200 
THE MEDITERRANEAN NATURALIST 
NOTES AND NEWS. 
Discovery of Salt in Eg ypt.— Indu- 
stries reports that a discovery of salt, which 
seems likely to have important conse- 
quences, has been made by the officers of 
the Egyptian Salt Department, 25 miles 
west of Minieh, a point on the Nile about 
150 miles above Cairo. The salt is said to 
be of good quality, and the deposit to extend 
over an area of 1,000 acres. 
Humanity’s Future on Earth. — The 
passing away of the human race is made 
certain by the signs of the sun’s approaching 
extinction. Referring to Prof. Langley’s 
researches on the loss of solar heat, Sir 
Robert Ball says that the, greatest amount 
of heat the sun can ever have contained 
would supply its radiation for 18,000,000 
years at the present rate. It seems that 
the sun has already dissipated about four- 
fifths of its original energy, and that it may 
hold out for 4,000,000 or 5,000,000 years 
more, but not for 10,000,000 years. No 
possible source of heat seems to be availa- 
ble for replenishing the waning stores. The 
heat may have been originally imparted to 
the sun as the result of some great collision 
between two bodies which were both dark 
before, so that, in fact, the two dark bodies 
coalesced into a vast nebula from which 
the whole of our system was evolved. That 
the sun may be reinvigorated by a repeti- 
tion of a similar startling process is, of 
course, always conceivable, but so territic a 
convulsion would be fatal to all life in the 
solar system. From no source does it seem 
possible to discover any rescue from the 
inevitable end. The race is as mortal as 
the individual. 
Irrigation in Egypt. — At the date of a 
recent official report, according to En- 
gineering, Egypt had 565,744 acres of 
irrigated land under cultivation, or about 
8,840 square miles. The irrigated lands 
extend along the Nile for a distance of 525 
miles. The revenue derived by the Egyp- 
tian government in 1890 from water tax 
and rented lands was £5,084,547. The po- 
pulation of the irrigated districts is returned 
as 5,879,431. 
Imitative Forms in Rocks. — There is a 
universal tendency to seek, and sometimes 
to see, in the forms of objects around us 
representations of the human figure or of 
animals and plants, says 51. Stanislas 
Meunier in Popular Science Monthly for 
May. Many interesting examples have been 
recorded and pictured in La Xature of 
rocks and mountains presenting resem- 
blances to animated forms. We are qui:e 
ready to discern in the clouds all 
sorts of personages; and at periods when 
superstition has been active, apparitions 
have been described, the whole existence of 
which consisted of misinterpreted simple 
resemblances. Stones have usually been 
considered especial ly w orthy of attention in 
this category; in tubercles of sandstone 
and nodules of flint it is easy to find 
features analogous with the most various 
objects. A block of sandstone is exhibited 
in the forest of Fontainebleau on which 
one willing to see it may recognize a 
petrified knight on his horse, all of the 
natural size. A nodule of sandstone was 
once brought to the geological labora- 
tory of the museum, on which the owner 
saw the portrait of our Lord on the cross. 
Some persons are specially ingenious in 
finding resemblances in flints; and Boucher 
de Perthes admitted into his Atlas of Celtic 
and Antediluvian Antiquities a whole series 
of figures of imitative forms of that mineral. 
An Uncanny Customer. — In byegone 
times the waters of the Mediterranean have 
served as the habitat of some curious mons- 
ters of which the carnivorous whale Zeu- 
glodon and the enormous shark Carchara- 
don megalodon were perhaps the most for- 
midable. But though these are now extinct 
their places are filled by monsters almost 
equally as large and in some respects equally 
