FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



7*9 



feet, but the tree will not thrive if exposed 

 to the direct influence of the sea breeze. 

 The plants are propagated by means of the 

 seed, which is simply covered with loam 

 and some sort of fertilizer, and then the 

 whole covered with banana leaves. The bed 

 is sprinkled every day for twelve or fifteen 

 days, when the seedlings appear. Then the 

 banana leaves are removed, and sheds are 

 erected over the bed, which serve as shade 

 and shelter. A year after sowing, seedlings 

 are about twenty inches high and ready for 

 transplanting. The plants begin to yield 

 remuneratively in about five years. The 

 average annual yield of dry cacao from each 

 tree varies greatly, but is somewhere be- 



tween a pound and a half and eight pounds. 

 The pods having been gathered are placed in 

 heaps under the trees, to be subsequently 

 taken to the quelradero where they are 

 broken. The kernels or nibs are then taken 

 out of the pods, which are either opened 

 with a machete or a knife made from a wood 

 called jahuate. The seeds are thrown into 

 wooden troughs called iollas half filled with 

 water to wash them, and the beans are then 

 carried away to the cacao house for the 

 sweating or fermentation process. After 

 being properly sweated they are dried ready 

 for shipment. It is stated that seven hun- 

 dred and fifty trees will give the planter a 

 net annual profit of more than $1,225. 



MINOR PARAGRAPHS. 



Prof. Dewar, in the first of a series of 

 lectures on Chemical Progress at the Royal 

 Institution, paid a well-deserved tribute to 

 the pioneer work of M. Moissan, in his re- 

 searches on the combination of carbon and 

 the various metals in the electric furnace. 

 Prof. Dewar also called attention to the fact 

 that many years ago Mendeleef put forth the 

 view that the immense localization of petro- 

 leum at Baku and other centers could only 

 be accounted for on the theory that it was 

 being continuously generated by the action of 

 water on carbides. Benzene, which is the nu- 

 cleus of all the colors hitherto obtained from 

 coal tar products, is reached by the acetylene 

 process in three stages : first, the combina- 

 tion of lime and coal in the electric furnace ; 

 second, the decomposition of the resulting 

 carbide by water ; and, . thirdly, the trans- 

 formation into benzene of acetylene gas by 

 means of heat. 



The catalogue of earthquakes in Russia, 

 to which are added those in China, Persia, 

 and other countries bordering on that empire, 

 begun by A. Orloff, in 1869, and just com- 

 pleted and revised by Prof. Mushketoff, con- 

 tains a list of abont 2,400 separate earth, 

 quakes which occurred in 560 places, be- 

 tween 596 b. c. and a. d. 1887. Of them, 

 710 took place in China, 549 in East Siberia, 

 36 in West Siberia, 202 in Central Asia, 590 

 in Caucasia, 121 in Asia Minor and North 

 Persia, and 188 in European Russia. Con- 

 sidering only the periods during which the 



observations went on without interruption, 

 the frequency of earthquakes may be repre- 

 sented as having been 640 in each hundred 

 years in Caucasia, 310 in China, 290 in East 

 Siberia and Turkistan, 138 in Middle and 

 South Russia, and only 19 in North Russia, 

 Finland, and the Baltic provinces. The date 

 of the catalogue shows that while in Siberia 

 and Central Asia earthquakes are more fre- 

 quent during the autumn and winter than 

 during spring and summer, the proportion is 

 reversed for China and Caucasia. 



The interdependence of the most unlike 

 things in Nature is well shown by the follow- 

 ing: It seems that in certain districts the 

 growing of water cresses is quite an impor- 

 tant industry. The caddis worm is very fond 

 of water cresses, but is usually kept from do- 

 ing them any serious damage by the trout, 

 which it seems are very fond of the caddis. 

 But during last season a large number of 

 herons appeared, who have a special predi- 

 lection for trout, which they thinned out to 

 such a degree that the caddis worms were 

 given a free course, and soon destroyed the 

 water-cress crop. The loss of the water-cress 

 grower was primarily due to ravages of the 

 caddis worm ; which ravages were due to the 

 lack of trout ; the lack of trout being due to 

 the unusual number of herons present in the 

 neighborhood, and the unusual number of 

 herons was due to the men who encouraged 

 their breeding and multiplication for other 

 reasons. Thus we have a state of things 



