7 i6 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



chemical school of the city of Paris. He 

 was a member of the Academy of Medicine 

 and the Academy of Sciences. His principal 

 works were on the application of chemistry 

 to animal physiology, coloring substances, 

 fermentation (in the International Scientific 

 Series), and the Traite de Chimie General^ 

 in seven volumes. 



Primitive Drills. We all know how dif- 

 ficult it is, even with the best tools we have, 

 to bore a correct hole by hand in a hard sub- 

 stance. Vastly more difficult must this have 

 been with primitive men, who had no tools 

 except flints and bones and sticks. Yet, as 

 Mr. J. D. McGuire observes in his study of 

 the Primitive Methods of Drilling, the ear- 

 liest remains of man are found associated 

 with implements of his manufacture in which 

 holes have been artificially perforated, the 

 implements consisting generally of bone, 

 ivory, or shell. During the cave period man 

 had the implements called " batons of com- 

 mand," the use of which is unknown, which 

 were bored with extreme care from reindeer 

 horn, and are often carved with representa- 

 tions of animals or of man, often artistically 

 done. These men could only fashion the 

 rudest implements from chipped stone. At 

 later periods of development beads of shell 

 and stone were made of shapely forms and 

 evenly perforated. Of such are the Indian 

 wampum beads, which, according to Law- 

 son's History of North Carolina, they man- 

 aged " with a nail stuck in a cane or reed. 

 Thus they roll it continually on their thighs 

 with their right hand, holding the bit of shell 

 with their left, so in time they drill a hole 

 quite through it, which is a very tedious work." 

 This describes the most primitive form of 

 drill, except that men had not yet advanced 

 to the nail. They used flints or bones or 

 sticks, re-enforced with sand. Mr. McGuire's 

 presentation of objects perforated with this 

 sort of drill exhibits some specimens of fine 

 work done in hard stone and applied to vari- 

 ous purposes. The next development is the 

 strap drill, in which a string or cord is wound 

 around the stick, and when pulled back and 

 forth produces corresponding alternations in 

 the motions of the drill, and adds consider- 

 ably to its power. To this was added a bow, 

 the pulling and relaxing of which maintained 

 the revolution of the instrument. An im- 



provement on this was a disk, the momen- 

 tum of which carried on the motion of revo- 

 lution, and rewound in an opposite direction 

 the string which had been unwound. When 

 the bow was arranged so as to have an up- 

 ward and downward motion on the stick, the 

 pump drill was constituted, an instrument 

 differing essentially from all other boring 

 tools, relatively easy to work, which has been 

 widely distributed. The Egyptian monu- 

 ments bear frequent representations of the 

 use of the bow and disk drills under differ- 

 ent forms and with various modifications. 

 The Egyptians, however, had copper and 



Birds and their Songs. Whether birds 

 inherit their song or learn it by imitation has 

 been the subject of experiments which M. 

 Flamel describes in La Nature. We know 

 already that some species take up the songs 

 of others, but it had not been determined 

 whether they ever learned them at the ex- 

 pense of their native song. One of M. 

 Flamel's correspondents had a sparrow, 

 "brought up by hand," which, when put 

 into a cage with finches and canary birds, 

 took up the songs of all its companions, re- 

 peating them perfectly ; and then, some cap- 

 tured crickets having been placed near it, 

 adopted their chirp too, but never sang like 

 a sparrow. Another correspondent was told 

 by a gamekeeper of two linnets which he 

 had taken fiom the nest when they were 

 very young and kept at his home in a wood 

 where there were no other birds of their 

 species, but nightingales were abundant. 

 The birds sang like nightingales. Of the 

 somewhat varied repertory of songs of a 

 certain species of linnet, this correspondent 

 asserts that the songs are severally peculiar 

 to certain well-defined localities. All the 

 individuals in one of these districts have the 

 same songs and the same number of songs, 

 so that the fanciers in the city where he 

 lives are acquainted with the songs of the 

 several stations around and know just where 

 to go to get birds to their liking. It follows 

 from this that some birds, at least, learn 

 their songs by imitation. 



Sunlight and Bacteria in Rivers. In 



view of the destructive effect of sunlight, 

 especially of the blue to the ultra-violet rays, 



