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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XV. No. 368 



words from the haphazard way in which they occur in dictation 

 and reading lessons, they will never learn them all, and those 

 they do learn must be pointed out to them specially at a great 

 loss of time during these lessons. I thought this plan of exer- 

 cises better. I own it to be unintelligent, yea, absurd; but it 

 answers its pui-pose. ' ' The inspector confesses that at this reply 

 he was gravelled. 4. To suppress as much as possible all excep- 

 tions, and bring them under general rules. We should soon get 

 accustomed to chdteaus, chevuus, cieus, in which words the x is 

 due to a grammatical error. Wliy write ails in botany, and aulx 

 in cookery? Why not write des livres hebreus as we write des 

 habits bleiis 9 Why not give the birthright to agenda, exeat, er- 

 rata, quatvor, and write them with an s in the plural? We 

 write pcrte-plume because a holder holds only one pen, but porte- 

 eigares because it holds more than one cigar. This is hair-split- 

 ting. On this principle, are we to write des villageois en cas- 

 quette, or en casquettes ; du sirop de groseille, or de groseilles ; 

 des oiseaiix qui voltigent defleitr enfleur, or de fleurs en fleurs ? 

 5. In the case of compounds that are of constant use, to suppress 

 the hyphen : to write porteplume, portemonnaie, as well as porte 

 faix, portefeuille. On the five preceding points, as well as on 

 the following, M. Carre is at one with M. Breal. 6. To simjilify 

 the rules of the past participle. At present we vcrite, la maison 

 que j'ai vu construire, and la maison que j'ai vue tomber; but 

 the syntax is the same in both cases. The real object of vu is the 

 infinitive with which it forms one plu-ase, one idea. In the 

 second case, as in the first, it is not the house that I have seen, it 

 is la maison qui tombait : what I saw is the house that fell, the 

 falling house. 



— The bound volumes added to the library, Kansas Historical 

 Society, Topeka, Kan., in the past year, numbered 1,369; un- 

 bound volumes and pamphlets, 2,248; volumes of newspapers 

 and periodicals, 1,053; single newspapers and newspaper cut- 

 tings containing special historical matter, 5,707; maps, atlases, 

 etc., 53; manuscripts, 219; pictures and other works of art, 

 867; scrip, currency, and coin, 8; war and other relics, 224; 

 miscellaneous contributions, 99. The library accessions during 

 the past year have somewhat exceeded in number the average of 

 former years. They have been of the same general character. 

 The purchases have been chiefly confined to works more or less 

 directly pertaining to Kansas. The additions to the number of 

 volumes of newsi3apers and periodicals exceed that of any year 

 except one since the organization of this society. This year's 

 experience has brought additional proof of the gi-eat value of this 

 depai-tment. There are now 9,034 volumes of this class. Of 

 these, 6,613 volumes are files of Kansas newspapers. These rep- 

 resent every county and considerable town in the State. These 

 files are consulted by the people of all classes, — by teachers, stu- 

 dents, and local historians and writers ; for information as to the 

 early settlements, the organization of societies, churches, and 

 schools ; for the proceedings of political conventions and all public 

 gatherings ; for the records of public men ; and for ofiicial and 

 legal notices. In these days historical writers seek for original 

 information as to the early beginnings and the every-day prog- 

 ress of the social life of the people; and they have come to 

 learn that it is in the columns of the daily and weekly newspaper 

 that this information has been most fully recorded, and that no- 

 where else is exact data to be found. Teachers and students in 

 our educational institutions are more and more learning that the 

 study of the history and development of their own State and 

 locality are woithy of their attention. No little of the corre- 

 spondence of the secretary is employed in giving information 

 sought by students, teachers, and other inquirers for such local 

 information. 



— In one of the lectures delivered at Aberdeen, in January, 

 under the GifFord bequest. Dr. E. B. Tylor, says Nature, ofi'ered a 

 most interesting suggestion as to the meaning of a well-known 

 but puzzling Assyi'ian sculptured group. This group consists of 

 two foiir-winged figures, with bodies of men and heads of eagles, 

 standing opposite a tree-like formation, which is easily recog- 

 nized as a collection of date-palms, or a conventionalized rep- 

 resentation of a palm-grove. Each of the two figures carries in 



the left hand a bucket or basket ; in the right, a body which each 

 seems to be presenting to the palm-ti-ee. Wliat is this body ? It 

 is usually described as a flf-cone ; but some have regarded it as 

 a bunch of grapes, others as a pine-apple. Dr. Tylor suggests 

 that it should be connected with the most obvious point of inter- 

 est for which the date-palm has been famous among naturalists 

 since antiquity; namely, its need of artificial fertilization in 

 order to produce a crop of edible dates. This process in its sim- 

 plest form consists in shaking the pollen from the inflorescence 

 of the male date-palm over the inflorescence of the female. The 

 practice is mentioned by Tlieophi'astus and Pliny, and in modern 

 times in such works as Shaw's "Ti-avels in Barbary." Dr. 

 Tylor exliibited a drawing of the male palm inflorescence, and 

 said it was hardly necessary to point out the resemblance to the 

 object in the hand of the winged figure of the Assyrian sculpture. 

 As the cultivator of the palm-tree has to ascend the ti-ee in order 

 to perform the process of fertilization, he of course takes with 

 him a sujsply of fresh flowers in a basket. Dr. Tylor' s theory, 

 therefore, is that the objects can'ied by the winged genii of the 

 Assyrians are the male inflorescence of the date-jmlm in one 

 hand, the basket with a fresh supply of inflorescence in the other, 

 and that the function the genii are depicted in the sculptures as 

 discharging is that of fertilizing the palm-groves of the country, 

 — a function which must have been held to denote their great 

 beneficence, since it showed them fulfilling the great duty of 

 providing the Assyrians with bread. 



— The following, published in Nature of Jan. 30, is translated 

 from a notice published by the authorities of the Madrid Observ- 

 atory : ' 'D. Ernesto Caballero, professor of physics, and director 

 of the electric-lighting manufactory in Pontevedra, -wi-ites to this 

 observatory, giving details of a remarkable meteorological phe- 

 nomenon which appeared at 9.15 p.m. on Jan. 2. In a sky serene 

 and clear, there appeared suddenly a globe or ball of fire of the- 

 apparent size of an orange, which, after falling (it is not possi- 

 ble to well indicate how or from whence) upon the conducting 

 wires stretched across the city, entered the manufactory (referred 

 to) by a skylight or window, struck the apparatus for distribut- 

 ing the light, from which (after raising the annatatre of a mag- 

 netic cuiTeut closer) it struck the dynamo at work. In the 

 presence of the -alarmed engineer and workmen present, it re- 

 bounded twice from the dynamo to the conductor, and from the 

 conductor to the djTramo, then fell, and burst with a sharp and 

 clear detonation into a multitude of fragments, without produ- 

 cing any harm or leaving any trace of its mysterious existence. 

 In various j)arts of the city the lights swiftly oscillated and were 

 extinguished for some seconds; and that the darkness was not 

 general and long-continued, was owing to the admirable self- 

 possession of the employees, who almost instantly established the 

 order of things, so suddenly and strangely inteiTupted by this 

 mysterious meteor, of whose action and presence there only re- 

 mained ti'aces on the melted (or soldered) edges of the thick 

 copper plates belonging to the armature of the circuit-closer. 

 Outside the building, and at the moment of falling upon the con- 

 ducting wires, it was seen by (among others) the professor of 

 natural history, Seiior Garceran; and, from various effects ob-' 

 served on the wires during the following da,y, there were un- 

 doubted manifestations (in no other way explicable) of its elec- 

 trical origin. ' ' 



— An interesting paper is contributed by Professor Cai-nelley 

 to the Philosophical Magazine for January, in which he attempts 

 to express the periodic law of the chemical elements by means of 

 an algebraic formula. For reasons which are giveii in detail in 

 the memoir, an expression of the form A = c (m + Vi') is 

 adopted, where A represents the atomic weight of the element, c 

 a constant, ?re a member of a series in aritlunetical pi-ogression, 

 depending upon the horizontal series in the periodic table to which 

 the element belongs, and v the maximum valency or the number 

 of the vertical group of which the element is a member. From 

 a number of approximations, as we learn from Nature of Jan. 

 30, Professor Carnelley finds that m is best represented by the 

 value in the lithium-beryllium-boron, etc., horizontal row; 

 by 2i in the sodium series ; 5 in the potassium series ; and 8J, 



