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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



given on the Saturday to Devil's Lake, about 

 forty miles from Madison, and the Dells of 

 the Wisconsin River, about eighty miles dis- 

 tant; besides three excursions of sections. 

 The International Botanical Congress will 

 consider questions of botanical interest, but 

 papers embodying the results of research 

 will be excluded, and the International 

 Standing Committee upon Nomenclature is 

 expected to make its report. Mr. William 

 Harkness will be president of this meeting 

 of the American Association ; and the sec- 

 tional vice-presidents will be: (A) Mathe- 

 matics and Astronomy, C. L. Doolittle ; (B) 

 Physics, E. L. Nichols ; (C) Chemistry, Ed- 

 ward Hart ; (D) Mechanical Science and En- 

 gineering, S. W. Robinson ; (E) Geology and 

 Geography, Charles D. Walcott ; (F) Zoology, 

 Henry F. Osborn; (G) Botany, Charles E. 

 Bessey ; (H) Anthropology, J. Owen Dorsey ; 

 (I) Economic Science and Statistics, William 

 H. Brewer. 



Large dame. — Among the animals de- 

 scribed in Mr. Rowland Ward's Measure- 

 ments and Weights of the Great Game of 

 the World, precedence is given to the hippo- 

 potamus of Africa. Not unlike him is the 

 manatee, now extinct in the West Indies, but 

 surviving in the upper Amazon. Both kinds 

 of marine cattle, observes the Saturday Re- 

 view, graze upon water weeds at the bottoms 

 of the streams ; but the manatee is harm- 

 less under all circumstances, while the hip- 

 popotamus sometimes plays the part of an 

 assailant. A very formidable enemy he can 

 be, for his massive tusks — all tusks are 

 measured at the root — are sometimes more 

 than nine inches in circumference. Still more 

 dangerous are the razor-like tushes of the 

 boar, and they are none the less dangerous 

 that they are short. The greatest length of 

 the outside curve is given at ten inches, and 

 yet the boar has been known to come off vic- 

 torious in a battle with the Bengal tiger. Tn 

 contrast with one another stand themuntjac, 

 a deer of India and the warm countries of the 

 southern Pacific, with a " sweep " of horns of 

 only six inches and a half, and the sambur, 

 which weighs six hundred pounds and has a 

 "magnificent" spread of antlers of two feet 

 and a half from tip to tip. The best of the 

 American wapiti is more than half as large 

 again as the Scottish red deer, and the 



grand Carpathian species yields in size to the 

 extinct Irish elk. Generally speaking, we 

 find that the weight of deer depends partly 

 on the climate, but chiefly on the food. The 

 caribou, or reindeer, is an exception. The 

 farther north you find him, the better he 

 seems to thrive, and, like the musk ox, he 

 fattens on the arctic lichens; and the 

 moose, which haunts more southerly forests 

 and swamps, is decidedly smaller. Th-re 

 are some remarkably gracef ul dwarfs of the 

 deer tribe. Kirk's antelope of East Africa 

 wears Lilliputian horns three inches long; 

 and Salt's antelope from Somali Land is still 

 more minute. The beautiful little gazelles 

 of Oriental poetry seem to do well anywhere ; 

 apparently they can dispense with water and 

 lay on flesh in a wilderness of sand and 

 stones. Naturally, they are always in high 

 condition, and it is no easy business to ride 

 them down. A very remarkable group are 

 the wild sheep and goats which have been 

 attracting so many adventurous rifles to the 

 Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, to the 

 Himalayas and the plateaus of Kashmir and 

 Thibet. The horns of the finest Himalayan 

 ibex which was killed by Mr. Kennard had a 

 span of four feet and a quarter. Those of a 

 wild goat from southeastern Europe, which 

 fell to Colonel Marston's rifle, were a trifle 

 longer. These, again, are surpassed by the 

 curve of the best markhor, a denizen of the 

 higher Himalayas, resembling the goat. 

 When you cross the Indus into Afghanistan, 

 the curved horns of the markhor are curi- 

 ously straightened and fall away in length by 

 a fourth. The length of the longest tiger 

 skin after drying is said to be thirteen feet 

 six inches ; but it must be noted that skins 

 expand considerably in the curing. The 

 greatest length of a skin undressed is given 

 as ten feet two inches and a half. 



The Company of the Dead. — In Mr. 



Charles Hose's journeys in North Borneo, he 

 found one morning after his night's rest that 

 the remains of his host's last wife also occu- 

 pied the room, where they were kept in a large 

 box serving as a coffin. It is the custom of 

 these people to keep a corpse in the house 

 for three months before burying it. The 

 body is then removed from the house and 

 conveyed with much ceremony to the tomb. 

 Every one present sends one or more cigar- 



