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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



faculties, has derived numerous varieties, by 

 prolongation, duplication, and intonation. 

 The cry of appeal, the germ of the demon- 

 strative roots, prelude to nouns of number, 

 sex, and distance ; the emotional cry, of which 

 our simple interjections are survivals, com- 

 bining with the demonstratives, prepares the 

 outlines of the proposition, and prefixes the 

 verb and the noun of condition and action. 

 Imitation, either direct or symbolical, but 

 necessarily only approximative, of the sounds 

 of Nature, or, in short, onomatopoeia, fur- 

 nishes the elements of attributive sorts : from 

 which proceed the names of objects and 

 special verbs and their derivatives. Analogy 

 and metaphor complete the vocabulary by 

 applying to objects of touch, sight, smell, 

 and taste the qualifications derived from 

 onomatopoeia. Then comes reason, which, 

 discarding the greater part of this unwieldy 

 wealth, adopts a larger or smaller number of 

 sounds reduced to a vague or generic sense ; 

 and by derivation, suffixing, and composition 

 cause to proceed from these subroots in- 

 definite lineages of words, having every 

 manner of relationship among themselves, 

 from the closest to the most dubious, and 

 which grammar proceeds to distribute among 

 the recognized categories of parts of speech. 



The Audnbon Monument. The Monu- 

 ment in memory of J. J. Audubon, erected by 

 the Audubon Monument Committee of the 

 New York Academy of Sciences, consists of 

 a granite base, a bluestone die, and a cross, 

 and is in all twenty-five feet ten inches high. 

 It is adorned with figures of the birds and 

 animals which Audubon described. In 

 raising the money for it, Prof. Thomas 

 Egleston says, at first school children took a 

 great interest in it individually, and many 

 subscriptions were received from schools as 

 the contributions of the children. Some 

 subscriptions were sent in postage stamps, 

 others as low as ten cents were received 

 from every part of the United States. After 

 a number of months it was found that by 

 this method a sufficient sum for the erection 

 of the monument could not be raised. It was 

 then proposed to ask a hundred gentlemen 

 in the cities near New York in which Audu- 

 bon had been especially interested to give a 

 hundred dollars each, and this plan succeed- 

 ed so well that the amount was raised in the 



fall of 1891. The contributions for the 

 monument were received from almost every 

 part of the United States. Boston was very 

 liberal; Philadelphia and Baltimore made 

 some subscriptions ; but much the largest 

 part was contributed by citizens of New 

 York city. The small balance which re- 

 mains is to be invested as " the Audubon 

 Publication Fund," the interest of which is 

 to be devoted to the publication of a memoir 

 on some zoological or botanical topic, an- 

 nually, or whenever a paper suitable for 

 such memoir shall be presented. 



Experiments with Liquid Oxygen. By 

 means of the intense cold produced in his 

 experiments in liquefying gases, combined 

 with an exhaustion not before attained, Prof. 

 Dewar has proved that mercury distills, as 

 do phosphorus and sulphur, at the ordinary 

 temperature when the vapor pressure is 

 under the millionth of an atmosphere. The 

 increasing indisposition shown by the chem- 

 ical elements to combine with one another as 

 the absolute zero is approached was well il- 

 lustrated in an experiment in which liquid 

 oxygen was cooled to 200 C. On insert- 

 ing a glowing piece of wood into the vessel 

 above the liquid it refused to burst into 

 flame. Another interesting experiment was 

 that of immersing an electric pile composed 

 of carbon and sodium into liquid oxygen ; al- 

 most immediately the electric current ceased, 

 in consequence of the suspension of chemical 

 action. Absolute alcohol, run upon the sur- 

 face of liquid air, after rolling about in the 

 spheroidal state, suddenly solidifies into a 

 hard, transparent ice, which rattles on the 

 sides of the vacuum test-tube like marble. 

 On lifting the solid alcohol out by means of 

 a looped wire the application of the flame of 

 a Bunsen burner will not ignite it. After a 

 time the solid melts and falls from the 

 looped wire like thick sirup. 



Mountains and Lakes. The first of Sir 

 Douglas Freshfield's Christmas lectures be- 

 fore the Royal Geographical Society was on 

 mountains in their relation to the earth as a 

 whole, and more particularly the peculiar 

 features of snow mountains. Mountains, 

 however great in human eyes, the lecturer 

 said, were mere wrinkles on the face of the 

 earth. How were they made ? was a natural 



