122 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XXI. No 526 



yellow-breasted chat, and in the Pacific coast by {I. v. longicauda), 

 Ions; tailed chat. The western variety can hardly be distinguished 

 from the eastern except by the longer tail and perhaps brighter 

 colors. These l)irds are about 7 inches or a little more in length, 

 having an extent of wings of 9.5 inches; wing a little more than 

 3 inches, the tail of the western bird being about the same 

 length: bill. .65 inch long. They are slaty-br.^wn on the head, 

 neck and back; wings and tail brown, tinged with yellow; throat 

 and breast bright yellow; underparts brownish- white; yellow of 

 the throat bordered with white; a few white feathers about the 

 eyes, and a faint light stripe from nostril to eye. They build 

 quite a bulky nest in bu-hes or briars near the ground, and lay 

 from four to six white eggs, spotted with brown. As a songster, 

 for variety and execution, I think they are second only to the 

 mocking bird in Oiegon ; but in the eastern States I do not think 

 they can equal the brown thrasher or catbird. 



In the breeding season the chats have a peculiar habit of flying 

 up and dropping down nearly straight, beating the air with their 

 wngs incessantly. Occasionally they will remain almost sta- 

 tionary in the air for several minutes, beating the air with their 

 winss and singing. At times they flap their wings so as to be 

 heard some distance away. 



A curiosity in the owl family is the pygmy owl. One variety 

 {Glaucidium gnoma) is quite often seen in Oregon. They are 

 well named pygmies, as they are only about 7.35 inches in length 

 and 14.0 in extent of wings; tail, 2 85, of twelve feathers; bill, 

 greenish-yellow with lighter tip; feet and claws brownish- black. 

 This little owl appears very much like a miniature barred owl 

 {Syrniwn nebulosiim), as it has a smooth head with no ear tufts, 

 and is marked much like the barred owl, b"ing of a slaty-brown, 

 thickly barred and spotted with white, darkest on the wings and 

 back, lighter on the underparts. This little owl I think is more 

 of a day-bird than most of the family, as it may quite often be 

 seen on cloudy days out hunting for mice and small birds, or 

 even moths and insects, which I think sometimes form partof its 

 food. It no doubt breeds in hollow trees, but I have never found 

 its n St. 



' TELEPHONING BY INDUCTION. 



ET G. H. ERTAN, M.A., ST. PETEB'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND. 



The wonderful revelations dealt out to an admiring public by 

 some of our newspapers under such headings as ''Science 

 Notes" often afford infinite amusement to the initiated. Some 

 recent experiments of Mr. \V. H. Preece, F.R.S., on induction 

 currents, have found their way into some of these collections of 

 information in a form which makes them appear little short of 

 miraculous. According to some accounts, Mr. Preece has solved 

 the problem of ''telephoning without wires." He had only to 

 speak the word (so we are told) and the electric fluid leapt across 

 the three miles of sea which separates the island of Flat Holm, in 

 the Bristol Channel, England, from the mainland, and delivered 

 its message with unerring accuracy into the telephone placed 

 there for its reception. On reading such accounts as this the 

 British public will exclaim. Oh ! with a mixture of awe and ad- 

 miration, and half a dozen "'paradox mongers '" will build up 

 unintelligible theories of "the electric fluid and the way it 

 radiates through the ether" or something of the kind — showing 

 that Maxwell and Faraday are wrong and they themselves are 

 right. Those, however, who know anything about electricity 

 will smile when they see what impossibilities the presiding genius 

 of the British Postoffice Telegraphs is credited with performing. 

 In the first place they will know that either telegraphing or tele- 

 phoning without wires is still an impossibility. Wii-es there 

 must be, and the wires at the transmitting and receiving stations 

 must form circuits enclosing a considerable area, but the impor- 

 tant feature of the experiments is that the two differtnt sets of 

 wires may be some miles apart without any wire connecting 

 them. Then, again, the idea that the "electric fluid" can jump 

 across through three miles of air like a flash of lightning is ab- 

 surd. What really happens is that every time that a current is 

 passed through one circuit a current is "induced" in the other 

 circuit, and when the current in the first circuit is stopped an 



"induced" current flows round the second circuit in the reverse 

 direction to what it did before. This is the well-known principle 

 of electro-magnetic induction, which has given rise to the induc- 

 tion coil, the dynamo, andimleed to most of our modern applira 

 tions of electricity. The remarkable thing about the present ex- 

 periments is that they show that this " induction " can not onlv 

 make itself felt at such great distances, but can actually be util- 

 ized to transmit telephonic messages. At present we can only 

 speculate as to the way this " inducing action " takes place, all 

 that we can assert definitely is that no electricity passes from 

 one circuit to the other. Even if we regard the action as mag- 

 netic, the " lines of magnetic force " do not go from one wire to 

 the other, on the contrary they encircle the wires and do not 

 anywhere terminate on a wire. Again, so far from the action 

 travelling with unerring accuracy in any particular direction, 

 the same message would be transmitted to a receiving apparatus- 

 placed anywhere in the neighborhood, provided that it was fur- 

 nished with a sufficiently large circuit of wire, so that if several 

 transmitting apparatus were in use at the same time in any par- 

 ticular neighborhood, the various messages would get confused. 



Scientific discoveries such as this appear to be comparatively 

 simple matters on paper, but they are usually the outcome of 

 many years of patient experimenting It is more than six years 

 since Mr. Preece described some similar experiments made with 

 the telegraph wires running up the northeast and northwest 

 coasts of England respectively. In these experiments, however, 

 the primaiy current was produced by means of a powerful 

 dynamo, but the induced current right over the other side of 

 England was sufficient to produce a sound " very like a wail" in 

 the telephone employed for its detection. 



Feb. 10, 1893. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*** Correspondents are requested to be as brief as possible. The writer's name 

 is in all cases required as proof of good faith. 



On request in advance, one hundred copies of the number containing his 

 communication loill be furnished free to any correspondent. 



The editor laillbe glad to publish any queries consonant with the character 

 of the journal. 



The So-Called "Cache Implements" 



There has recently crept in to archaeological literature an unfortu- 

 nate, because misleading, term for a well-known form of chipped- 

 stone tool or weapon, that of "cache implement." Thisnamehas 

 been suggested, nn the ground of the erroneous assumption, that 

 long, narrow blades of jasper, argillite, and other flakable stone 

 were only to be found in "caches " or deposits, and then, continu- 

 ing the argument, because so found, they were unfinished objects, 

 and in time were to be disinterred and converted, by further 

 chipping, into knives, spear-heads, and, possibly, arrow points. 

 There is not a scintilla of truth in this, so far as any living man 

 now knows. It fits admirably, however, with a plausible theory 

 by acoterie who have failed to make any important archseologica) 

 discovery, and so is one of their mainstays in proving the mod- 

 ernity of America's native peop'e; something that must be pro?;ec? 

 at all hazards; or. if not demonstrated, foisted upon the unthink- 

 ing to s'^cure the scientific prominence of a few archeeological 

 mugwumps. 



Wuen we examine a series of these "cache" implements, it 

 will be seen that they are not too long, too broad, or too thick to 

 be used as weapons or domestic implements, but lacking any 

 evidence of a notched or narrowed base appear unavailable so far 

 as the matter of attaching a handle thereto; ei'go, an iinhandled 

 implement being an impossibility, they are unfinished. If, how- 

 ever, the reader will refer to " Remarks upon Chipped Stone Im- 

 plements" (Bulletin of the-Essex Institute, vol xv., 1883) he will 

 find there pictured just such objects as I refer to, with short 

 wooden handles secured by a " tenacious substance probably ob- 

 tained from the cactus." Now, the Delaware Indians made a 

 most excellent glue by boiling together cherry gum and fish-bones, 

 and so could as readily have secured handles to these plain blades, 

 and, considering how frequently single whole specimens and 

 broken ones are found on village sites, it is clearly obvious that 

 they were in frequent use. 



