November i8, 1887.] 



SCIENCE. 



251 



One was of a lady who suffered from violent puerperal convul- 

 sions, followed by fever, which rendered her practically unconscious 

 for ten days. After her recovery she found that she had lost en- 

 tirely the recollection of .every thing that happened during the 

 week before her sickness. 



In another case two gentlemen of my acquaintance, while driv- 

 ing across a railroad, were struck by the engine. One of them was 

 instantly killed : the other was so seriously injured that he was un- 

 conscious for twenty-four hours, and for several weeks lay at the 

 point of death ; after his recovery he never regained the recollec- 

 tion of going to drive on that fatal morning. 



In another instance a gentleman well known to me was thrown 

 from his carriage by a runaway horse and by collision with another 

 team. He was rendered insensible for fifteen or twenty minutes, 

 and after regaining consciousness, although he remembered his 

 horse running away with him, he never had any recollection of the 

 collision or of falling. 



In each of these cases there seems to have been some relation 

 between the length of the period of unconsciousness after the sick- 

 ness or accident, and the memory-blank before it. 



Joseph Hall. 



Hartford, Conn., Nov. 12. 



Changes in Indian Languages. 



That unwritten languages might change more rapidly than 

 those which are preserved in books is very evident, though the verses 

 of Chaucer and Spenser would puzzle the modern school-boy. Yet 

 the vocabulary of an unlettered people has elements of stability in 

 its comparatively few words, and often in the songs and ceremo- 

 nies preserved through many generations. How rapidly they may 

 change is not so easily proved, for this requires accurate vocabularies 

 made long ago, which must be carefully compared with a language 

 at a recent period. A moderate basis may be found for such a 

 comparison in the case of some of the New York Iroquois, who 

 early attracted the attention of learned men, and from this may be 

 drawn a few suggestions. 



I make this comparison now, in the case of the Mohawks, be- 

 tween Father Bruyas' lexicon, written about A.D. 1700; the 'Mo- 

 hawk Prayer-Book' of 1769; and Schoolcraft's 'Notes on the 

 Iroquois,' written in 1845. The later prayer-book of Rev. Eleazar 

 Williams might also be cited, as the work of an educated man 

 brought up as a Mohawk; but its marked differences from all other 

 books printed in that language would require a good deal of com- 

 ment. Father Bruyas' lexicon is of radical words, and deals with 

 phrases and verbs much more than with nouns and adjectives ; yet 

 I make the comparison on the latter. In a little over one hundred 

 words common to both Schoolcraft and the missionary, fifty-one 

 differ almost entirely, while fifty-eight are either alike, or so nearly 

 so as to have the resemblance apparent. Perhaps half of the latter 

 number are modified forms of the same words. These represent 

 the changes of an existing Indian language in about a century and 

 a half, so far as they may be called changes. About one fourth are 

 the same as they were in A.D. 1700; another fourth are partially 

 changed ; nearly one-half differ entirely. 



It is to be remembered in this, that, in a language whose words 

 are often descriptive, several words might represent the same ob- 

 ject, and often do so, while a writer may choose but one of these. 

 Many synonymes appear in Bruyas' vocabulai'y and in the ' Mo- 

 hawk Prayer-Book.' One of these words, once common, might dis- 

 appear and be succeeded by another, not new, but for a time 

 obscure. In Schoolcraft's vocabulary each English word has a 

 single Mohawk word as its equivalent. There may have been many 

 others which do not appear. 



The ' Mohawk Prayer-Book' of 1769 was the work of several 

 hands, and has comparatively few of the words found elsewhere. I 

 have not made a close comparison, but have noted twenty-five names 

 agreeing with Bruyas, and thirty with Schoolcraft, while it has very 

 many given by neither. It is hard to catch or represent the Iro- 

 quois inflection, and so spelling has made a difference where the 

 word is clearly the same, though possibly changed. Thus ' ice ' 

 was rendered Gawisa in 1700, Oiviese in 1769, and Oise in 1845, 

 the latter perhaps approaching our own word. Some words which 



I have classed as similar are much farther apart than these, often 

 differing greatly. 



As this paper is only suggestive, I note some changes in the On- 

 ondaga language, based on a comparison of Zeisberger's dictionary, 

 made subsequent to 1750, and Schoolcraft's vocabulary of 1845. 

 In comparing nouns and adjectives common to both, out of one hun- 

 dred and fifty, I find eighty-six entirely or widely different, and sixty- 

 four the same or plainly similar. In regard to the nature of these 

 changes, the same remarks apply as to the Mohawk. Relatively 

 the latter might be called a written language, and had changed 

 much less in a century and a half than the Onondaga had in less 

 than a century. In a sense the latter might seem almost a new 

 language. Many words in it, of course, are new, as those of ani- 

 mals and articles of which their fathers knew nothing, and doubt- 

 less others were assumed for familiar things when some one hit on 

 a new characteristic. The word for ' hog ' is expressive of its voice,, 

 and is better rendered by Zeisberger as Kweas kweas than by the 

 modern Quisquis. Git git does very well for a hen, and others as 

 good might be cited. The Oneidas and Onondagas formed different 

 names for the elephant, yet easily understood by both ; the one 

 calling it ' that great naked animal,' and the other terming it the- 

 ' long nose.' The Onondaga name for the black raspberry is de- 

 scriptive, ' the plant that bends over,' and many are quite as pictur- 

 esque. This shows how a vivid imagination could readily multiply 

 or change names among a primitive people, and how verbs might 

 persist long after nouns had vanished. Place such a people by 

 themselves, amid new scenes, and how quickly their speech might 

 alter ! The Onondagas have not moved over twenty miles in two- 

 hundred and fifty years, yet how much their tongue has changed in 

 less than half that time ! A migration to new and distant homes 

 would have produced many new words, and then the language 

 would have remained much the same for a time, waiting for other 

 disturbing causes. W. M. Beauchamp, D.D. 



Baldwinsville, N.Y., Nov. ii. 



Distillery-Milk. 



After the grain is mashed (corn comprises three-quarters of the 

 grain used), it is cooled and run into the fermenting-tubs, where 

 the yeast is added. The period of fermentation is seventy-two hours 

 the first three days in the week, and ninety-six hours the last four 

 days, which include Sunday ; this length of time being considered 

 by the government sufficient to ferment all of the saccharine. It is 

 during this period that the acetic acid is formed, unless verv great 

 care is taken. It does not necessarily follow that acetic acid appears 

 but acetic fermentation occurs more often than otherwise. 



At the expiration of the fermenting period, the ' beer ' (the en- 

 tire mass in fermentation) is run through the ' still ' at a tempera- 

 ture supposed to evaporate all the alcohol and fusel-oil ; which 

 vapor is run into a worm from the top of the still, and the ' slops ' 

 run from the bottom of it. The mash or beer can be distilled so 

 as to leave little if any alcohol or fusel-oil in the slops, or feed ; but 

 in general practice there is a trace of alcohol and fusel-oil left in 

 the feed. 



I have tested slops coming from a still when the instrument va- 

 ried from o to 3 per cent alcohol. No test was made for fusel-oiL 

 So large a per cent of alcohol as 3 per cent is unusual, and it would 

 be found very unprofitable to the distiller. The slops are fed to- 

 the cows while hot. Each cow's ration is thirty-six gallons a day. 

 If the water was evaporated from that quantity of slops, it would 

 leave about twelve pounds of grain ; or, in other words, there is 

 2,400 per cent more water than grain in the slops. 



With the entire system in practice to-day, the food is not desir- 

 able for milch-cows, but it might be made so. But the sanitary 

 conditions at BlissviUe and Chicago were a thousand times more 

 harmful to the cows, and necessarily to the milk also, than the food 

 upon which they were fed. I speak from observation of cows 

 under good and bad sanitary conditions and care, fed on distillery 

 slops. 



The Germans would be horrified to see any kind of animals sur- 

 rounded by the conditions at the places named. Europeans excel 

 Americans in the sanitary condition and care of their stables and 

 stock, etc. 



