Vol. XXIV. No. 4.] 
POPULAR SCIE^^CE NEWS. 
59 
taken, and, when evening came with its grateful 
coolness, the country erstwhile so desolate, dreary, 
and forbidding, was found to have developed into an 
enchanted region. Tlie test to this wonderful find 
proved its value, and the region which was an 
epitome of desolation, covered now bj' hope of 
golden treasures, swelled away to a fairy gleam of 
great opportunities. The purchase price duly paid, 
the three Mexicans established the legal claim to 
excellent plants, which, it is true, cost much to 
develop, the scarcity of water ever rendering any 
effort difficult. 
Reduction works of the best construction in con- 
centrator and milling are now in operation. Sul- 
phur, alum, coal, copper.- lead, and nickel are 
shipped from various points in. paying quantities. 
A good merchantable article of mica, produced in 
large quantities from the mica mines at Petaca, is 
being shipped to an eastern market. A Chicago 
company owns the mine, and the sheets — which 
are cut into sizes varying from two inches and a 
half by four, to twelve by twenty inches — are 
shipped at the Tres Piedres station to the east in 
marketable condition for the retail trade. 
Water and capita! are tlie necessary adjuncts to a 
good trade and much prosperity in developing the 
mineral wealth of New Mexico. 
[.Special Correspomjencc ot Popular Science New8.\ 
PARIS LETTER. 
One of the scientific events of the last few days 
is the appearance of a new paper, published by G. 
Masson, and edited by MM. Cartailhac. Hamy, and 
Topniard. This paper is a review of exceedingly 
good exterior appearance, which is published every 
two months, and bears the name J,' Anthropologic. 
It is destined to take the place and functions of three 
other reviews, which now disappear, only to assume 
a new plumage and combine their forces in one 
; effort. The Materiaux pour I'llistoire de i' llorame, 
the Keviie d' Anthropolorjie, and the Revue d' Kthno- 
arapliie are things of the past; their individual 
existence has disappeared ; tliey live anew under a 
new form — L' Anihropologie. We will not complain. 
The writers of the three periodicals remain devoted 
to the fourth, and this last one assumes a more 
varied and interesting character, in the eyes of most 
readers. Among the papers published in the first 
number, just issued, (No. i, January-February, 
1890), the principal ones are : A paper by Topniard, 
on the skull of Charlotte Corday, who murdered 
Marat; one by O. Montelius, on the Bronze Age in 
Egypt, with many illustrations ; and one by S. 
Reinach, on the tomb of Vaphio. This tomb, dis- 
covered in Greece, belongy to the mycenian period 
of the pre-historical age of Greece, and is of great 
interest, as it certainly will give new documents on 
times concerning which but little is yet known. As 
to Charlotte Corday's skull, M. Topniard, the pupil 
of Broca, and one of the most able anthropologists, 
concludes by saying that it is a handsome and very 
regular woman's skull, delicate and well shaped, 
very similar to that of the average Parisian woman, 
in which the principal defect is a rather low fore- 
head. At all events, there is nothing very criminal 
in it, and neither Lombroso nor any other of the 
Italian school of criminalists, would venture to say 
that it is a criminal's skull. 
It has often been questioned by microbiologists 
whether pathogenetic microbes are not the ordinary 
and inoffensive ones which are well known to all, 
and which, for some reason or other, have acquired 
dangerous characters which endow them with the 
power of creating disease, while, under ordinary 
circumstances, they exert no appreciable bad influ- 
ence. MM. Rodet and Rouse believe that they have 
shown that the typhoid-fever bacillus is no other ! 
than the Bacillus coli communis, a bacillus which is 
ordinarily found in the intestines, toward their 
distal portion, and which is quite innocuous. Their 
experiments seem to show that between both types 
many passages are observed, which show that they 
are intimately related, and that the typhoid-fever 
bacillus is a degenerate and weakened form of the 
B. coli communis. The degeneracy seems to be 
produced by the influence of the spleen, and it is 
supposed by the authors that the Ji. coli communis 
becomes the typhoid-fever bacillus when it has been 
brought to the spleen, where various agencies oper- 
ate upon it and bring it to a state where it becomes 
simultaneously degenerate and harmful to the 
organism. It must, however, not be believed that 
the degeneracy usually originates in this manner. 
MM. Rodet and Rouse think that, as the Bacillus 
coli communis is innocuous so long as it remains in 
the intestines, but becomes dangerous after having 
been expelled with the fiecal matters, the degeneracy 
originates outside of the body, during the time the 
bacillus remains among the matters expelled. If 
true, this fact shows that not only typhoidic fx-cal 
matters, but all, without exception, are liable to 
pollute the water, and to render it poisonous and 
able to confer typhoid-fever, when drank by persons 
who are in a condition rendering the outbreak of 
the fever — that is, the multiplication and growth of 
the poisonous bacillus — an easy process. If things 
go on, I wonder who will dare to eat or drink, or 
touch anything, considering the number of dangers 
"ffesh is heir to," owing to the presence of those 
unamiable and highly unbidden guests that our 
body, our food, our drink, and all things generally 
swarm with of late I M.M. Rodet and Rouse's inter- 
esting paper has been published in the proceedings of 
the Societe de Jiiologie, an old established and very 
hard-working society of naturalists and physiolo- 
gists, whose only inconvenience is to be too liitle 
known abroad by biological workers. 
Biologists will be much interested in M. E. Yung's 
Propos Sdenlifiqut, a rather short book, published 
by Reinwald, in which the author, formerly assist- 
ant of Carl X'ogt in the Geneva University, has 
abstracted most of his original contributions to 
biology, and more especially to the influence exerted 
by various physical and chemical media on the 
development and growth of some organisms (frogs' 
eggs, principally.) At the present time, and es- 
pecially in America, where the study of the influ- 
ence of environment on organisms is the aim of a 
great number of naturalists, — of the neo-lamarckian 
school, as it is commonly called, — such researches 
are of great use, and call for a large public of 
readers. Large is perhaps an euphemism ; but it is 
clear that while in England pure Darwinism re- 
mains unattacked, in France and America biologists 
are considering that natural selection does not give 
all it pretends to give, and that some reason for 
variation must exist. If it exists, it can be dis- 
covered through observation or experiment, and 
must become so. Hence this very marked tendency 
towards the research for causes of variation in the 
influence of media or environment. If one con- 
siders how much influence the variations of media 
do exert on the biology of microbes, surely the influ- 
ence of media on higher organisms may be very 
great. 
Athletics are a good thing, but, like all good 
things, must be taken with discrimination, and it 
will not do to take too much of them. Oxygen also 
is a good thing, but if you take too much of it, it 
becomes a poison, as Paul Best has shown. There 
is a marked tendency in France to develop out-door 
games and, exercise. But, in order to avoid the evil 
effects of excessive exercise, or of exercise taken 
under unfavorable circumstances, some care must be 
taken. M. Lagrange, himself a great admirer of 
athletics, and a man who has given a good deal of 
time to the practical study of the subject, brought 
out some time ago a book on the physiology of 
exercise, of which we have said a word. Now he 
publishes a volume on the Hygiene of Exercise, for 
children and young people. It is a sound book, 
and contains many good hints as to how, and how 
much, exercise must be used in order to yield good 
and beneficial results, and to avoid the many dan- 
gerous effects which follow when athletics are indis- 
criminately performed. In a second volume the 
author is to deal with the also very important sub- 
ject of exercise for adult persons. 
To electricians and geologists I must give the 
names of the two following works: Hospitaller: 
Traite Elementaire de I' Energie Electrique (2 vols, in 
8vo.), a very good volume of matters but little 
known; and,Dupont: Lettres sur le Congo, \n -which 
the geology of a part of Africa is well studied. 
• H. 
Parks, Feb. 24, 1S90. 
[Specially Observed for Popular Science Xews.] 
METEOROLOGY FOR FEBRUARY, 1890, 
WITH REVIEW OF THE WINTER. 
TEM-VERATUKK. 
Average Thermometer 
At 7 A. M. . . 
At 3 r. M. . . 
At 9 p. M. . . 
Whole Month . 
Second Average 
Last 20 Februarys . . 
Winter of 1889.90 . 
Last 20 Winters 
ETER. 
Lowest. 
2S.6S' 
2° 
38.1 ■• 
■4° 
31.18° 
9° 
32.65° 
2° 
32.28° 
2° 
25.98° 
1 in 1S85. 
37-23° 
2° 
26-57° 
I 21.85° 
/ .n 1S75. 
Highest. I Range. 
ss° 
52° 
5S° 
5S° 
32 -Cj" I 
in 1S90. \ 
64° 
.37-2.1° ) 
in iSyo. \ 
52° 
44' 
^^° 
56° 
14.84° 
62° 
15-38° 
Another remarkable month and winter. The 
lowest point reached by the mercury the last month 
was 2° above zero, on the 22d, and this, indeed, is 
the lowest point during the entire winter. The 
next lowest were 7" and 9°. This is the only winter 
in twenty years when zero has not been reached at 
the hours of observation. The highest point during 
the month was ^S". on the Sth. The 21st was the 
coldest day, with a mean of lo'^ and the 5th was the 
warmest day, with a mean of 47.33". The entire 
month was the warmest February during the last 
twenty years, being 6.67° above the average, and 
nearly 15" above that of 18S5. 
The entire winter has been equally remarkable 
for high temperature. December and February of 
the present winter were the warmest on my record, 
and January had but two slight exceptions of higher 
temperature. Hence this result. The cold waves 
have been few, generally very short, and not severe, 
ending in a warm spell, spoiling our entire ice 
harvest in this 'region. 
SKY. 
The face of the sky, in 84 observations, gave 33 
fair, 13 cloudy, 28 overcast, 5 rainy, and 5 snowy, — 
a percentage of 39 3 fair. The average lair for the 
last twenty Februarys has been 56.9, with extremes 
of 30 per cent, in 1SS4 (the only instance less fair 
than the present February), and 73.4 in 1S77. Sev- 
eral days were noted "fine,"' and others "spring- 
like," and two or three mornings foggy — that on the 
25th continuing all day, rendering it quite dark. 
The percentage of fair weather the last winter 
was 46 6, while the average for the last twenty 
winters has been 54, with extremes of 38.1 in 1S84, 
and 67 in 1S78. Only two winters have been more 
cloudy than the present in twenty years. 
