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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



carrying and running involved in primeval 

 arts connected with food, shelter, clothing, 

 rest, enjoyment, and war, were accomplished 

 on the heads or foreheads, shoulders or 

 backs, or in the hands of men and women ; 

 and civilization, while it has invented many 

 ways of burden-bearing, finds also an end- 

 less variety of uses for the old methods. . . . 

 It is, for instance, only a few years since 

 the invention of the passenger and freight 

 elevator began to supplant that caravan of 

 hod-carriers who have been since the be- 

 ginning of architecture carrying upward to 

 its completion every wooden and brick 

 structure in the world. . . . The back is the 

 natural resting-place for the burden. The 

 lowest savages know this, and inventive 

 genius early began to devise apparatus for 

 harnessing this part of the body. In Africa, 

 on the Andes, in Mexico, throughout the 

 civilized world, the peaceable carrier bears 

 on his back the commerce of the race." 



Mexican Porters. —Mr. W. A. Croffut re- 

 lates, in the " American Anthropologist," that 

 of half a dozen porters whom he saw resting at 

 a Mexican railway station — " One had a sofa 

 on his shoulders, strapped on I could not see 

 how ; another bore a tower of chairs locked 

 into each other and rising not less than eight 

 feet above his head ; another carried a hen- 

 coop with a dozen or twenty hens, and oth- 

 ers were conveying laden barrels and vari- 

 ous household goods. They had come, they 

 said, from San Luis Potosi, not less than 

 fifty miles distant." The carriers were 

 almost always in sight from the car-win- 

 dows of the Mexican National Railroad, and 

 were declared by President Purdy to be its 

 rivals. If it were not for them, the country 

 would treble its railroads in the next year, 

 and the roads would double their profits. 

 " We are combating the custom of centuries. 

 Those fellows carry on their backs to Mexi- 

 co the entire crops of great haciendas far 

 over the mountains." 



Monthly Distribution of Incendiary 

 Fires. — Mr. Franklin Webster has found 

 that the prevalence of incendiarism is sus- 

 ceptible of being graphically represented 

 systematically according to the season. The 

 monthly curves for the four years ending 

 in 1886 show that there are more criminal 



fires in January than in February ; that the 

 number increases through March, April, 

 and May, falls off in June, and then in- 

 creases again till November, to fall off again 

 in December. Taking the years separately, 

 there appears to be an extraordinary regu- 

 larity in the number of criminal fires in the 

 first six months, while the chief irregulari- 

 ties and widest fluctuations are in the last 

 half of the year ; and in this period, crimi- 

 nal fires, taking the whole country, are ex- 

 cessive compared with the earlier months. 

 In the farming districts they are more fre- 

 quent when the greatest activity prevails, 

 and are especially numerous in the time de- 

 voted to harvest; while, during the months 

 when most of the great crops are growing, 

 there is a lull in the reports of incendiarism. 

 Mr. Webster concludes that incendiary fires 

 for the sake of collecting insurance are rare 

 as compared with other fires of criminal 

 origin. 



California's Thermal Springs. — Accord- 

 ing to a paper read by Prof. W. F. McNutt 

 before the International Medical Congress, 

 more than two hundred localities are known 

 in California where waters of temperatures 

 rising to 212° F., and charged with salts and 

 gases of high therapeutic value, pour forth 

 from the earth in great profusion. The num- 

 ber of individual springs in different locali- 

 ties ranges from one to thirty, each varying 

 in composition, temperature, and possibly 

 other as yet undetermined qualities. Al- 

 though the character of these springs is 

 known, only a few of them have, as yet, been 

 carefully analyzed, and at still fewer have pa- 

 tients been under a competent observer's care. 

 The seven aguas calientes springs at Warner's 

 Ranch, fifty miles from San Diego, vary in 

 temperature from 58° to 142°. An account 

 is given of a wonderful little valley near El- 

 sinore, containing altogether one hundred 

 and eighty-six springs of hot and cold 

 water, sulphur, soda, white sulphur, magne- 

 sia, iron, borax, hot mud, fresh water, etc. 

 The Arrowhead hot springs, at an altitude 

 of over two thousand feet, vary in tempera- 

 ture from 140° to 210°. An immense pe- 

 troleum spring is mentioned as being some 

 ten miles west of Santa Barbara, situated in 

 the bed of the ocean, about a mile and a 

 half from the shore, the product of which 



