440 ARE WE APPROACHING A SECOND ICE PERIOD? 



growing old before Rome was born ! One almost wonders, after straying 

 through the city, to come out into old portions of the corso, the principal 

 street of the modern city, and find the evidences of contemporary civiliza- 

 tion. A sewing machine in Perugia seems an anomaly, and gas-lamps a 

 satire. — Sjmngfield Republican. 



SIBERIAN NATURAL HISTORY. 



Dr. 0. Finsch, lately returned from a scientific expedition in Siberia, 

 has opened at Bremen an exhibition of the ethnographic and natural his- 

 tory collections made by him during his travels. The specimens have been 

 duly classified by Dr. Finsch himself, and, according to Die I^atur, whose 

 account of these valuable collections we follow, give a good general idea of 

 the kind of life led by the inhabitants of Western Siberia; in this respect 

 they surpass even the Imperial Museums of St. Petersburg and Moscow. 

 The inhabitants of the whole region of the Obi, lying north of the conflu- 

 ence of the Irtish with that stream, live exclusively by fishing, hunting, and 

 reindeer-breeding. The reindeer is the principal source of their wealth, but 

 the herds have been ravaged during the last forty or fifty years by spenitis, 

 and thus the people have been reduced to great straits. For instance, we 

 are informed that Ivan Taisin, Prince of Oddorsk, who twenty years ago 

 owned 7,000 reindeer, now has only 700. Dr. Finsch's ethnographical col- 

 lection consists of the following groups : 1. Women's and children's cloth- 

 ing, articles of feminine adornment, needles, and thread, etc; 2. Household 

 furniture and culinary utensils ; 3. Men's clothing ; 4. Instruments used in 

 hunting and trapping ; 5. Sundry other implements, together with requisites 

 for smoking ; 6. Fishing outfit ; 7. Articles used in public sports and in 

 gaming; 8 Keindeer-harness ; and 9. Objects used in religious worship. 

 Besides there is a complete state dress of a Tungu notable, as also sundry 

 specimens of Turkistan and Siberian manufactures. The natural history 

 collection includes a portable herbarium, a great herbarium of plants from 

 the Altai region, mosses, arctic berries, butterflies, beetles, bees, flies, locusts, 

 spiders, shells, reptiles, fishes, and birds, and the last in great variety. 

 Then there is a collection of human skulls, and a number of paleontologi- 

 cal specimens. Finally, the economic products of Siberia are represented 

 by specimens of skins, farm-produce, manufactures, ores, and metals. — Pop- 

 tdar Science Monthly, Supplement. 



ARE \^^E APPROACHING A SECOND ICE PERIOD? 



Translated for the Globe-Democrat from a Swedish paper. 



Speaking of the summers continually growing colder, the paper referred 

 to makes the following observations, well worthy of attention. It says : 

 Fossils and very peculiar remnants of palm trees have been discovered. 



