POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



1 39 



growers use coal-oil cans filled with kindling 

 wood and coal and placed in the orchard at 

 the rate of from eight to twenty-five per 

 acre. Some provide themselves with two- 

 gallon iron kettles and use reduced petro- 

 leum. Ten dollars per acre will pay for the 

 plant and the expense of one night's burn- 

 ing. Horticulturists in other citrus colonies 

 are following in the track of Riverside and 

 preparing for future " cold snaps." 



Curious Fauna of La Plata. A curious 

 medley of animal life is described by Mr- 

 W. H. Hudson as existing in the pampas re- 

 gion of La Plata : A poisonous toad which 

 kills horses ; the wrestler frog, which suddenly 

 pinches its enemy with its fore legs and then 

 runs away ; a large, venomous, man-chasing 

 spider, which pursues men on foot and on 

 horseback ; dragon flies, a single individual 

 of which will cause clouds of gnats, mos- 

 quitoes, and sand flies to disappear in an in- 

 stant; and an opossum, fully adapted to life 

 in trees, which yet lives in a desert destitute 

 of trees, and when brought to a tree, which 

 it may never have seen before, will clasp it 

 and climb it with all the agility of its forest- 

 dwelling relatives of North America. 



Manufacture of Fans. The manufac- 

 ture of fans is chiefly carried on now in 

 France, Spain, China, Japan, and India. 

 The fashions are established in France prin- 

 cipally at Sainte-Genevieve, Audeville, Cor- 

 beil-Cerf, Le Deluge, Coudray, and the vi- 

 cinity of Beauvais and Meru. At Sainte- 

 Genevieve they work in bone, mother-of- 

 pearl, and ivory ; at Le Petit-Fercourt, and 

 Andecourt, in mother-of-pearl and horn; 

 at Le De"luge and Corbeil-Cerf, pear tree, 

 apple tree, and hornbeam wood; at Boir- 

 siere, in bone ; and at Paris, in shell. The 

 leaf of the fan is generally made and the fan 

 mounted at Paris. Fans have been made in 

 Spain only for some sixty or seventy years, 

 notably at Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Mala- 

 ga, and Cadiz. Most of the Chinese fans are 

 made hi Canton and E-moui, but the manu- 

 facture is generally diffused through the 

 country, for the fan is a part of the na- 

 tional costume. Every Chinese of good so- 

 cial standing holds a fan during visits of 

 ceremony, and the custom of writing on fans 

 is spread throughout the empire. The prin- 



cipal centers of production in Japan are the 

 cities of Osaka, Kioto, and Nagoya. In that 

 country the fan is a part of the costume of 

 both sexes, and is to be seen in the hand of 

 the soldier as well as in that of the monk. 

 When a gentleman gives alms to a beggar, 

 he often puts the coin upon his fan ; and 

 salutes are made by waving the fan as they 

 are hi Europe by tipping the hat. There are 

 also fan factories in some other countries. 

 Lace fans are made at Brussels and De 

 Grammont, in Belgium ; fans of braided 

 straw, at Fiesole and Vicenza in Italy ; and 

 fan-standards of braided grass and cloth em- 

 broidered with gold and silver, in Tunis and 

 Morocco ; but France holds the first place in 

 the manufacture of luxurious, and China in 

 that of cheap, fans. 



Origin of Hot Waves." A theory is 

 published by Prof. F. Hawn, of Leavenworth, 

 Kan., that our southwest winds are tropical 

 currents, which rise to great elevations in 

 the upper atmosphere, and then flow north 

 and reach the ground again in latitude 34, 

 bringing subtropical heat. As other results 

 of his theory he concludes that the close at- 

 mospheric relations between the upper and 

 lower currents attest their common origin ; 

 that the atmospheric temperature is inci- 

 dentally if not perpetually higher in the 

 upper than on the lower levels ; that these 

 relatively higher thermal conditions of the 

 upper atmosphere control the lower atmos- 

 phere in the spring and summer, and indi- 

 dentally in the winter ; that the hot waves 

 of the Northwest have their origin in a 

 superheated upper atmosphere, and are con- 

 densed by gravitation in their descent to the 

 surface, evolving heat in a ratio inverse to 

 the humidity; and that thefoehn winds (hot 

 waves), with their resultant temperatures of 

 more than 100 in the temperate seasons 

 and from 65 to 73 in the winter, are not 

 local west of the eighty-eighth meridian, but 

 at intervals simultaneously cover the north- 

 ern half of the United States. 



Qualities of Slates. From experimental 

 studies with roofing slates, Mr. Mansfield 

 Merriman has drawn the conclusions that those 

 with soft ribbons are of an inferior quality 

 and should not be used in good work ; the 

 stronger the slate the greater are its tough- 



