NOTES. 



jig 



brought above the surface for a second, and 

 then disappear ; but any attempt to remain 

 on the surface leads to ludicrous splashing 

 and confusion, for the submarine bird can 

 not float. The movements of the cormorant 

 are quite different. It does not plunge head- 

 long, but " launches itself on the surface, 

 and then ' ducks ' like a grebe. Its wings 

 are not used as propellers, but trail unresist- 

 ingly level with its body, and the speed at 

 which it courses through the water is wholly 

 due to the swimming powers of its large and 

 ugly webbed feet. These are set quite at 

 the end of the body, and work incessantly 

 like a treadle, or the floats of a stern-wheel 

 steamer. Yet the conditions of submarine 

 motion are so favorable that the speed of 

 the bird below the surface is three or four 

 times greater than that gained by equally 

 rapid movements of the feet when it has 

 risen and is swimming on the top." The 

 " darters " divers of the African and 

 American lakes, compared to the survival of 

 some ancient lizard dive and swim much 

 like the cormorant, except that the bird 

 keeps its neck drawn back .in the form of 

 a flattened S when in pursuit of the fish. 

 " Once within striking distance, the sharp 

 bill is shot out as if from a catapult, and 

 the fish is spiked through and carried to the 

 surface. This ascent is made after each 

 single capture. Sometimes the bird has 

 great difficulty in disentangling the pierced 

 fish from the spearlike beak, and its com- 

 panion adroitly relieves it of the struggling 

 victim and swallows the prize." 



An Ominous Forecast. A dismal fu- 

 ture is foreseen by M. Leroy Beaulicu, with 

 two new and exhaustive processes going on 

 in Europe, and, we might add, demanded 

 by large classes in America. They are the 

 rapid increase of state and communal ex- 

 penditure, which in France, Germany, Italy, 

 and Great Britain is augmenting by leaps 

 and bounds, mainly for unproductive outlay 

 on defense ; and the other is the still more 

 rapid increase of demands for grants-in-aid 

 to institutions intended to benefit the poorer 

 classes. More education, more guarantees, 

 more "civilization" of all kinds there is 

 no end to the proposals. Every European 

 state except Austria-Hungary has already a 

 large deficit; besides which the communal 



expenditure is advancing incessantly in 

 France, and in a less degree in Germany, 

 while in Italy it is menacing the founda- 

 tions of society. It is impossible that the 

 twofold expenditure, on the means of killing 

 and on the means of philanthropy, should go 

 on without new taxation, and every tax di- 

 minishes the fund available for the payment 

 of labor. No prospect is seen of these two 

 depleting processes coming speedily to an 

 end. Formerly they were checked by the 

 rage of the taxpaying classes ; but univer- 

 sal suffrage disregards that, and may go on 

 taxing until its mood changes, or its own 

 sources of supply begin visibly to fail. The 

 demands partly urged by actual necessities, 

 and otherwise being in the line of modern 

 philanthropy, " which desires improvement 

 in everything except manly independence," 

 and further promoted by the fact that rea- 

 sonable wants increase more rapidly than 

 the means of satisfying them, are likely to 

 go on advancing. In view of these circum- 

 stances, men of M. Leroy Beaulieu's school 

 think that a time of grave economic dis- 

 tress, producing great social and political 

 changes, is at hand for western Europe. 



NOTES. 



THE plague reported as prevailing m 

 China is described by a correspondent of the 

 British Medical Journal as presenting all the 

 symptoms of the true bubonic pest which 

 devastated Europe in the middle ages. Al- 

 though extinct in Europe, this pest has never 

 ceased to prevail in China from time to time, 

 and has also spread from there to Persia and 

 Asiatic Russia. The present outbreak is char- 

 acterized by intense symptoms corresponding 

 to those of typhus, and by the bubonic boils 

 characteristic of the disease. Europeans are 

 not affected by it, except the soldiers who 

 come directly in contact with it in disinfect- 

 ing work. It is extremely contagious from 

 person to person, but the danger from aerial 

 infection is slight. 



IN the " Crump Burial Cave," Blount 

 County, Ala., which was discovered in 1840, 

 were several coffins of black and white wal- 

 nut, "dug out" of logs, twelve or fifteen 

 human skulls, and other human bones scat- 

 tered about, masses of galena, grooved like 

 the aboriginal stone axes or mauls, as if for 

 use as war clubs, and other more usual im- 

 plements. Near this cave Mr. Frank Burns 

 has since found an Indian ladder that had 

 been used to climb up to a " rock house," a 

 large, roomy, dry place under overhanging 



