374 
THE YOUNG SCIENTIST. 
almost exceeds that with which a ward 
politician accepts office, and is only 
equalled by the readiness with which a 
poor girl accepts a rich husband. 
— The sixth of a series of lectures by 
Professor Albert S. Bickmore was de- 
livered on the 10th of November at the 
American Museum of Natural History. 
The lecturer took for his subject " Hum- 
ming Birds." He said: — "Humming 
birds are only found in the New World. 
Their principal home is in Central and 
South America. A few, however, are 
found up as far as Hudson's Bay. Their 
favorite place is not in densely wooded 
forests, but in the open, where there are 
flowers and fruits. While this family of 
birds is confined to xlmerica, yet there 
are four hundred different kinds of them. 
They have two different motions of the 
wings— one producing the humming 
sound and the other propelling them the 
same as other birds. The humming bird 
lays only two eggs, which are not pointed 
at either end, but are elliptical. Hum- 
ming birds take great care of their young. 
Frequently, when they are disturbed, the 
male will remove one egg and the female 
another to a different place." 
The lecture was illustrated by a long- 
series of photographic transparancies and 
by the coliection of the museum, which 
is one of the best in America. 
The subject of the next lecture will be 
'''Pheasants and Doves." 
— The annual fall games of the Athletic 
Association of the College of the City of 
New York took place on the 5th of No- 
vember at the Manhattan Athletic Club 
Ground, Eighty-Sixth street and Eighth 
avenue. A one-hundred-yard handicap 
was won by E. B. La Eetra, class '86— time, 
101 seconds. A half-mile handicap was 
won by Harris Smith, class '86 — time, 2m. 
17bs. a one-mile handicap walk was won 
by C. A. Clinton, class '86— time, 8m. 59s. 
A two-hundred-and-twenty-yard hurdle 
race was won by C. F. Bostwick, class 
'87— time, 331 seconds. A one-mile bicy- 
cle race, haodicap, was won by W. E. Fer- 
ris. In a spirited one-mile handicap run 
T. W. Martin, class '85, came in first— ^ 
time, 5m. 1518. The quarter-mile handi- 
cap was won by A. J. Murberg, class '87— 
time, 63 seconds. In the running, broad 
jump, handicap, C. L. Woolley, class '88, 
came off victorious by 17 feet 4 inches. 
The baseball throwing competition was 
won by D. M. Marvin, class '84, his best 
effort being 281 feet Sh inches. 
— Prof. C. V. Riley, the entomologist 
of the Department of Agriculture, has 
deposited with the Smithsonian Institute 
his own private collection of insects, 
with the idea of using it as a nucleus for 
the development of a collection fitting the 
dignity of a national museum. The col- 
lection deposited comprises some 30,000 
species and upward of 150,000 specimens 
of all orders. The most important addi- 
tion to the Institute has been Mr. Ridg- 
way's private collection of American 
birds, containing 2,302 specimens of 778 
species, especially important because the 
specimens have been selected in the field 
to illustrate variations of color and form 
due to age, sex and geographical loca- 
tion. 
— President Barnard, of Columbia Col- 
lege, in a letter gave the result of careful 
computations which he had made relative 
to the disintegration of the Central Park 
obelisk's surface due to exposure to the 
weather. . His opinion is that it will take 
6,000 years of exposure in this climate to 
reduce the volume of the obelisk to the 
depth of 1 cm. on each side. " The waste 
in a century would be, therefore, scarcely 
a perceptible amount," he concludes. 
— Children are very wise. While the 
philosopher and his family were quizzing 
each other as to what ought to be done 
in case of fire, little Jack said, "Father, 
what would you run for if the house were 
all ablaze ?" The old gentleman de- 
clared that he should run for a very 
valuable manuscript. " I wouldn't," re- 
sponded the boy; "I should run for the 
door." 
— A party of Italian scientists have just 
returned from an expedition to the South 
Pacific, having proved to their own satis- 
faction that a race of giants once existed 
in Patagonia. In wandering over Terra 
del Fuego, they found human bones of 
marvellously large size. 
