Vol. XXII. No. 7.] 



POPULAE SCIENCE NEWS. 



99 



proceed to use them, and to use them in the same 

 manner as they had seen them used. Probably 

 young birds receive instruction, and maybe assist- 

 ance, from the parent birds in .the art of nest- 

 building. It is further probable that a young bird 

 does not always mate with one of the same age. 

 A bird of last summer may mate with one of this, 

 and bring experience to the happy labor of con- 

 structing a home. With its knowledge and expe- 

 rience of one kind of nest, and finding the materials 

 in its daily search for food, it would be strange, 

 indeed, if it should go out of its way to find different 

 materials, and attempt to construct its nest in a 

 different manner. Such originality on the part of 

 birds would be greater than is found among savage 

 men. The South-American shows no disposition 

 to resort to clay or sun-burnt bricks, or stones and 

 turf, in place of the palm-leaves with which he 

 builds his hut. 



When necessity or convenience has directed man 

 to one kind of materials with which to construct his 

 dwelling, and one particular mode of building has 

 been sanctioned by long usage, he is very slow to 

 change, even when altered conditions render the 

 old method inconvenient. The inability readily to 

 depart from old customs is no less strange in birds 

 than in man; yet that birds do change and im- 

 prove their dwellings when necessity requires, is 

 well established by facts. The house sparrow origi- 

 nally built in trees, and does so now; but when 

 houses were first built, he was able to adapt him- 

 self to new circumstances, and is not slow now to 

 utilize any convenient spot that affords good shelter 

 for his young, and saves him the trouble of building 

 a more elaborate nest, such as is necessary when 

 he builds in a tree. The chimney and house swal- 

 lows have in like manner changed their habits. 

 The purple martin and other birds have no objec- 

 tion to use the boxes that are sometimes put up for 

 them. Wrens will build in cigar-boxes placed in 

 convenient spots, and a robin has been known to 

 utilize an old tin or kettle. As the swallow and 

 the sparrow have shown a liking for human dwell- 

 ings, so from time immemorial the jackdaw has 

 taken to church steeples, which is to be explained 

 neither by mere instinct nor by his theological 

 opinions. Birds not only change the situation, 

 but will also alter the style, of their nests, making 

 them slighter or more compact and strong, shallower 

 or deeper, as circumstances demand. 



The little gold-crested warbler makes a perfect 

 dome to its nest in exposed situations, and has the 

 entrance at the side ; but when it builds in a situ- 

 ation where no dome is required, it builds an open 

 cup-shaped nest. Mr. Wilson strongly insists that 

 the Baltimore oriole impioves in nest-building by 

 practice, and that the older birds make the best 

 nests. 



The lark did not always line its nest with horse- 

 hair; and, in place of hair, or wool, or vegetable 

 fibre, birds have been able readily to utilize wors- 

 ted, thread, silk, bits of cloth, and other materials, 

 about which original instinct could teach them 

 nothing. 



Modern civilization has been unable to create 

 any distinctive style of architecture. We have 

 what we have borrowed, — the Egyptian, the Gothic, 

 the Grecian, the Roman. These may be instanced 

 as vastly superior to any thing that has ever been 

 developed among birds, and as demonstrating the 

 differences between the results of reason and those 

 of instinct. But man is capable of adapting him- 

 self to more varied conditions than the birds, and 

 draws his knowledge and experience from a wider 

 field. By war and conquest and by migration 

 different races are mingled together, and the habits 

 and customs of one nation are modified by those 

 of another. Man has learnt his architecture as 



he has learnt other things, — by this mingling of 

 races. And the contrast is not so great as at first 

 sight appears. The nests of some birds are so 

 wonderfully and skilfully made, that the contrast 

 between them and the lowest human habitation, 

 on the one hand, is greater than between these 

 nests and the finest human architecture on the 

 other. If the nest of the tailor-bird is the result 

 of instinct, can the hole in the ground made by 

 the South-African Earthman be the result of rea- 

 son ? It is less a question of kind than of degree. 

 The contrast is not between reason and instinct, 

 but between a higher and lower kind of reason. 

 Birds, like men, though in a less degree, are wise 

 enough to alter the situation, the mode of build- 

 ing, and the material of their dwellings, and to 

 improve them in obedience to changed conditions. 

 6 Ali.ston Place, Boston, J-une 1. 



[Communicated to the Popular Science News.'l 



TUE GOLF-BALL'S FLIGHT. 



A SEEMING paradox is met with when a golf- 

 player assures one that a properly "driven " golf- 

 ball, after proceeding with an apparently etjuable 

 motion over the first part of its flight, acquires at 

 a later stage an additional impulse which enables 

 it to describe the last part of its mid- air course 

 with a velocity which is evidently greater than that 

 which it has been just previously travelling under 

 Investigation for one's self, or inquiry from any 

 intelligent golf-player, will convince one that this 

 statement is borne out by the fact. Let us see 

 what the theoretical reasons for this peculiarity are. 



The ball is so placed on the ground with refer- 

 ence to the player, that the blow is struck when the 

 lowest part of the curve is being described by the 

 golf-club in the hands of the player. In conse- 

 quence of this, the direction of tlie impelling force 

 is horizontal : yet a " well-driven " golf- ball starts 

 in its flight at an angle of from 20° to 30° with the 

 horizon; then it must be, that this horizontally de- 

 livered blow is applied to the surface of the ball as 

 much below the horizontal line passing through its 

 centre as the line of flight is elevated above the 

 horizon. It is evident, that, as the force is not 

 applied at such a point that the prolongation of its 

 direction would pass through its centre (assumed 

 to be its centre of gravity as well), there will be 

 evolved a motion of gyration about some point, 

 generally near the upper surface of the ball at 

 starting, and never at its centre. Let us assume 

 that the impelling force has been so applied that 

 the gyratory motion is about that point of the ball 

 which is at the surface vertically over the point on 

 which it is resting; then the path traced out by this 

 point in its flight will be the apparent path of the 

 ball, and that gone over by the centre of gravity 

 its true path, an inverted curtate-cycloid. 



It will be evident that the greater the number of 

 gyrations in proportion to the velocity of the ball's 

 flight, the greater the difference between the appar- 

 ent and true path. If we assume that the ball 

 gyrates once in going twice the length of its own 

 diameter, there will be two instants, separated by 

 half the total period we are considering, in which 

 the ball will be in exactly the same place, except- 

 ing that the point of gyration will now be in ad- 

 vance of its previous position a distance equal to 

 the ball's diameter. It is evident, from this possi- 

 ble case, that a large proportion of the impelling 

 force of the blow is being absorbed in carrying the 

 ball, or its centre of gravity, through this true 

 path; and it will be equally evident that if, by any 

 means, this gyratory motion, which, as pointed out, 

 is the cause of the difference between the true and 

 apparent paths, could be arrested, there would be 

 available just the amount of energy toward acceler- 



ating its flight that is absorbed in gyration. Such 

 a means is present in the resistance that the ball 

 experiences from the atmosphere in its flight, but 

 not ipso facto, because the resistance that the ball 

 experiences in one part of its gyration as a ball is 

 practically equal to the acceleration it is in receipt 

 of in the correspondingly opposite portion, and in 

 such a case this gyration would be maintained 

 throughout its flight: but if we consider the ball 

 as an arm or radius turning about the point of 

 gyration whilst being impelled forward, we see that 

 the atmospheric resistances at different parts of the 

 radius are unequal, — at one extremity being equal 

 to the resistance of the atmosphere due to the flight 

 of the ball, plus that due to the velocity of rota- 

 tion; whilst at the other, situate at the point of 

 gyration, it is merely equal to that due to the first 

 cause. Dividing our radius equally at the point 

 that will coincide with the centre of gravity of the 

 ball, which we will now suppose contains this radius 

 as a diameter, we have two levers of equal length 

 on which the atmospheric resistances are unequal, 

 and of such a nature that we can represent their 

 effect by supposing a single force as acting on the 

 extremity next to the point of gyration in opposi- 

 tion to this gyratory tendency, equal in amount to 

 half the difference of the total resistances on each 

 of our equal levers. The result of this will be the 

 conversion of the gyratory motion into an impel- 

 ling force ; for the lost motion in one direction must 

 be apparent in the other, as none of it has been 

 absorbed by the atmospheric resistance occasioned 

 by the flight of the ball, as that, whether the ball 

 is gyrating or stationary, is equal in both cases, 

 and follows the same law. 



We can therefore see how, if a golf-ball or any 

 spherical projectile in its flight gyrates about any 

 other than its centre of figure and gravity, in 

 any plane other than one at right angles to the 

 line of its flight, its path will be that of a curtate- 

 cycloid, modified in so far that, instead of being 

 described off a fixed plane, it is described from the 

 parabolic curve of its apparent flight; and how the 

 forces expended in developing the true path are 

 converted without diminution into a corresponding 

 one in the direction of the line of flight, which 

 will result, at the instant of conversion, in a sen- 

 sible increase in its velocity, as at first stated. 



W. A. Ashe, F.R.A.S. 



The Quebec Ohsekvatoky, May, 1888. 



AMERICAN INDIAN JUGGLERY. 



The feature of the evening at one of the late 

 meeting.s of the Washington Anthropological Soci- 

 ety was a paper by Col. Garrick Mallory on " Al- 

 gonkin Glypson Bark and Stone." The paper also 

 dealt briefly with some related subjects, and will 

 form a part of the annual report of the Bureau of 

 Ethnology. The following is a brief chapter on 

 " Indian Jugglery," extracted from this paper: — 



" Paul Beaulieu, an Ojibwa of mixed blood, 

 present interpreter at White Earth Agency, gave 

 me his experience with a Jossakeed, at Leech Lake, 

 about the year 1858. The reports of wonderful 

 performances reached the agency, and, as Beaulieu 

 had no faith in the jugglers, he offered to wager 

 one hundred dollars, a large sum, then and there, 

 against goods of equal value, that the juggler could 

 not perform satisfactorily one of the tricks of his 

 repertoire to be selected by him (Beaulieu) in the 

 presence of himself and a committee consisting of 

 his friends. 



" The wager was accepted, with the result to be 

 described. 



" A medicine lodge was made. Four strong 

 poles were planted deep in the ground, rising to an 

 elevation of at least ten or twelve feet; one of them 



