Briefer Articles. 1 39 



sumption; and its manufacture into starch, tapioca, and glucose, 

 mav become a leading industry in Florida. As to the yield per 

 acre, no satisfactory estimate has yet been made; it will probably 

 vary greatly under various conditions. A single plant has been 

 known to produce fifty pounds of tubers, but this is exceptional. 

 Certainly, however, the plant will yield enormously under favor- 

 able conditions, and its uses are so numerous that it cannot fail 

 to soon become a staple product 



A Buried City. — A buried city, hitherto unknown to the 

 civilized world, has been lately discovered in Olancho, Honduras, 

 and Mr. A. J. Miller has obtained from the Honduras govern- 

 ment the exclusive right of excavation. The ruins were found 

 in the new Department of Mosquito, about two hundred and fifty 

 miles from the mouth of the Partook River. They may be ap- 

 proached only by the river, no path or track leading to them for 

 miles. The Central American Indians of this region are the 

 Peyas, but none of their traditions point to the existence of these 

 ruins, which antedate the oldest civilization. The ruins, half- 

 buried under the debris of ages and overgrown by a great forest, 

 are about two miles square in extent, and show evidence of hav- 

 ing been a city surrounded by a wall. Within the city was dis- 

 covered an immense workshop where ancient Indian sculptors 

 worked. Many beautiful designs in white granite — a stone which 

 is found nowhere else in this immediate section of Honduras — 

 have already been found. Immense tablets of stone, bowls on 

 three legs, carved blocks of various sizes, weighing from twenty- 

 five to six hundred pounds, urns and vases ornamented with 

 curious hieroglyphics, or heads of snakes, turtles, tigers or rude 

 human forms, were found among the relics. Further excavations 

 will undoubtedly reveal still more rare treasures of great antiquity. 



Intelligent Swallows. — France is threatened with a pecu 

 liar calamity, and has been warned thereof by the Zoological 

 Society. It seems that the fancy for using swallows as a millinery 

 garniture has led to a line of campaign against them which the 

 intelligent little migrators have noticed. Wires connected with 

 electric batteries have been laid along the coast of the Depart- 

 ment of the Bouches du Rhone, which is one of the great land- 

 ing places for swallows coming from Africa, and the birds, 

 wearied with their flight across the Mediterranean, perch upon 

 the wires and are struck dead. Their bodies are then prepared 

 for the milliner and sent by cratefuls to Paris. Thousands of 

 swallows have been yearly disposed of in this way for some years; 

 but this last spring the swallows demurred against this wholesale 

 manner of electrocution, and landed further east and west. The 

 gnats and other flying insects on which they live did not join in 

 the boycott, however, and the loss to agriculturists threatens to 

 be very serious unless the swallows again take up their summer 

 quarters in France. 



