FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



575 



a detailed account of his investigations the 

 whole to constitute a contribution to knowl- 

 edge. In studying paleontology the student 

 receives careful training in systematic clas- 

 sification. Candidates for honors must pre- 

 pare theses of sufficient merit to warrant the 

 publication of at least an abstract in some 

 scientific journal. As aids, students have 

 access to the library and museum of Union 

 College, and to the State Library and Mu- 

 seum at Albany. 



Antiquity of the Qnielmas. Dr. George 

 A. Dorsey expresses his belief, in a paper on 

 The Character and Antiquity of Peruvian 

 Civilization, that the Quichuas came into Peru 



from the north, and that the time of their 

 arrival must have been a great while ago, 

 " perhaps several thousand years. The fact 

 that they had thoroughly domesticated the 

 llama as well as other smaller animals is in 

 itself proof of great antiquity. The same 

 holds true in regard to the high state of 

 cultivation in which we find the cotton plant, 

 several varieties of maize, and other cereals 

 and food products. In the province of 

 Huarochiri, Avila states that the origin of 

 the great acequias and irrigating canals was 

 only accounted for by a myth, their con- 

 struction dating back to so remote a period 

 that they were no longer ascribed to human 

 agency." 



MINOR PARAGRAPHS. 



THROUGH the co-operation of some private 

 persons interested in the preservation of spe- 

 cies and the Linngean and other societies of 

 New York, protection has been afforded to 

 the terns on Great Gull Island, Long Island 

 Sound. A sum of money was contributed to 

 employ a gamekeeper, and the lighthouse 

 keeper on Little Gull Island was authorized 

 to act in that capacity. From three to four 

 thousand birds were found on the island in 

 1886. They had been since diminishing 

 year by year in numbers under the attacks 

 of sportsmen and egg-hunters, till attention 

 was called to the fact and a watch was 

 placed over them. Under the care of the 

 gamekeeper the numbers of the colony in- 

 creased at least one half during 1894, and 

 terns are now seen where they had not been 

 observed for many years before. 



WERE Indians of the Sioux stock ever set- 

 tled in the East ? is asked by James Mooney, 

 who finds evidences in languages that such 

 tribes once lived in a particular territory in 

 Virginia and the Carolinas. Traditions are 

 cited in his paper on the subject, which are 

 said to exist among some of the Sioux tribes, 

 of a former residence on the Ohio, and of a 

 migration prompted by the density of the 

 population, which had become too numerous 

 for the hunting grounds. The emigration was 

 probably prehistoric, as the Sioux tribes were 

 established in the West as early as three 

 hundred and fifty years ago, and was caused, 

 Mr. Mooney thinks, not by the disappearance 

 of game for the buffalo did not become 



extinct in the Ohio Valley till late in the last 

 century but by the pressure of hostile tribes 

 from the north and south Algonkins and 

 Muskogees. 



THE encouraging fact is brought out in 

 the reports of examinations published by the 

 Regents of the University of the State of 

 New York that a rapid and healthy increase 

 is going on in the standard of proficiency of 

 the candidates in all the grades. Even 

 more significant than this is the evidence 

 that desultory courses of study are giving 

 way to longer and reasonably balanced 

 courses. A very beneficent influence is ex- 

 erted it is alleged by the new laws and regu- 

 lations requiring candidates for admission to 

 practice in law, medicine, and dentistry to 

 submit evidence of a general preliminary 

 education equivalent to a full high-school 

 course. 



FROM certain manuscripts left by Dalton, 

 to which attention is called by Sir Henry 

 Roscoe and Dr. A. Harden, it is made clear 

 that his application of the atomic theory to 

 chemistry was not the result of his own 

 analysis of certain compounds of carbon, as 

 has hitherto been supposed, but that his 

 mind was saturated with Newton's notions on 

 atoms, and he worked out the theory from 

 physical conditions as to the constitution of 

 gases. Somewhat later he quoted numerical 

 results, not of his own, but of other chem- 

 ists' analyses, in support of the theory, and 

 seems to have worked out the law of chem- 

 ical combination in multiple proportions as 



