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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



At Heliopolis, where were the most famous 

 schools, religion, law, mathematics, medicine, 

 and language were taught. Primary schools 

 were provided for all classes ; and libraries 

 were attached to the temples. The old 

 methods were adopted in the institutions 

 founded at Alexandria by the Ptolemies, 

 but, as these were intended for a mixed pop- 

 ulation of Egyptians, Greeks, and Hebrews, 

 law and religion were excluded, to avoid 

 controversy. Learned men were maintained 

 by the state to prosecute research, and a 

 botanical garden and a menagerie were 

 added. The first Alexandrian Library was 

 burned when Julius Caesar captured the 

 place. The second disappeared at the time 

 of the Arabian conquest. The university 

 was restored by one of the caliphs two cen- 

 turies after the conquest. The great Uni- 

 versity of Cairo, which has five thousand 

 students, and practically includes all the Al- 

 exandrian faculties except medicine, was 

 founded by a Greek officer of the Fatimite 

 caliphate, a. d. 969-970. 



The Jackal, the Fox-Fables, and the 

 Dog-Star, — Herr 0. Keller, in a paper on 

 " The Jackal in Antiquity," urges that the 

 Western nations, who had foxes but no jack- 

 als, borrowed the traits ascribed to jackals, 

 in Oriental fables, with the fables, and trans- 

 ferred them to their foxes. Thus the Gre- 

 cian foxes were endowed with the attributes 

 of two animals, and the most curious fox- 

 fables of iEsop are in their origin Indian 

 jackal-fables. Some of JSsop's fables rep- 

 resent the fox as the follower and servant 

 of the lion, which he is not known to be in 

 any sense. The jackal, however, is in the 

 habit of following the lion at a respectful 

 distance, and lives on what he can pick up 

 from the deserted repasts of the king of 

 beasts. This trait was observed by the an- 

 cient Indians, and it was a natural result of 

 the observation that their vivid imagina- 

 tions, discovering royal prerogatives in the 

 lion, should endow his follower with the 

 qualities of a minister and counselor, and 

 make him to assist his majesty by using in 

 his behalf the qualities of slyness and cun- 

 ning in which the royal beast was deficient. 

 The Greeks substituted foxes for jackals be- 

 cause they knew nothing about them, and 

 their foxes came nearer than any other ani- 



mal to answering the descriptions of them- 

 The transfer was made easier by the gradual 

 development of the fables from simple na- 

 ture-stories into moral lessons, in the course 

 of which absolute truth to nature grew less 

 essential, and the representation of abstract 

 qualities under purely conventional masks 

 became more prominent. The incongruous 

 association by the Greeks of the supposed 

 evil influences of Sirius with the harmless 

 dog are susceptible of a similar explanation. 

 The Chinese, however, who also attributed 

 evil qualities to the dog-star, called it the 

 jackal-star, and appropriately; for as the 

 heat and drought of which it is the forerun- 

 ner are destructive to the crops, so likewise 

 are the jackals, which make their home in 

 the fields, and are constantly running through 

 them in gangs, destroying myriads of plants, 

 in search of their food. To the Egyptians, 

 Sirius was also the jackal-star, but foreboded 

 good, for it appeared just before the time of 

 the inundation. The Mesopotamians also 

 recognized in it a forerunner of beneficent 

 inundations, and gave it the name of the 

 dog, an animal which they held in high es- 

 teem. The Greeks borrowed the Mesopo- 

 tamian name, and kept the Chinese idea, 

 which harmonized well with the character 

 of their own dog-days. The origin of the 

 dog-star has been associated by some other 

 writers with the idea that Sirius, the chief 

 of the stars, was the shepherd-dog to the 

 host of the heavenly sheep, represented by 

 the other stars. 



Deforestization and Floods in China. — 



The country of the lower Yangtse-Kiang 

 in China suffered terribly from floods last 

 July and August. Dr. Macgowan has taken 

 advantage of a trip up the river, for the dis- 

 tribution of relief to sufferers, to make in- 

 quiry whether any connection existed be- 

 tween the inundations and the removal of 

 the forests. China, old as it is, is not so 

 old but that the process of denuding the 

 land of trees may be distinctly traced. The 

 treeless aspect of the hills of the lower 

 Yangtse now attracts attention from every 

 voyager ; yet no mention is made of their 

 barren condition by Ellis or Davis in their 

 narratives of Lord Amherst's embassy in 

 1816, but wooded hills are alluded to ; from 

 which it would seem that the deforestization 



