570 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



teorite and meteorite. At this point the di- 

 rect evidence of the spectroscope fails us. 

 The force of gravity which has drawn the 

 meteorites gradually together must still con- 

 tinue to operate, but as its operations be- 

 come more intense the collisions will be- 

 come more frequent, until at last the me- 

 teorites are completely volatilized by the 

 beat evolved, and in that case the star be- 

 comes a mass of incandescent vapor at a 

 transcendental temperature. We know that 

 such stars exist, but we can not produce 

 their spectra in the laboratory because we 

 have no means of obtaining the tempera- 

 ture required. The condensation is now- 

 complete, and the highest temperature capa- 

 ble of being evolved by the forces at work 

 has been attained. When gravity has re- 

 sulted in the complete volatilization of the 

 gravitating bodies its power is exhausted, 

 and the process of cooling must thenceforth 

 set in. This stage is exhibited in the stars 

 of Class II, of which our sun is the most fa- 

 miliar example. The stars in Vogel's Class 

 III6 once more exhibit spectra capable of 

 approximate reproduction in the laboratory, 

 and thus show that they have returned to a 

 temperature no longer transcendental. The 

 last stage of all is that of stars, or bodies 

 associated with the stars, so cool as no 

 longer to be incandescent. The spectro- 

 scope tells us nothing of them, but there are 

 good evidences of their existence. Is this 

 the end ? We can not say so with any con- 

 fidence. We have no right to say that col- 

 lisions can not occur between the larger 

 bodies as well as between the meteorites. 

 Then " the cycle of the universe would be 

 complete, and we might say of the Cosmos 

 as the geologist Ilutton said of the earth — 

 that it exhibited no trace of a beginning, 

 and no evidence of an end. This, however, 

 is pure speculation." 



Antiquity of North American Flora. — 



Reasons are adduced by Mr. A. T. Drum- 

 mond, in his discussion of the distribution 

 of British Xorth American plants, for sup- 

 posing that America was the starting-point 

 of that phase of the vegetation which, in 

 its later development, has become the flora 

 of to-day. The first undoubted evidences 

 of this flora, on any considerable scale, are 

 found in the Lcda clays of the Ottawa Val- 



ley. The Eocene flora resembles, not so 

 much the Eocene as the later Miocene of 

 Europe. Seeing that the Eocene and Upper 

 Cretaceous of North America, in the resem- 

 blance of their flora to that of northern tem- 

 perate America of to-d;ij', are older than the 

 European Cretaceous and Eocene, that it was 

 only in later epochs in Europe that the ge- 

 neric identity with North American plants 

 became so very distinctly marked, and that 

 in Europe many of the genera of the Pliocene 

 identical with those of to-day have since 

 become extinct, "there seems a possible 

 presumption," says the author, " quite apart 

 from that derivable from their present 

 range, that some of these identical European 

 and American plantsjmay be older in Ameri- 

 ca, and being northern temperate in range 

 may have originated in northern temperate 

 America." 



The Peabody Mnseam. — The latest — the 

 twentieth — annual report of the Peabody 

 Museum of American Archaeology and Eth- 

 nology records the complete affiliation of 

 that institution with Harvard University by 

 the installation of its curator, Dr. F. W. 

 Putnam, as professor there. This position 

 imposes no duties which the curator of the 

 museum has not already performed, they 

 consisting only of the delivery of one or more 

 courses of lectures annually ; but it brings 

 the museum more closely into the general 

 system of the university. The archajological 

 work which the museum has in hand in- 

 cludes explorations in Nicaragua and Costa 

 Rica through the co-operation of Dr. Earl 

 Flint, in the course of which many relics, 

 including some of jade, have been recov- 

 ered, and human foot -prints have been 

 found in volcanic tufa sixteen feet below 

 the surface ; continued explorations by Dr. 

 C. C. Abbott, in New Jersey, which have 

 yielded, in fragments of human skeletons 

 associated with the stone implements in the 

 glacial gravel, the earliest record of man on 

 the Atlantic coast ; the explorations of the 

 shell-heaps of Maine, under Dr. Putnam's 

 personal supervision, which have brought 

 to light many inteiesting facts relative to 

 the early occupation of New England by 

 man ; the ethnological researches of Miss 

 Alice C. Fletcher among the Omaha and 

 Sioux Indians, which is growing into a his- 



