FOREST AND STREAM. 
201 
a Ne ee Ss Ss Ss sss sss reteset 
One never should be without a compass; though in some 
persons animal magnetism is so strong that they determine 
the cardinal points instinctively. Indeed there are individ- 
uals who cannot sleep with their heads to the south, but 
instantly detect a bed so placed. Back-woodsmen acquire 
by practice and careful observation a certain craft in 
‘reading signs which is almost infallible. Asa rule, but 
not always, moss grows more densely on the north side of 
trees, nature providing against the cold that comes from 
that quarter. But a more reliable sign is the limbs of trees, 
which grow longest on the south side, those on the north 
side being exposed to the wintry blasts which twist, scathe 
and stunt them. A laurel swamp is the worst conceivable 
is place in which to get lost. The tendency to travel in circles 
well known. Itis a physiological freak not easily explained. 
in an article on this subject: which we clipped from the 
Scientific American fifteen years ago, the writer, who is a 
Texan, says :— 
Bewildered persons frequently travel in a perfect cir- 
cle, sometimes keeping the same track until they have 
made half a dozen equal rounds; at other times mak- 
ing the circle larger or smaller each time. It is not, by 
any means, always the case, when a person is lost; but it is 
so frequent that it is within the experience of every one 
who has been much in the woods. In calm and cloudy 
weather and in a country of much sameness of appearance, 
the best woodsmen get so bewildered as to ‘‘take the cir- 
cles.” Persons not accustomed to the woods will some- 
times do so, when the sun is shining and a steady breeze 
blowing. On the level or gulf prairies of this country on a 
calm, foggy morning, no man can travel without a road. 
[t is an incident of every day occurrence in the spring and 
tall seasons, that men are thus becalmed on the prairie as 
effectually as are ships at sea; nor willa compass mend the 
matter, forit cannot be carried steadily efiough to keep its 
meridian, and the course it points cannot be kept for fifty 
yards; if a man attempts it he will make a circle and come 
hack to the place he started from. The circle will be large 
or small generally in proportion to the density of the fog— 
sometimes only a hundred yards in diameter; at other times 
a mile, but seldom more. ° The circles thus made are per- 
fect. This kind of wandering seems to arise from an at- 
tempt to go a straight course when there is nothing to guide 
the senses, or when the usual guides of sun, wind, or the 
general contour of the country are disregarded. It rarely 
befalls children, who do not attempt to get on a course, but 
only run from one visible point to another equally per- 
ceptible 
Many apparently trivial traits in the disposition of ani- 
mals, which are of great use to woodsmen are omitted in 
books of natural history; chiefly from ignorance no doubt. 
One of these is the disposition of the horse, when frighten- 
ed, to run against the wind, if any is blowing. Thousands 
of horses which would be otherwise irrecoverably lost an- 
nually on this frontier, are recovered by observing this 
simple rule in pursuit. All animals have similar inexpli- 
cable traits in their disposition; and men are no exception 
to the rule. White men, when they are scared, will re- 
treat in the same direction in which they came. The Indians 
know this, and lay their plans accordingly; and many a 
gallant company has been cut to pieces simply from igno- 
rance of this fact. But those who understand these mat- 
ters, when they find it necessary to make a hasty retreat, 
always do so ina straight line, and in a direction different 
from the one in which they came. 
We frequently see notices in Northern papers of children 
being lost. Such things rarely occur on this frontier; 
though children often wander, and there are but few 
neighbors to help to search for them. Perhaps the cause 
of humanity might be subserved by publishing a few rules 
to be observed in such searches. Any child will make a 
track or trail plain enough to be followed by the eye over 
any ground, unless there be much passing of men or ani- 
mals to spvil the trail; and it can be followed by almost 
any person of good sight, although he may not have had 
any ‘previous experience. Go tothe place where the child 
was last seen and look for the trail, glancing along the 
ground with a sharp scanning look; when it is found, a 
faint kind of a line will be seen, which may be followed at 
a fast walk until a well-defined track occurs. If the trailer 
stops to look for a track he will probably lose the trail,and 
must go back and take it up again with the same scannin 
glance along the ground. The trails which hunters an 
Indians follow skillfully, is not so much composed of 
tracks or footprints, as of indescribable little signs, such as 
leaves and blades of grass bent or turned, twigs broken, 
and other things so small and faint that they cannot be 
shown to any one, yet which, when all put together, make 
a kind of line along the ground, which line can be seen by 
a rapid glancing look, but which will disappear when 
looked at steady. The trail of a human being is more 
easily followed than that of any other creature, because 
there isa kind of purpose in it different from the trail of ir- 
rational animals. A child will change its course around 
every thick clump of bushes, and go nearly straight when 
the ground is open. If it is scared and running, it will 
run from the wind, if much is blowing, and from any voice 
it hears; in such cases, therefore, it is not good policy to 
call much upon the lost child’s name. 
> ge 
HONOR TO WHOM HONORIS DUE. 
_— + 
N the 7ribune, under date of October 30th, there is an 
able letter from Virginia, written in the clearest, plain- 
est style and backed up by the strongest arguments, which 
gives to Maury what he is so fully entitled to, the distinc- 
tion of having been the first to comprehend the use of the 
telegraph as a means of not only getting meteorological in- 
formation, but of distributing it. The classification of all 
meteorological data had been to him the study of his life; 
in the telegraph he found the instrument for its collection 
and diffusion. 
Maury’s labors were not exclusively devoted to the study 
of the ocean currents, but were of the most comprehensive 
kind. Twenty years ago, when called to the Brussels Con- 
ference, Maury urged the formation of a system of meteor- 
ological observations embracing both the sea and land, it 
being evident to him that the same laws governed them. 
“Barly in 1858,” says the correspondent to the Z’ribiune, 



writing on this subject, ‘Maury had produced such an im- 
pression in the Northwest of using the telegraph for the 
purpose of making weather forecasts according to the pres- 
ent plan, that no less than eight of the lake cities, Buffalo 
among them, memorialized Congress in the same year— 
1858—to establish a general system of daily telegraphic re- 
ports for discussion ata central office. In 1859 Maury, at 
Decatur, Ala., at a public meeting used these words: 
“Some years ago I proposed, you recollect, a system of ag- 
ricultural meteorology for the farmers, and of daily weather 
reports by telegraph from all parts of the country for the 
benefit of mankind.” Are any stronger proofs necessary 
in order to show that to Maury alone is due the honor of 
having originated the present plan of weather signals? 
To General Myer should be awarded full praise for the 
organization of a system which is, however, as yet in its 
infancy, the perfect development of which may only be ar- 
rived at in a century yet to come. Butthe germ of thought, 
the creative power which first brought practical meteorol- 
ogy to where it is now is to be credited to Maury alone. 
Political differences are insignificant in a question of this 
kind. Who cares now whether Newton had a Round-head 
or Cavalier tendencies? It istime we had forgotten our 
own troubles. But surely the day will come when the 
grand conception by means of which the very elements are 
not only shorn of their powers, but even made subservient 
to man’s ends, will cause the name of Matthew F. Maury 
to be classed not only among the greatest of America’s il- 
lustrations, but of the age we live in. 

<< o 
HOW OLD IS MAN ? 
ae ee 
NTHROPOLOGY, or the study of man, has received 
additional strength, as a science, from the publication 
ot Sir Charles Lyell’s last edition of the geological eviden- 
ces of the antiquity of man, This book was first written 
fully forty years ago, when anthropology as a positive 
study was almost unknown. By its bold flight of thought 
at that time, Lyell’s views of the age of man were con- 
sidered ingeniously paradoxical. To-day a better knowl- 
edge of geology, and the assistance given by philology 
have added such a mass of evidence as to place the views 
of this most distinguished of English scientists entirely be- 
yond the vague position of speculative hypothesis. 
In the researches of the history of man, the leading ques- 
tion—the fundamental one—is ‘‘How old is man %’ 
A curious phase of human thought, and by no means an 
unnatural one, is here discoverable. Man’s comprehension 
as to the vastness of numbers seems to be at all times quite 
vague. Between a million of years and a billion of years, 
though appreciating numerically the difference when it is 
expressed by written figures,the measure of such a notation 
of time is, to many, almost incomprehensible. 
In regard to placing the antiquity of man’s presence on 
the earth, there has seemed to have been a tendency to 
choose the lowest possible estimate. Now, strange to say, 
when calculating the positions of the stars, the inclination 
of the human mind has been to place them at the greatest 
possible distances from the earth, from the sun, or from 
one another. It was perfectly easy for us to accept the 
theory that such and such a star was millions on millions of 
miles distant from us, while when we studied man’s first 
presence on the earth, the bold geologist who should have 
dared to have made man’s advent on this globe to recede a 
mere thousand of years or so, would have had his dictum 
received not only with considerable doubt, but, strange to 
say, would have been taxed with irreverence. 
To have gone past the traditional six thousand years, 
was thought to have been a reckless endeavor to unsettle 
preconceived ideas. But as has been most wisely asked, 
“How can the truth of this vital question as to man’s age 
be possibly arrived at by always adhering to the lowest es- 
timates? Shall we be always safe by calculating wrongly?” 
With exceeding accuracy from fhe lacustrine habitations of 
man found in Switzerland, the evidences are almost posi- 
tive that they were built some 56,000 to 7,000 years ago, and 
a wide margin for error is allowed. At sixty feet deep in 
the Nile aluvium, fragments of brick have been found. 
Calculations of how long it has taken the Nile mud to de- 
posit to such adepth were not difficult. In a century the 
data were almost positive that 8} inches represented the 
thickness of the deposit. Sixty feet then represented a pe- 
riod of 30,000 years, according to M. Rosiere, Agassiz, 
when studying human remains found in Florida, coming 
from a lacustrine structure, declared them to be fully 10,- 
000 years old. A human skeleton discovered under four 
buried forests, seems to point to an age of 50,000 years ago. 
But these traces of the antiquity of man, whether posi- 
tive or not, are as if but of yesterday, in comparison with 
other evidences which are much more definite in character. 
In Torquay is Kent’s Cavern. It is a cavern where stalag- 
mites are constantly forming. The carbonate of lime dis- 
solved in water containing an excess of carbonic acid, drip- 
ping through the upper surface of the cave is deposited as 
solid carbonate of lime. This simple chemical process, 
though constant, is a very slow one, a pellicle or film of 
lime being formed of exceeding thinness. In this particu- 
lar cave, where this process has apparently been going on 
forever, names of persons which have been cut two hun- 
dred years ago into the stalagmites are still visible, though 
covered over bya coating or varnish of fresh carbonate of 
lime. Very careful estimates of how long it would take to 
form an inch of stalagmite led the British Association to de- 
termine that a foot could be only produced in 20,000 
years. Now far below the stalagmite floor, specimens of 
man’s handicraft have been found. At the very lowest es- 

timate, the flint weapons in Kent’s Cavern were made half 
amillion of years ago. 
Isolated cases of this character might perhaps take away 
from the general value of such estimates of man’s age, but 
when we find them multiplied, we must give them a certain 
positive value. The evidences of man in Northern Europe 
before the ice period, seem doubtful, or if he did exist, all 
traces of him have been lost. : 
With questions of how far the pre-historic man differed 
from the present man we have little to do, save to indicate 
some curious researches made in the late Lyons Congress, 
where De Mortillets’ opinions in regard ‘to the existence 
of aspecies of man different from the present race,” found 
advocates and opponents. The argument is upheld strong- 
ly by linguistic proofs, and has for its basis the much dis- 
puted Development theory. It may be summed up as fol- 
lows: ‘That a certain number of animals without the fac- 
ulty of Janguage were capable of acquiring it, and did ac- 
tually acquire it, and were entitled to be called men. Then 
came a certain divergence. Those who had the power of 
transmitting their thoughts by means of words, improved 
until they became in time the men of to-day, while the 
other portion declined mentally, though gaining certain 
physical advantages, until they became anthropomorphoid 
apes—chimpanzces or gorillas.” 
In another portion of our columns will be found notice 
of a skull, said to have been found in Kansas, imbedded in 
the solid rock. Should future examination prove it to be 
a human skull, it will add much additional interest to this 
already most absorbing study, especially as an evidence of 
man’s antiquity in America. If we are credited with hav- 
ing some of the crust of the earliest world yet known 
above the surface of the sea, the exact locality of which is, 
we believe, somewhere in the neighborhood of St. Catha- 
rines, in Canada, perhaps we may yet upturn the primitive 
skull, and the newest world be proved to be the home of 
the oldest man. 
— ~~ + > 0 ee 
—We deviate for our established rule not to print 
editorial notices that may be construed as advertisements, 
to call the attention of our readers to a rare opportunity to 
purchase the Fish Farm of a professional! pisciculturist, the 
whole complete and paid for, well stocked, and supplied 
by one of the purest and most copious springs in the 
country. The gentleman desires to sell toa Club and man- 
age the concern for it. We regard this opportunity, which 
is a legacy of the hard times, as exceptional, and deserving 
the consideration of sportsmen or fish culrurists. Address 
this office. 
a 
(es We trust our readers will appreciate the good 
quality and general usefulness of the information we are 
giving them in our paper from week to week, as well as the 
novelty and freshness of it. Since our first issue we have 
introduced them to regions little known—our Great West, 
the Lake Superior region, Anticosti, the Saguenay, and 
other places remote and seldom visited, covering sufticient 
new ground and geographical range to entitle our paper, if 
it were a book, toa p'ace in the Historical Library. We 
wish to call particular attention to the articles we are now 
printing on Florida, extending to districts never explored 
and almost mythological in character. We shall give the 
whole State, lengthwise and athwart, such ventilation this 
winter as it has never before had in books or papers. We 
have arranged to pay the expenses of a gentleman who will 
take up his abode in “ Tiger Tail’s” camp, taking with him 
drawing materials and photographic apparatus which will 
some day serve to illustrate in book form the information 
we shall print of this wonderful region; and although his 
investigations will not extend to confines so remote as those 
of Livingston and Baker, they will nevertheless prove more 
interesting, and we hope fully as useful. If the London 
Times, the New York Herald, or the Government, were to 
undertake this mission which we propose to accomplish by 
our own enterprise and private expense, the achievement 
would call forth world-wide comment; but we suppose 
that coming merely within the limited, modest endeavor of 
Forest AND STREAM, few people will ever hear of it. 
SS 
AD FoR MemPHis—AMATEUR GYMNASTIC TOURNAMENT, 
—We would call special attention to an exhibition given by 
the gentlemen of the National Amateur Gymnastic and 
Athletic Tournament Association, to be held at the Acad- 
emy of Music on Saturday, November 8th. The entries 
embrace amateurs from New York, Brooklyn, Boston, 
Albany, Pittsburgh, and Providence. Prizes will be given 
of gold medals, diplomas, etc. The judges of the games 
will be Prof. John Wood, Prof. Wm. Wood, Prof. Geo. 
Goldie, Princeton College; Mr. Hessler of New York Turn- 
verein, and J. C. Babcock of New York Athletic Club; 
Prof. Burnham, manager of games and stage; Mr. Willis 
Van Tine, treasurer and manager of house. The exercises 
consist of jumping, lifting dumb-bells, vaulting, club 
swinging, climbing the rope, trapeze performances, and 
general gymnastics. A display of calisthenics willend the 
performances. 
Aside from the certain excellence of the performances, 
it should be remembered that the proceeds of the exhibj- 
tion are to be given to the Memphis sufferers. 
ly trust the Academy will be crowded. 
ie 
—A new economical use for the fungus which 2TOWS on 
trees has been indicated. Caps are made out of the beaten 
outinterior mass of Polyporus fomentarius, the amadou or 
German tinder of commerce, which is described as being 
both warm and light. It is stated that large use is made in 
Hungary of this material for caps and Waistcoats, and it is 
also used for caulking boots, 

We sincere 

