152 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. I., No. 5. 



serving the fire furnished hy the active volcano of 

 one of the islands are very ingenious. Many mis- 

 statements have been made concerning their former 

 ignorance of fire. 



The closing part of Mr. Man's paper, relating to 

 superstitions, beliefs, and mythology, furnishes a 

 tempting field for the prolongation of this notice ; 

 but the want of space forbids; — (Journ. anthrop. 

 inst. Or. Br., xii. 117.) [340 



The Papuans and the Polynesians. —Students 

 of ethnology are astonished and perplexed at the 

 occurrence of a patch of mop-headed blacks occur- 

 ring in the oceanic area tliat exl,ends soutli-easterly 

 from New Guinea to Fiji, and various have been the 

 attempts to classify them. Mr. A. H. Keane has 

 elaborated a scheme of all the oceanic peoples in the 

 ethnologic appendix to Stanford's Compendium for 

 Australasia. To this arrangement Mr. C. Stanilaud 

 Wake takes exception, in a paper read before the 

 London anthropological institute, which called forth 

 a sharp rejoinder from Mr. Keane. Mr. Wake's own 

 views may be briefly stated : — 



1. The Eastern Archipelago was early inhabited 

 by a straight-haired Caucasian race, repi-esented by 

 the Australians. 2. To this race belonged also ances- 

 tors of the Papuans, Micronesians, Tasmanians, and 

 Polynesians. 3. The special peculiarities of the dark 

 races are due to foreign elements, the Negritos having 

 influenced them all in varying degrees. 4. The lighter 

 races show Negrito influence, but they have been in- 

 termixed with Asiatic peoples, giving rise to the 

 Malay and the Polynesians. 5. Traces of an Arab or 

 Semitic element appear among all, but chiefly among 

 the Papuans and Melanesians, the former of whom 

 may also possess a Hindoo admixture. — {Journ. an- 

 throp. inst., xii. 197.) [341 



Pebbles resembling artificial objects. — Dr. 

 Jos. Leidy called attention to a collection of large 

 pebbles, which illustrated how closely certain natural 

 forms may sometimes resemble works of primitive 

 manufacture. The pebbles have the general shape 

 of human feet, and might readily be supposed to have 

 been used as lasts upon which the moccasins or san- 

 dals of prehistoric man were shaped. — (vlcad. nat. 

 sc. Philad.; meeting Feb. .5.) [342 



PSYCHOLOGY. 



Apparent size of magnified objects. — A paper 

 (to appear elsewhere) was read by Prof. W. H. Brewer, 

 in which he gave the results of several hundred esti- 

 mates by as many different observers chosen from 

 diif erent classes of people, of a common insect as seen 

 magnified by a microscope. These estimates were 

 found to vary from a fraction of an inch to several 

 feet, the actual apparent size at ten inches being a 

 little over four inches. — {Conn. acad. arts sc. ; meet- 

 ing, Dec. 20. ) [343 



Experiments in binary arithmetic. — Simple ad- 

 dition involves several distinct but nearly simulta- 



neous mental operations, and a capital of more than 

 fifty propositions committed to memory. The object 

 of the experiments by the author of the paper, Mr. 

 Henry Farquhai-, was to test the possibility of dimin- 

 ishing the mental strain, and consequent liability to 

 error, by the use of numbers expressed in powers of 

 2, the mental work being reduced to counting similar 

 marks and halving their sums. Columns of numbers 

 of six or eight figures each were written with the 

 ordinary, and with various forms of binary, notation; 

 and comparative additions were made. To avoid 

 confusion of columns it was found best to give dif- 

 ferent shapes to the marks denoting neighboring 

 powers of 2; and, for brevity of expression, two or 

 more of them were combined in one written figure. 

 About seventy combinations were tried, with various 

 results. With the best combination, addition re- 

 quired only three-fourths the time taken with ordi- 

 nary figures; and this was reduced to one-half when 

 the binary aiotation was taught to a person unskilled 

 in arithmetic. 



The only natural division is by bisections; hence 

 the superior convenience of a binary scale of weights ; 

 and hence another reason for endeavoring to intro- 

 duce a binary arithmetic. 



In the discussion which followed, Mr. William B. 

 Taylor said the world was losing so much by the use 

 of the denary arithmetic, that even a single generation 

 might fiud economy in substituting the octonary. 

 The paper had especial value in that it proved the 

 ability of binary arithmetic to cohipete with the es- 

 tablished system in rapidity of computation. — ( P/ji;. 

 soc. Wash.; meeting J a,u. 13.) [344 



Varying the thermal background of reflex 

 perception. — The background of conscious percep- 

 tion, physiologically speaking, is defined by W. T. 

 Sedgwick as "that standard (usually unconsciously 

 held) with which we compare any stimulus which 

 awakens consciousness." We perceive difference of 

 relative intensity between a specific stimulus and its 

 background. The latter may vary so that a stimulus 

 which will to-day cause consciousness or motion will 

 not do so to-morrow. Instead of studying the reflex 

 background by means of inhibitions, the author va- 

 ries the background as a whole thermally, and ob- 

 serves its effect on reflexes. A reflex or headless 

 frog may be heated so slowly, that, although the 

 heart may beat very fast, rigor caloris may be caused 

 without any motor re-action of its limbs. If the 

 heart be tied beforehand, reflexes occur from grad- 

 ual heating. 



This the author thinks explained by assuming, that, 

 in the first case, the hot blood passing inward equal- 

 izes the progressive heating throughout, or changes 

 the thermal background; while in the second case, 

 with no circulation, the background is fixed, and 

 the surface temperature rises to the point of differ- 

 ence which causes movement. — {Johns Hopk. univ. 

 arc, Feb., 18S3.) g. s. h. [345 



INTELLiaENCE FROM AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC STATIONS. 



GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS. 

 National niuaeum. 

 Manitoba fishes. — A collection of fishes from Man- 

 itoba, the first received for twenty years, shows that 

 the fish-fauna of that region does not differ materially 

 from that of the lake states. 

 Number of visitors in ISSS. — The reports of the 



doorkeepers, which have been regularly made since 

 Feb. 8, 1882, show that the average daily attendance 

 at the museum building for that year was 535 persons, 

 and, at the Smithsonian building, 488 persons. Esti- 

 mating upon this basis, the attendance for the year 

 1882 may be placed at 183,265 for the museum build- 

 ing, and 152,822 for the Smithsonian building. When 

 the re-arrangement of the collections in the latter 



