POPULAR MISCELLANY 



711 



pies of muscular, long-lived people who live 

 on a minimum of animal food, sucb as those 

 of the Grecian Archipelago, who subsist on 

 goat's millc, figs, and maize -bread. Indi- 

 vidual examples are to the same effect. Dr. 

 Winship began as an invalid, and by athlet- 

 ics and diet attained such vigor that he could 

 lift twelve hundred pounds. lie indulged, we 

 are told, occasional!}' in sardines, and for the 

 rest depended on fruit and farinaceous (that 

 is, starchy) food. The recovery of health in 

 grape-cures shows what may be sought in 

 that directioa; the peach-cure has lately 

 come into notice, and doubtless any ripe, 

 fresh, juicy fruit, if net of a kind too astrin- 

 gent or laxative in certain cases, would do 

 as well. I can testify that a quart or two of 

 strawberries, twice or thrice a day, soon re- 

 covered me from torpidity of the liver and 

 consequent constipation, increasing for a 

 year or two ; and yet this is spoken of as 

 not of an aperient sort. Since then my only 

 medicine is fruit the year round." 



Thrifty Habits of a TFoodpecker. — Not 



miuy observations have been recorded of 

 the laying up of food for future use by 

 birds. One woodpecker, in California, is 

 known to deposit food by digging holes in 

 the trunks of trees and driving acorns into 

 them till the trunks look as if they were 

 studded with brass nrils. Professor 0. P, 

 Uay observed a similar trait in the red- 

 headed woodpecker during an unusually fa- 

 vorable season for beechnuts in Indiana. 

 " From the time the nuts began to ripen," 

 he says, " these birds appeared to be almost 

 constantly on the wing, passing from the 

 beeches to some place of deposit. They 

 have hidden away the nuts in almost every 

 conceivable situation. Many have been 

 placed in cavities in partially decayed trees ; 

 and the felling of an old beech is sure to 

 provide a little feast for a bevy of children. 

 Large handf uls have been taken from a sin- 

 gle knot-hole. They are often found under 

 a patch of the raised bark of trees, and sin- 

 gle nuts have been driven into cracks in 

 bark. They have been thrust into the 

 cracks in front gate-posts ; and a favorite 

 place of deposit is behind long slivers on 

 fence-posts. I have taken a good handful 

 from a single such crevice. ... In a few 

 cases grains of corn have been mixed with 



beechnuts, and I have also found a few 

 drupes, apparently of the wild-cherry, and a 

 partially eaten bitter-nut. The nuts may 

 often be found driven into the cracks at 

 the end of railroad-tics ; and, on the other 

 hand, the birds have often been seen on the 

 roofs of houses, pounding nuts into the crev- 

 ices between the shingles. In several in- 

 stances I have observed that the space 

 formed by a board springing away from a 

 fence-post has been nearly filled with nuts, 

 and afterward pieces of bark and wood 

 have been brought and driven down over 

 the nuts, as if to hide them from poachers. 

 These pieces of bark are sometimes an inch 

 or more square and half an inch thick, and 

 driven in with such force that it is difficult 

 to get them out. In one case the nuts were 

 covered over with a layer of empty invo- 

 lucres. Usually the nuts arc still covered 

 with the hulls ; but here and there, when 

 the crevice is very narrow, they have been 

 taken off, and pieces of the kernels have 

 been thrust in." 



Alasta and Its Tundra. — A contributor 

 in the " American Field " describes Alaska 

 as having dimensions not only in latitude 

 and longitude — " for not a great distance 

 from the Aleutian Islands, separating the 

 Pacific from Behring's Sea, and in the 

 former body of water we have the deepest 

 sea - soundings known to science, while 

 Mount Saint Elias cleaves the clouds for 

 19,500 feet, the highest mountain of the 

 North American continent, and the highest 

 Alpine peak in the whole world ; for the line 

 of perpetual snow and ice starts at its verj- 

 base and covers it throughout except where 

 buttresses of bare rock and pinnacles of 

 perpendicular stone jut through the frozen 

 mass, because they are too steep for the 

 snow and ice to rest upon. ... If we look 

 at a map of Alaska we will see that fully a 

 third of it is above the Arctic Circle, and 

 the climate and other characteristics of this 

 part are truly Arctic. The thermometer 

 falls so low in winter-time that even the 

 short, squatty Eskimo does not have to 

 crane his neck to read the scale ; the ground 

 is frozen for numberless feet below the sur- 

 face, while nothing grows on that surface 

 except the hardy polar mosses that form 

 the marshy covering for the vast tundra for 



