eng- 

 lish board-schools indicate that too much 

 may have been made out of color-blindness, 

 and that want of instruction rather than 

 want of discrnuination may be at fault in 

 many of the cases where disability is sup- 

 posed to exist. Some of the pupils at the 

 examination in question were awkward at 

 first, and made great mistakes, but needed 

 only a little setting right to prove that they 

 could distinguish the colors correctly. One 

 boy was in the habit of calling black white 

 and white black ; as for the other colors, he 

 had never been particular to name them, or 

 think about them exactly, supposing it to be 

 a matter of little importance. Of a hundred 

 boys examined upon the seven principal col- 

 ors, not one showed any real suspicion of 

 color-blindness. Of two hundred boys ex- 

 amined in graduating and matching shades, 

 none found any difficulty after practicing for 

 about an hour ; and every one was soon 

 able to distinguish all the ordinary colors 

 without the least difficulty. 



Vitality of Mierolies la Water. — Accord- 

 ing to Prof. Frankland's relation of experi- 

 ments on the vitality of various microbes in 

 water, great differences in behavior are ob- 

 servable. Of Koch's comma spirillum of 

 Asiatic cholera, Finkler-Prior's comma spi- 

 rillum of European cholera, and the Bacillus 

 pyocyaneus, \i\\ic\i produces the greenish-blue 

 coloring in abscesses, the latter exhibits 

 much greater vitality than either of the other 

 two. It lives and increases many times for 

 more than fifty days. Koch's comma spiril- 

 lum disappeared from pure water in nine 

 days, but flourished and increased in Lon- 

 don sewage ; while Tinkler's spirillum disap- 

 peared in less than one day. In some cases 

 when organisms not the natural inhabitants 

 of water are introduced into it, a large pro- 

 portion of them are at first destroyed, but a 



multiplication in numbers takes place after- 

 ward. The Bacillus anthracis in its bacillus 

 form is destroyed with comparative case, but 

 the spores have remarkable vitality. Mr. 

 Arthur Downes has remarked how, in tubes 

 containing more than one form of microbe, 

 the first dominant form will gradually grow 

 more and more feeble until it seems to be- 

 come extinct and is succeeded by races of a 

 different kind. 



The Arts of Life in Anthropology. — The 



one great feature which it is desirable to 

 emphasize in anthropological museums, said 

 Lieutenaut-Gcneral Pitt-Rivers, in the British 

 Association, is evolution. To impress upon 

 the mind the continuity and historical se- 

 quence of the arts of life is one of the most 

 important lessons to be inculcated. It is 

 only of late j-ears that the development of 

 social institutions has at all entered into the 

 design of educational histories. The arts of 

 life have never formed part of any educa- 

 tional series. Yet, as a study of evolution, 

 they are the most important of all, because 

 in them the connecting links between the 

 various phases of development can be better 

 displayed. Laws, customs, and institutions 

 may, perhaps, be regarded as of greater im- 

 portance than the arts of life, but for anthro- 

 pological purposes they are of less value, 

 because in them, previous to the introduction 

 of writing, the different phases of develop- 

 ment, as soon as they are superseded by new 

 ideas, are entirely lost, and can not be re- 

 produced except in imagination ; whereas 

 in the arts of life, in which ideas are em- 

 bodied in material forms, the connecting 

 finks are in many cases preserved, and can 

 be replaced in their proper sequence by 

 means of antiquities. For this reason the 

 study of the arts of life ought always to 

 precede the study of social evolution, in 

 order that the student may learn to make 

 allowance for missing links, and to avoid 

 sophisms and the supposition of laws and 

 tendencies which have no existence in reality. 

 To ascertain the true causes for all the phe- 

 nomena of human life is the main object of 

 anthropological research, and it is obvious 

 that this is better done in those branches in 

 which the continuity is best preserved. In 

 the study of natural history existing animals 

 are regarded as present phases in the devel- 



