March 25, 189'.] 



SCIENCE 



72, 



Their number, in consequence of frequent battles with their more 

 numerous enemies, has been much reduced, and is now, probably, 

 very small. They are very skilful in the use of the bow, and 

 show some dexterity in the manufacture of aiTOw-heads of flint 

 and glass and needles of bone, but they never make any improve- 

 ments in their utensils and are utterly ignorant of art of the lude 

 description generally found among savages. Tierra del Fuego is 

 inhabited by six tribes of Onas, each of which speaks a particular 

 dialect, though men of different tribes are able to converse to- 

 gether. Each man has his distinctive name, wherein the Onas 

 differ from the Yaghan, who live on the Beagle Channel, and go 

 out in their canoes to sell otter and seal skins to passing vessels. 



— Among the most singular cats which have been introduced 

 into Europe of late years are those known as the Siamese. They 

 are coming into favor, and half a dozen old cats and several young 

 ones in the kitten classes were exhibited last fall at the Crystal 

 Palace show. The ground color of one was pale cream, slightly 

 darker on the hind-quarters, the color of the extremities, that is 

 to say, the muzzle, ears, and tail, and the four feet, being a very 

 dark chocolate, approaching black. 



— At a meeting of the board of directors of the American Asso- 

 ^ciation to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, held at 



Washington, D. C, Jan. 18, it was decided to hold the annual 

 summer meeting either at Manitou, Col., Lake George, N. Y., or 

 at Northampton, Mass., and Mr. A. L, E. Crauter was appointed 

 a committee to ascertain the relative advantages of these points. 

 He reported to a meeting of the executive committee at the Parker 

 House last week. The committee decided, after due deliberation, 

 to hold the meeting from June 22 to July 1 inclusive, at Crosby- 

 side Hotel, Lake George, N. Y. This will in no wise conflict with 

 the proposed conference of principals and superintendents of deaf 

 and dumb institutions in Colorado. At the meeting last week, 

 Dr. A. Graham Bell presided. Among those present were Miss 

 C. A. Yale, principal of the Clark Institution for the Deaf; Miss 

 Sarah Fuller, principal of Horace Mann school, Boston; Prof. A. 

 L. E. Crauter, principal of the Pennsylvania Institute for the 

 Deaf, Philadelphia; Hon. John Hitz, superintendent of the Volta 

 bureau, Washington, D. C, and others. The meeting adjourned 

 subject to call of the president to hear the report of the committee 

 of arrangements in regard to a programme. 



— Mr. William Sowerby, the veteran and distinguished Secre- 

 tary of the Royal Botanical Gardens, writes to the British Medical 

 Journal the following note on his suggestion for adding to the 

 number of alkaloid beverages by the introduction of coffee-tea ; 

 When walking in the Gardens of the Royal Botanical Society, 

 Regent's Park, and noting the extent of the collection of living 

 medicinal and economic plants of all climes and countries there 

 brought together in one spot, it must have occurred to all of us 

 how very small a number of plants, out of the vast store which 

 Nature has provided, man has bound to his service, and the yet 

 fewer he has taken the trouble to cultivate. During the march 

 of the last half-century, in science, medicine, mechanics, steam, 

 and electricity how little has been gained from Nature's stores. 

 The artificial culture of cinchona is, perhaps, the most noted of 

 the few. Again, any step in eating, drinking, dress, is so gov- 

 ■erned by habit or fashion that he must be a bold man who tries 

 to turn the current. This is illustrated in tea drinking. Perhaps 

 there is no one habit so universal; each people has its peculiar tea 

 or closely allied beverage, and most of these have continued the 

 same for many ages. In one it is cocoa, in others, coffee, and in 

 many, tea; in a few special quarters of the globe nothing but 

 maU is thought fit to drink, but in only one small district is 

 coffee-leaf tea used. Now we all know that these beverages are 

 found by man to be pleasant and agreeable to him by reason of 

 their contarning a peculiar principle called theine; but jet ive do 

 not always select for our use the part of the plant containing the 

 largest percentage of theine. or cultivate the special plant with a 

 view to afford us the most valuable part. For example, in coffee 

 the leaves are said to contain 1.26 of theine, and the htrries only 

 1.0 per cent, and yet over 110,000,000 of men use the berries, and 

 only 2,000,000 the leaves of coffee, although .500,000 000 use the 

 leaves of tea. Now the cultivation of coffee henies is very try- 



ing, precarious, subject lo attacks of blight and unfruitfulness; 

 in fact it follows the general line that the produce of fruit by cul- 

 tivation is far more open to accident than that of the leaves, and 

 very probably good crops of coffee leaves could be obtained at 

 small cost in countries and localties where it would be risky or 

 even impossible to produce berries. Here is a case open to a vast 

 variety of people to solve, for there can be no reason why coffee 

 leaves may not become a valuable item of culture in our warmer 

 colonies and many parts of the world. The one most difficult 

 item to move is to create the demand. Once start the fashion for 

 " five o'clock coffee-leaf tea," and the thing is done, and many a 

 fortune made. As to the peculiar flavor of coffee-leaf tea much 

 depends on the manipulation of the leaf after it is taken from the 

 plant. At the Botanic Gardens a variety of flavors have by treat- 

 ment been produced from leaves off one plant, the general flavor 

 being a kind of combination of coffee and tea so as to get both in 

 one cup. 



— The St. Petersburger Medicinische Wochenschrift gives a 

 resume of a paper by A. S. Ignatovski on the cause of death by 

 hanging. He refers the rapid loss of consciousness after suspen- 

 sion to the retarded or arrested circulation in the brain brought 

 about by the increased intra-cranial blood pressure. The effect of 

 this impediment to the circulation is the same as in cerebral 

 anasmia, for in both the nutrition of the brain suffers. It is there- 

 fore not, as Leofman teaches, an insufficient supply of blood to the 

 brain, due to compression of the carotids, which interferes with 

 the functional activity of the brain, but compression of the capil- 

 laries by increase of the intra-cranial pressure, which has this 

 effect, and which occurs whilst the supply of blood remains the 

 same, or even increases. 



— We learn from Nature that a prize is offered by Schnyder von 

 Wartensee's Foundation, Ziirich, for the solution of the following 

 problems in the domain of physics. " As the numbers which rep- 

 resent the atomic heats of the elements still show very considerable 

 divergences, the researches conducted by Professor H. F. Weber 

 on boron, silex, and carbon, regarding the dependence of the 

 specific heats upon the temperature, are to be extended to several 

 other elemt nts, prepared as pure as possible, and also to combina- 

 tions or alloys of them. Further, the densities and the thermic 

 coefficients of expansion of the substances investigated are to be 

 ascertained as carefully as possible." The following are the con- 

 ditions : the treatises handed in by competitors may be in German, 

 French, or English, and must be sent in by Sept. 30, 1894. The 

 examination of the treatises will be intrusted to a committee con- 

 sisting of the following gentlemen : Professor Pernet, Ziirich ; Pro- 

 fessor A. Hantzsch, Ziirich ; Professor E. Dorn, Halle-on-the Saale ; 

 Professor J. Wislicenus, Leipzig; Professor E. Schar, Ziirich, as 

 member of the committee offering the prizes. The Prize Com- 

 mittee is empowered to award a first prize of two thousand francs, 

 and minor prizes at its discretion to the amount of one thousand 

 francs. The work to which the first prize is awarded is to be the 

 property of Schnyder von Wartensee's Foundation, and arrange- 

 ments will be made with the author regarding its publication. 

 Every treatise sent in must have a motto on the title-page, and be 

 accompanied with a sesled envelope bearing the same motto out- 

 side and containing the author's name. The treatises are to be 

 sent to the following address : " An das Pi-aesidiiim des Conventes 

 der Stadtbibliothek, Ziirich (betreffend Preisaufgabe der Stiftung 

 von Schnyder von Warlensee fur das Jahrj 1894)." 



— John Wilson & Son, Cambridge, announce "Selections Illus- 

 tratmg Economic History Since the Seven Years' War." compiled 

 by Benjamin Rand, Ph. D., assistant in philosophy, Harvard Uni- 

 versity. This is a second edition, revised and enlarged The first 

 edition of these selections was published as a text- book of required 

 reading to accompany a course of lectures on economic history 

 given at Harvard College. It was also adopted for a simila' pur- 

 pose by other American universities. A continued demand for 

 the work has led to the preparation of the present edition. The 

 design of the book has been to exhibit in a series of articles of 

 permanent value different phases of economic thought, and to 

 present in chronological order anarrati>e of some of the more im- 

 portant events and influences of modern econcmic hist'^ry. 



