576 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In a paper in the British Association on 

 " Tattooing," Miss A. W. Buckland said that 

 in Africa, Australia, and the islands of the 

 Indian Ocean, tattooing consists of a series 

 of short cuts which heal, leaving cicatrices. 

 In New Zealand, America, the Pacific islands, 

 among the tribes of India, and in Burmah, 

 Borneo, and New Guinea, patterns are first 

 drawn upon the skin, and then punctured 

 with thorns, needles, or splinters of human 

 bones. Color is then rubbed in. The pro- 

 cess is very painful and can only be carried 

 on at intervals, several years being some- 

 times required for its completion. Among 

 men tattooing is valued as a mark of brav- 

 ery. In the case of women devices are 

 worked upon the chin to signify marriage. 



After his ethnological researches in 

 Egypt, Prof. Virchow has concluded that the 

 fellaheen do not exactly represent the an- 

 cient inhabitants in their physical aspect. 

 The evidence afforded by the oldest sculpt- 

 ure and the earliest skulls shows that the 

 primitive type was brachy cephalic, whereas 

 the types of the present time and of many 

 centuries past are dolichocephalic and meso- 

 cephalic. It is uncertain whether the change 

 was produced by the environment or by the 

 influx of new races ; but Prof. Virchow in- 

 clines to the latter view. 



The principal and most useful wood in 

 Borneo is bilian, or iron-wood. Its char- 

 acteristics, as mentioned by Mr. R. T. Prit- 

 chet, are hardness, density, and being ant- 

 proof. It is the best shingle wood, and, be- 

 ing large and plentiful, the most valuable 

 timber. Other sinking woods are russock, 

 grealing, mirabou, the last of which, a heavy, 

 dark-yellow wood, is valuable for furniture 

 and takes a fine polish ; camphor-wood, and 

 a red wood, and sirayah, which gives logs 

 five feet in diameter and forty feet long. 



Observations made by M. Janssen on 

 Mont Blanc for the purpose of deciding 

 whether certain lines in the solar spectrum 

 are due to oxygen in our air or in the solar 

 atmosphere, showing the lines weaker than 

 at lower levels, seem to prove that they are 

 due to our atmosphere. 



The nipa is a palm - tree of Borneo 

 which grows in the swamps above the man- 

 grove, where the water begins to be brack- 

 ish. It revels where the swamps are more 

 fresh than salt, its leaves growing boldly and 

 imposingly to a height of twenty feet and 

 upward. House-thatching is principally made 

 of these leaves stitched together, which form 

 roofs well adapted to turn away the heat. 

 The kadjan mats, which travelers find very 

 useful, and will fold up into very small com- 

 pass, are also made from them. 



The pest of locusts has been fought vig- 

 orously and successfully in Cyprus by gath- 

 ering the eggs and catching the developed 

 insects in systems of screens. The number 



of eggs collected increased from 3*7-^ tons in 

 1879 to 236 tons in 1880, and 1,330 tons in 

 1881. More than 6,000 screens were em- 

 ployed in 1882, and 195,000,000,000 insects 

 were destroyed. The system was steadily 

 made more effective, and in 1886 there were 

 available for use more than 11,000 screens 

 and 13,000 traps, the screens representing 

 an aggregate length of about 315 miles, or 

 nearly the whole coast-line of the island. 



It sounds odd to read in a paper by 

 Robert Wallace, on Indian agriculture, that 

 the Manchester Chamber of Commerce is co- 

 operating in an attempt to "reduce the 

 amount of refraction " or impurities to be 

 recognized as a " trade custom " in the sale 

 of wheat from six or seven to two per cent. 

 Regarding the present custom, it has been 

 estimated, according to Mr. Wallace, that the 

 direct loss to the community is equivalent to 

 the sum of fifty thousand pounds a year, 

 " spent upon the absolutely unremunerative 

 work of shipping or carrying sand or clay 

 which had been added to the cleaner sam- 

 ples of wheat with the deliberate object of 

 netting an unjust gain." 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Maria Mitchell, a distinguished astrono- 

 mer and professor in Vassar College, died in 

 Lynn, Mass., June 28th, of disease of the 

 brain, from which she had been suffering for 

 about eighteen months. She was born in 

 Nantucket, in 1818, the daughter of an ama- 

 teur astronomer, and studied under her fa- 

 ther and Charles Pierce. At eleven years of 

 age she recorded the time of the beginning 

 and ending of an eclipse of the moon. In 

 1847 she discovered the first of her eight 

 comets. She was the first woman to be 

 elected to the American Academy of Arts 

 and Sciences ; was a member and fellow of 

 the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science ; an LL. D. of Hanover 

 and Columbia Colleges ; and was actively in- 

 terested in measures to elevate woman's 

 work. She resigned her professorship at 

 Vassar College in January, 18S8, but no ac- 

 tion was taken on her resignation, so that 

 she still remained the titular incumbent. 



Reichenbach, the eminent botanist, has 

 recently died in Hamburg, aged sixty-seven 

 years. He was best known from his investi- 

 gations of orchids and hybrids. 



Dr. George Owen Rees, F. R. S., died in 

 Mayfield, England, May 27th. 



Dr. Paul Du Bois-Reymond, a brother 

 of Dr. Emil Du Bois-Reymond, died in Frei- 

 burg, Baden, April 7th, in his fifty-ninth 

 year. He was Professor of Mathematics at 

 the Technical High School of Berlin; was 

 formerly at the Universities of Freiburg and 

 Tubingen ; and was the author of two well- 

 known mathematical works. 



