50 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 337 



choose to make a list of the fools they know, they can send it to 

 the Theosophical Book Company. 



— John Wiley & Sons announce as ready, " A Treatise on the Or- 

 dinary and Partial Differential Equations," by William Woolsey 

 Johnson, professor of mathematics in the United States Naval 

 Academy, Annapolis, Md.; " Submarine Mines and Torpedoes as 

 applied to Harbor Defence," by John Townsend Bucknill, lieuten- 

 ant-colonel Royal Engineers ; " Elements of the Art of War," pre- 

 pared for the use of the cadets of the United States Military Academy, 

 West Point, N.Y., by James Mercur, professor of civil and military 

 engineering ; " A Laboratory Guide in Chemical Analysis," by 

 David O'Brine, professor of chemistry in Colorado State Agricul- 

 tural College ; and " A History of the Planing-MiU," with practical 

 ■suggestions for the construction, care, and management of wood- 

 working machinery, by C. R. Tompkins, M.E. 



— Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Co. announce that they have 

 made arrangements to supplement their series. Epochs of Modern 

 History, by a short series of books treating of the history of 

 America, which wdl be published under the general title " Epochs 

 o{ American History." The series will be under the editorship of 

 Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, assistant professor of history in Harvard 

 ■College. Each volume will contain about two hundred and fifty 

 pages, similar in size and style to the page of the volumes in the 

 Epochs of History Series, with full marginal analysis, working 

 bibliographies, maps, introductions, and index. The volumes will 

 be issued separately, and each will be complete in itself. Those 

 already arranged for will, it is hoped, provide a continuous history 

 of the United States from the foundation of the Colonies to the 

 present time, which shall be suited to class use as well as for gen- 

 eral reading and reference. The volumes in preparation are as 

 follows: "The Colonies (1493-1763)," by Reuben Gold Thwaites, 

 secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, author of 

 ■"Historic Waterways," etc.; "Formation of the Union (1763- 

 1829)," by Albert Bushnell Hart, A.B., Ph.D., the editor of the 

 ■series; and "Division and Re-union (1829-1889)," by Woodrow 

 Wilson, Ph.D., LL.D., professor of history and political economy 

 in Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., author of " Con- 

 gressional Government," etc. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 

 Are Beech-Trees ever struck by Lightning ? 



This is the question implied in your note on p. 7 of Science for 

 July 5, 1889. 



In August, 1885, at Mason, Ingham County, Mich., a number of 

 men were at work harvesting wheat in a large field west of the 

 village. 



A heavy thunder-storm came up, and all but one of them, Aura 

 Hines, fled for shelter to a saw-mill about a quarter of a mile dis- 

 tant. He said that his shoes hurt his feet, and he did not like to 

 run so far ; he would go to the woods, which bounded the field 

 south, not far distant. After the storm (accompanied with heavy 

 thunder and lightning) had passed, the men returned from the mill 



to their work, but Hines did not appear. They went in search, 

 and found him sitting under and against a large beech-tree, dead. 



Without disturbing his position, they sent to the village for help, 

 and I went and saw him. 



The tree was a large and tall one, about two feet in diameter, 

 and leaned a little eastward. A pile of brushwood had been 

 burned on the east side, which had killed the tree on that side 

 from the roots to the height of seven feet from the ground. The 

 storm came from westward, and Hines sat on the east side crouched 

 against the tree, which sheltered him from the rain. Two or three 

 holes of half an inch diameter, near his right foot, showed where 

 the current passed from the earth to his body, partly tearing the 

 sole from his shoe, and passing through the crown of the coarse 

 straw hat on his head, making a half-inch hole, as if a bullet had 

 been fired through it ; the broken straws pointing upward and out- 

 ward. 



There was a plain furrowed trace on the burned and dead bark 

 of the tree above his head, to the green and living wood, but no 

 farther. 



The wood of the beech is very close grained, and in the living 

 tree full of sap, and the green bark is also filled with sap, while the 

 outer or ross bark is thin and quite smooth. 



Has not such a tree the elements of a good conductor, over 

 which the electric fluid passes, without shattering it or leaving a 

 trace ? 



If this is true, beech-trees are probably struck by lightning as 

 often as any others, but it leaves no trace of its passage ovec them, 



H. D. Post. 



Holland, Mich., July 14. 



A Navajo Tree-Burial. 



For a number of years I enjoyed the opportunity of studying 

 the customs and traditions of three or four tribes of Indians in the 

 vicinity of Fort Wingate, N. Mex., and during that period became 

 very familiar with the method of disposing of their dead resorted 

 to by the Navajos, one of the tribes to which I refer. They are, as 

 we know, " cliff-buriers," as I have elsewhere described ; and per- 

 sonally I never met with a case where they do not bury their de- 

 ceased — men, women, and children — in the more capacious rents 

 in the rocky cations of the mountain-sides, where this tribe now 

 inhabits. Recently, however, a well-authenticated case has been 

 sent me where the Navajos had buried one of their dead children 

 in a tree. This was done not long ago, only about a mile from 

 Fort Wingate, and was discovered by Mr. Benjamin Wittick, who 

 has taken an admirable photograph of the tree and the locality. 

 The body of the child had been deposited, after having been 

 wrapped in cloth and blankets, longitudinally on the limb of a large 

 pinon-tree, about fifteen feet above the ground. A rude platform 

 of dead and broken limbs was constructed to hold the body in 

 position. Indeed, in all particulars the burial is characterized as a 

 typical tree-burial, and is interesting from the fact that it consti- 

 tutes such a remarkable departure from the general mortuary cus- 

 tom of that tribe of our Indians. R. W. Shufeldt. 



■ Takoma, D.C., July 16. 



INDUSTRIAL NOTES. 

 JJew Outfit of Electrical Engineering Apparatus for Prince- 

 ton College. 



Messrs. James W. Queen & Co. of Philadelphia, the well- 

 known manufacturers and impotters of electrical test instruments, 

 report the sale of a bill of goods amounting to four thousand dol- 

 lars to Princeton College for the equipment of their course in elec- 

 trical engineering to be inaugurated in September ne.xt. The list 

 embraces several of Queen's large Wheatstone bridge sets as de- 

 vised by Professor William A. Anthony, and pronounced by Pro- 

 fessor B. F. Thomas of Ohio State University " to be superior to 

 Elliott's Dial Form." These sets, as well as several of the next 

 size smaller, also ordered by Princeton College, are all guaranteed 

 by Professor Anthony to be accurate within J^ of one per cent. 

 There is also a large $375 reflecting galvanometer made for the 

 special purpose of measuring high insulation resistance, the galva- 

 nometer itself having a resistance of 500,000 ohms. This will be 



the only instrument of this character in the United States. For 

 measuring induction co-efficients, etc., there is provided one of 

 Ayrton & Perry's Secohmmeters. For the determination of mag- 

 netic constants there is a large Weber earth inductor which will be 

 used, in addition to the Kew magnetometer already possessed by 

 the physical department. There is also a Kohlrausch unifilar 

 electro dynamometer for the measurement of very weak currents, 

 such as those used in telephone work, etc. This suspension has 

 the minimum amount of torsion as the current is conveyed out of 

 the instrument by means of a platinum strip attached to the 

 movable coil, and dipping into a dilute solution of sulphuric acid. 

 A pair of Wiedemann's large dead beat reflecting galvanometers. 

 Sir William Thomson's astatic reflecting galvanometer, one of 

 Elliott's differential galvanometers as well as his ballistic instru- 

 ment, a Wheatstone Kirchoff cylinder bridge, Kohlrausch's mirror 

 differential galvanometer, condensers, telescopes, etc., go to make 

 up the remainder of as fine an outfit of electrical test apparatus as 

 has ever been sold at any one time in this country. 



