Febeuaey 5, 1897.] 



■ SCIENCE. 



221 



to similar trains of thought and those to 

 analogous results. 



SACEED SECRET SOCIETIES. 



In L^Anthropologie for October there are 

 accounts of two sacred secret societies 

 which illustrate the curious aberrations of 

 religious doctrines, unrestrained by reason. 



The society of ' Leopards ' exists in Sierra 

 Leone. Their god is represented by a manioc 

 root, stuffed with various holy objects. 

 They are cannibalistic, and the price of initi- 

 ation is to induce some member of the appli- 

 cant's family to wander into the midst of 

 the assembly, there to be slain and eaten. 

 The reward is to receive this fetish, which 

 •will bring good luck. 



The other society, already mentioned by 

 some writers, is that of the Aioi, of Tahiti 

 and some other Polynesian islands. It,- is 

 composed of both men and women, some 

 belonging to the highest castes. It is de- 

 voted to the genesiac cult in its most ab- 

 normal forms, and one of its laws is that the 

 members must scrupulously avoid the re- 

 production of their kind. 



The incredibly obscene groups in pottery 

 and metal excavated from the tombs of the 

 Yuncas in Peru can probably be explained 

 by the existence among them of some such 

 religious society. 



D. G. Brinton. 



TjNivEESiTy OF Pennsylvania. 



NOTES ON INOBGANIC CHE3IISTRY. 

 Several years ago Professor Dunnington, 

 ■of the University of Virginia, showed that 

 the element titanium was much more widely 

 ■distributed in nature than had been sup- 

 posed. Indeed, not only all rock masses, 

 but even all soils, examined by him were 

 found to contain considerable quantities. 

 More recently Professor Charles E. Wait, 

 of the University of Tennessee, has had oc- 

 •casion to analyze the ashes of various vege- 

 table substances for titanium and finds it 



to be an invariaTjle constituent. The ash 

 of oak contains 0.31 per cent., of apple wood 

 0.11 per cent., and of cotton-seed meal 0.02 

 per cent. In coals titanium was found 

 present to the extent of from nearly one 

 per cent, in bituminous coals to over two 

 and a-half per cent, in Pennsylvania an- 

 thracite. Titanium thus appears to be one 

 of the most widely distributed elements and 

 it is not improbable that analyses will show 

 that it is also found in animals. 



In the last Nature Professor Spencer Pick- 

 ering comes to the support of Professor 

 Armstrong in his attack upon the theory of 

 electrolytic dissociation of salts in solution. 

 In the course of his article he says : " For 

 a theory to be acceptable it should, at the 

 very least, be reasonably probable, and 

 should not violate any fundamental and 

 well established facts ; it should stand the 

 test of any apparently crucial experiments 

 * * * and, I think we may add, it should 

 give some explanation, not simply of the 

 behavior of matter in the condition in ques- 

 tion, but also of why matter ever assumes 

 such a condition. The theories of osmotic 

 pressure and ionic dissociation, I believe, 

 have not done this." 



The opening of the Davy- Faraday Ee- 

 search Laboratory in London should mark 

 an epoch in chemical science in Great 

 Britain. This laboratory has been estab- 

 lished by Dr. Ludwig Mond at a cost of 

 half a million dollars. $170,000 has been 

 expended in the building and its equip- 

 ment, while $330,000 remains as an endow- 

 ment fund. The laboratory is furnished 

 with the most modern instruments and 

 appliances for researches in pure and phys- 

 ical chemistry. In opening the laboratory 

 Dr. Mond said he had named it the Davy- 

 Faraday Eesearch Laboratory, in perpetual 

 memory of those two great pioneers of sci- 

 ence who carried out their world-famed 

 and epoch-making researches almost on 



