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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



activity : the negro battles ; the dreamy, still 

 life of the South Sea islanders ; the buffalo 

 hunters ; Yakuts so hardened as to sleep al- 

 most naked in the snow ; India-rubber col- 

 lectors on the Amazons ; Patagonian giants ; 

 Mam Niam dwarfs, etc." The author espe- 

 cially commends the polar regions as artis- 

 tically attractive, where great effects are pro- 

 duced with little color by the varying charms 

 of light conf erring life upon even the most mo- 

 notonous views. In the four years and a half 

 he spent there he was ever charmed by the 

 change in pictures of Nature. " What a magic 

 spell, for instance, is produced even by the 

 twilight, ... the time without bright light, 

 almost without shade ; that of soft, dreamy 

 silhouettes, of the clear green sky, and the 

 pale, silvery tone of the mountains ! The 

 snow is now melted, and the blue sea-ice lies 

 bare, scarcely tinged with red by the setting 

 sun. Even the long winter night possesses 

 its artistic charm from the midday arch 

 of light, or the moon, which changes the 

 channels beneath into rivers of silver. The 

 arctic sky alone would enrapture the painter. 

 As the returning sun nears the horizon, every 

 color glows forth, a border of light dividing 

 the part of the atmosphere still in the shadow 

 of the earth from that already lighted up." 

 Then there are the infinitely varied phe- 

 nomena of refraction, with Fata Morgana, 

 giving the most curiously odd and unlike 

 appearances to various objects; vapor ef- 

 fects; the ice blink; variations of snow 

 and bare ground; pastures with reindeer 

 and musk oxen ; and vegetation, for, " al- 

 though there is never the thick flora of 

 our meadows, yet one meets with limited 

 areas either yellow with Papava nudicaule 

 or Ranunculus, or carmine with Silene or 

 Saxifraga, or blue with forget-me-not, or 

 white with Craslium. East Greenland has 

 its huge Kaiser Franz Josef fiord, surpassing 

 the fiord of Norway, and the whole of Green- 

 land furnishes surpassing mountain land- 

 scapes ; Spitzbergen has a profile like a saw ; 

 and Novaya Zemlya is a table land, but- 

 tressed by mountain cones." 



Forest Protection in the United States. 

 In a paper published in the Proceedings 

 of the American Forestry Association, Mr. 

 George H. Parsons, of Colorado Springs, 

 shows that measures for the protection of 



forests were taken by some of the colonies 

 as early as in the seventeenth century. 

 These provisions were continued everywhere 

 after the formal organization of the Govern- 

 ment of the United States, and now each 

 State and Territory has some law, providing 

 more or less severe punishment to any per- 

 son setting fire to woodland or prairie. But 

 as it is very difficult to find the offender, or 

 to convict him afterward, laws of this class 

 are operative, if at all, by their threat rather 

 than by their execution, and with few excep- 

 tions have become dead letters. The only 

 States said to be comparatively free from 

 forest fires are Maine and Massachusetts, and 

 especially New York, whose forest commis- 

 sioner reports that they are now a thing of 

 the past. Laws encouraging the planting 

 and growing of timber and shade trees are 

 found on the statutes of twenty- two States 

 and Territories, having been adopted more 

 generally in the prairie States. They have 

 been the means of covering with trees thou- 

 sands of acres, and have driven the prairies 

 many miles westward. Kansas is credited 

 with the largest area planted with forest 

 trees, and Nebraska comes next. These 

 laws have done much good, but, after all, 

 tree-planting along roadsides, and in small, 

 isolated clumps, is not forestry, and legisla- 

 tion of this kind, though indirectly aiding 

 the cause in an educational way, does not 

 preserve or create forests. In the same 

 direction of education is the appointment of 

 Arbor Day, which has become a legal holi- 

 day in thirty States and Territories. Being 

 celebrated in the public schools, it is made a 

 most important factor in creating an interest 

 hi trees and a knowledge of plant life among 

 people at their most impressionable age. 

 Regular forest commissioners or commissions 

 have been appointed in ten States. They 

 began work actively and enthusiastically, 

 but it is now a question whether they are 

 able to do much good. Politics is gnawing 

 their vitals out. 



A Volcanic Dnst Deposit in Kansas. A 



large deposit of volcanic dust is described in 

 Science by H. J. Harney as existing in cen- 

 tral Kansas, in McPherson County, north of 

 the watershed between the Smoky Hill and 

 Little Arkansas, and in the great depression 

 extending from Salina to the Little Arkansas. 



