Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899

D. Appleton and Company publish as one of their Home Reading Books The Story of Rob Roy, by Sir Walter Scott, condensed for home and school reading by Edith D. Harris. The editor of the series, Dr. W. T. Harris, furnishes a preface, pointing out the essential qualities of Scott's works on which their fame rests, and analyzing the features of Scottish and English life of the age to which they relate and which give these stories of the border their interest and charm. In explanation of the plan and reason of the present condensation, he says that "it has been found possible to condense the Waverley novels by omitting all lengthy descriptions of scenery, historical disquisitions on the times, and a few passages of dialogue and monologue that do not contribute directly to the progress of the story, or throw light upon the character of the persons who enter upon the scene. It is believed that by this method the interest is preserved intact, and that after a year's interval the story in its unabridged form may be read with as lively an interest as the youth will feel in reading this version." Price, 60 cents.

A paper, Indices Ponderaux de la Crane (Weight Indexes of the Brain), in the Bulletin of the Anthropological Society of Paris, comprises the results of a study of the weight and capacity of the brain, the weight of the mandible, and the cranio-mandibular and cranio-cerebral indices, etc., made upon sixty-four heads of animals by George Grant McCurdy, of New Haven, with the collaboration of M. Nicolas Mohyliansky.

The pamphlet embodying the Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Session of the Association of American Anatomists, held at Cornell University in December, 1897, contains a portrait and notice, with bibliography of the late Dr. Harrison Allen, the reports of the majority and the minority of the committee on anatomical nomenclature, and seventeen papers contributed by members of the association.

The University Geological Survey of Kansas is conducted under the authority of the Board of Regents of the State University, and has issued already several large and elegant volumes recording the operations and results of its work. The fourth volume, now before us, embraces the paleontology of the Upper Cretaceous, and is by Samuel W. Williston, paleontologist. Kansas is famous for its fossils, no equal area in the United States, perhaps, presenting such varied and remarkable records of this kind. Yet, while the State has furnished much of interest to the sciences of geology and paleontology, the published accounts in these departments are confined to scattered and abstruse papers accessible only to the specialist. The present publication is an effort to put this knowledge, so far as the particular formation to which it relates is concerned, within the reach of students. Professor Williston has been engaged for twelve years in the study of the geology and paleontology of the State, having spent more than three years in field exploration, and has been eight years collecting material for his book, enjoying the advantage of access to the very important collection of the university. Much of the information is here published for the first time. The fossils of the western part of the State only are described in it, for the sole reason that more preparatory work has been done on them in the university in recent years; but other departments are in preparation and will appear in due course. The fossils described are birds, dinosaurs, crocodiles, mosasaurs, turtles, microscopic organizations, and invertebrates, all of the Upper Cretaceous.

In a paper on The Relations of the People of the United States to the English and the Germans, read before the Thursday Club of Chicago, Mr. William Vocke undertakes a defense of the Germans against a supposition that they are hostile to the United States. This is right, if the Germans need defense, which we doubt; but to give his thesis the shape of an attack on England, as is done in the paper, is unnecessary.

The account of the investigations conducted by Dr. D. N. Bergey under the supervision of Drs. J. S. Billings and S. Weir Mitchell, on the Influence upon the Vital Resistance of Animals to the Micro-organisms of Disease, brought about by a Long Sojourn in Impure Atmosphere, already referred to in the Monthly, is published under the Hodgkins Fund in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Contributions.

The Report of the United States National Museum which we are called upon to notice is for the year 1895, and bears the signature of G. Brown Goode. It embraces accounts of the origin and development of the museum, its organization and scope, and its work in public education; reviews of the special topics in its operations for the year; synopses of the scientific work in various departments; the administrative reports; appendixes relating to accessions to the collections, lectures, meetings, etc.; and a number of special papers of great value and interest, including an account of the Kwakiutl Indians, by Franz Boas; The Graphic Art of the Eskimos, by W. J. Hoffman; The Geology and Natural History of Lower California, by G. P. Merrill; The Tongues of Birds, by F. A. Lucas; The Ontonagon Copper Bowlder in the United States Museum, by Charles Moore; The Antiquity of the Red Race in America, by Thomas Nilsen; and accounts of the Mineralogical Collections in the Museum, by Wirt Tassin, and of the Taxidermical Methods in the Leyden Museum, Holland, by Dr. Shufeldt.

The Dawn of the Twentieth Century is a poem, described by the author, Charles P. Whaley, as his first sermon, dedicated to rationalism. He describes himself as having recovered from "a severe attack of orthodoxy," which deprived him for the time of the power of logical reason, and to have at last discerned a theology, "founded upon absolute, demonstrable scientific facts," which is to prevail in the next century. His poem presents his view of that theology.

In the September number of the Quarterly Review, The New World, an article by Prof. Otto Pfleiderer on Evolution and Theology, defines the task of Ecclesiastical Protestantism after having abandoned the ethical ideals of mediæval Christianity, as being "for a still wider development, to strike off the dogmatic fetters of ecclesiastical criticism, and to clothe its religious principle in new forms of thought, which shall render for our age the same service that the Greek and Roman dogmas rendered for the earlier time." In an article on Social and Individual Evolution, Mr. Henry Jones maintains that the social tendencies of the present day point to a limitation of individual independence and enterprise.

A contribution to the anthropology of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Facial Paintings of the Indians of Northern British Columbia, by Franz Boas, forms the first part of Volume II of the Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History. The Jesup expedition has been organized under the patronage of Mr. Morris K. Jesup, president of the museum, and under the direction of that institution, to study what relations may exist or may have existed between the natives of the northwest coasts of America and the peoples of the neighboring Asiatic coasts. The general likeness, in the midst of their special minor diversities, of all the Indians of the American continent points to an ultimately common origin for them, while the differences indicate that this may not have been precisely identical in time and place, and seem to have required a very long time for their development and establishment. The purpose of the expedition is to collect all the information that can be obtained by its method of exploration contributing to this end. The present contribution embodies the fruits of a study of the arts, as applied to facial decoration, of the Thompson River Indians, the Chilcotin, the Bella Coola, the Kakiutl, and the Nootka. This art is almost exclusively based on animal motives, is highly conventionalized, and has the unique peculiarity of seeking to fit the whole figure of the animal to the surface on which it is applied; whence it presents some curious effects. In this effort to illustrate the principles of its conventionalism Dr. Boas has selected as the most difficult and complicated surface the human face, of which he gives in six plates eighty-eight figures of as many different styles of decoration.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins and Reports. Cornell University: No. 154. Tables for Computing Rations for Farm Animals. By J. L. Stone. Pp. 20; No. 155. The San José Scale. By H. P. Gould. Pp. 12; No. 156. Potato Culture. By I. P. Roberts and L. A. Clinton. Pp. 12; No. 157. The Grapevine Flea Beetle. By M. V. Slingerland. Pp. 24; No. 158. Bacteria in Cheese Curd. By V. A. Moore and A. R. Ward. Pp. 20. with plate; No. 159. Report on Progress of Work. Pp. 32. – Hatch Station of Massachusetts Agricultural College: No. 56. Concentrated Feed Stuffs. Pp. 24. – New Jersey: No. 132. Fertilizer Analyses. Pp. 61. – Ohio: Seventeenth Annual Report for 1898. Pp. 48. – Purdue University: No. 73. Tests of Strawberries, Raspberries, Blackberries, and Grapes. Pp. 16; No. 74. A Native White Bedding Plant (Starry Grasswort). By J. C. Arthur. Pp. 12. – United States Department of Agriculture: No. 16. The Hessian Fly in the United States. By Herbert Osborn. Pp. 60, with plates; Miscellaneous Results of the Division of Entomology. Pp. 102. – University of Wyoming: No. 39. Alkali Studies. By E. E. Blosson and B. C. Buffum. Pp. 24.

Allen, Alfred H., and Leffmann, Henry. Commercial Organic Analysis. Third edition. Revised. Vol. II, Part I. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Sons & Co. Pp. 387. $3.50.

American, The, Kitchen Magazine. A Domestic Science Monthly, January, 1899. The Home Science Company, Boston, Mass. Monthly. 10 cents. $1 a year.

Bailey, L. H., Editor. The Principles of Agriculture. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 300. $1.25.

Bardeen, C. W. Commissioner Hume. A Story of the New York Schools. Syracuse, N. Y.: C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 210. $1.25.

Bates, Frank Greene. Rhode Island and the Formation of the Union. New York: Columbia University (Studies in History, etc.). The Macmillan Company. Pp. 220.

Brooks, William Keith. The Foundations of Zoölogy. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 339. $2.50.

Bulletins, Reports, etc. Atlanta University: Some Efforts of American Negroes for their own Social Betterment (Report of the Third Atlanta Conference). Pp. 66. – Bruner, Lawrence, University of Nebraska: Some Notes on Nebraska Birds. Pp. 178. – City of Chicago: Report of the Educational Commission. Pp. 248. – Connecticut: Fourteenth Annual Report of the State Bureau of Labor Statistics. Pp. 234. – Harvard Astrophysical Conference, August, 1898. By M. B. Snyder. Pp. 33. – Harvard College Astronomical Observatory: Annual Report of the Director to September 30, 1898. By E. C. Pickering. Pp. 14. – Iowa State University: Bulletin from the Laboratories of Natural History, Vol. IV, No. 4. Pp. 96, with plates. – Jewish Training School of Chicago: Ninth Annual Report. Pp. 45. – Michigan: Thirtieth Annual Report of Registry and Return of Births, Marriages, and Deaths for 1896. By C. L. Wilbur. Pp. 188. – Model, the Gas and Gasoline Engine. Garrett Works, Indiana. Pp. 22. – New York State Museum: A Guide to the Geological Collections, By F. J. H. Merrill. Pp. 156, with plates. – Society of American Authors: Monthly, January, 1899. Pp. 12. – Tokio, Japan, Imperial University Calendar. Pp. 250, with map. – United States Commissioner of Education: Report for 1896-'97, Vol. II. Pp. 1260. – United States Fish Commission Bulletin, Vol. XVII, 1897. George M. Bowers, Commissioner. Pp. 436.

Campbell, D. H. Lectures on the Evolution of Plants. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 319. $1.25.

Clinical Excerpts. Vol. I, No. 10. Pp. 16.

Coming Age, The. A Magazine of Constructive Thought. B. O. Flower and Mrs. C. K. Reifsinder, Editors. Vol. I, No. 1, January. 1899. Boston: The Coming Age Company. Pp. 122. 20 cents. $2 a year.

Dabney, Charles W., Jr. University of Tennessee. The Old College and the New. Pp. 16. – A National Department of Science. Pp. 13.

Elliott, A. G., Editor. Gas and Petroleum Engines. Translated and adapted from the French of Henry de Graffigny. New York: The Macmillan Company. 75 cents.

Farrington, E. H., and Wall, F. W. Testing Milk and its Products. Madison, Wis.: The Mendota Book Company. Pp. 256, $1. Pp. 140, 75 cents.

Haeckel, Ernst. The Last Link in our Present Knowledge of the Descent of Man. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 156. $1.

Huntington, Harwood. The Yearbook for Colorists and Dyers. Vol. I. New York: The Author. Pp. 309. – Some Notes on Chemical Jurisprudence. 260 West Broadway, New York. Pp. 24. 85 cents.

Index, The. Devoted to the Latest News and Gossip in the Field of Art and Letters. G. B. Rogers, Editor. Vol. I, No. 10. Cleveland and New York: The Hellman-Taylor Company. 50 cents a year.

Lee, Sidney, Editor. Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. LVII. Tom to Tytler. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 461. $3.25.

Luquer, L. M. Minerals in Rock Sections. The Practical Methods of Identifying Minerals in Rock Sections with the Microscope. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company. Pp. 117.

Marr, J. E. The Principles of Stratigraphical Geology. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 304. $1.60.

Martin, H. Newell. The Human Body. Fifth edition. Revised by G. W. Fitz. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 408. $1.20.

Mervan, Rencelof Ermagine. What is This? Copyrighted by G. Washington Price. Pp. 272.

Morehouse. G. W. The Wilderness of Worlds. The Evolution of Matter from Nebula to Man and Return. New York: Peter Eckler. Pp. 246.

Nichols, E. L., and Franklin, W. S. The Elements of Physics, Vol. I. Mechanics and Heat. New edition, revised, with additions. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 219. $1.50.

Ober, Frederick A. Puerto Rico and its Resources. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 282, with map.

Ratzel, Prof. Friedrich. The History of Mankind. By A. J. Butler. Introduction by E. B. Tyler. Vol. III. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 599, with maps. $4.

Reprints. Andrews, General C. C. Utilization of Our Waste Lands for Forestry Purposes. Pp. 10. – Bailey, Prof. E. H. S., Lawrence, Kan. The Proof of the Law of Similia (Homœopathic) from the Electro-Chemico-Physiological Standpoint. Pp. 8. – Bangs, L. Bolton, New York. Illustrative Cases of Prostatitis. Pp. 24. – De Courcy, J. Osborne, East St. Louis, Ill. Diseases of the Alimentary Canal, Ulcers, Malignant Sore Throat. Pp. 24 – Gilbert, G. K., Washington. Recent Earth Movements in the Great Lakes Region. Pp. 50. – Kakels, Sara W. Pregnancy in Women with Uterus Duplex. – Mayfield, R. N., New York. Catheters and Cystitis. Pp. 3. – Rotch, A. Lawrence. The Exploration of the Free Air by Means of Kites at Blue Hill Observatory, Massachusetts. Pp. 10.

Sladen, Douglas, Editor. Who's Who? 1899. An Annual Biographical Dictionary. Fifty-first year. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 1014. $1.75.

Smithsonian Institution. Adler, Cyrus, and Casanowicz, I. M. Exhibit of Biblical Antiquities at the Cotton States Exposition, Atlanta, Ga., 1895. Pp. 87, with plates. – Clark, Hubert L. The Feather Tracts of North American Grouse and Quail. Pp. 12, with plates. – Langley, S. P. Report of the Secretary for the Year ending June 30, 1898. Pp. 89.

Starr, Frederick; American Indians. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. Pp. 227. 45 cents.

Stewart, Freeman. Shall we Grow the Sugar we Consume? Swarthmore, Pa.: R. S. Dare. 25 cents.

Thompson, Sylvanus P. Michael Faraday: His Life and Work. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 308. $1.25.

Whitaker, Herbert C. Elements of Trigonometry, with Tables. Philadelphia: Eldridge & Brother. Pp. 196.

Wilson, L. L. W. Nature Study in Elementary Schools. First Reader. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 253. 35 cents.

Fragments of Science

Pre-Columbian Musical Instruments in America.– In a recent article in the Popular Science Monthly (November, 1898), entitled Was Middle America Peopled from Asia? I insisted that if there had been any invasion, peaceful or otherwise, sufficient to have affected even in the slightest degree the arts, customs, and religious beliefs of middle America, then, associated with these influences, we should find traces of Asiatic utensils, implements, structures, such as sandals, weapons, pottery, wheels, plows, roofing tiles, etc.; in other words, just those objects most intimately associated with man. I especially considered the absence of stringed musical instruments and coincided with Dr. Otis T. Mason in the belief that there was no evidence of a pre-Columbian stringed musical device. This question has been variously discussed and the following references bear on the subject: A short note in the American Antiquarian for January, 1897, by Dr. D. G. Brinton, entitled Native American Stringed Musical Instruments. The author frankly admits, however, that the cases cited may all have been borrowed from the whites or negroes. Mr. M. H. Saville in the American Anthropologist for August, 1897, described A Primitive Maya Musical Instrument, though he makes no pronounced statement of its pre-Columbian origin. Dr. Mason, in the American Anthropologist for November, 1897, discusses the question under the title Geographical Distribution of the Musical Bow, and in this paper says, "I have come to the conclusion that stringed musical instruments were not known to any of the aborigines of the western hemisphere before Columbus." In my paper I insisted that "had this simple musical device been known anciently in this country, it would have spread so widely that its pre-Columbian use would have been beyond any contention." Mr. Saville finally, in the American Anthropologist for September, 1898, shows apparently the existence of a pre-Columbian stringed musical device in a paper entitled The Musical Bow in Ancient Mexico, and presents his proof in the form of a reproduction from an ancient Mexican codex of an orchestra of six performers. One of the figures, according to Mr. Saville's interpretation, is holding a musical bow in his left hand while with his right hand he is striking the cord with a forked stick. Claiming no skill in the interpretation of these quaint and concentrated Jack-of-heart figures, I readily yielded to the authority of Saville in this matter, and so acknowledged in a footnote in my paper which I was enabled to insert after the pages were made up. Within a few days I have received a letter from Mrs. Zelia Nuttall, the eminent American paleographist, to whom we are indebted for the most profound researches in connection with these ancient codices. In this letter Mrs. Nuttall refers to Sahagun's great manuscript, wherein she says: "The native musical instruments are repeatedly enumerated. The turtle's shell figures among them, but there is no trace of a stringed musical instrument ever having been known or employed in ancient Mexico." (The Italics are hers.) Mrs. Nuttall then says that the object held under the arm of the musician which has been recognized as a musical bow is undoubtedly a turtle's shell. In support of this view she sends me a tracing of the figure from the original manuscript which is now in Vienna, in which the entire object under the arm of the player as well as the forked stick is colored blue (Fig. 1). A photograph is also inclosed from another ancient Mexican manuscript in course of publication by Mrs. Nuttall. In this (Fig. 2) the player has the turtle's shell and is pounding on it with a pronged stick, horn, or branch, while in the other hand he holds a rattle and at the same time sings, the notes being graphically portrayed as they come from his mouth. It will be observed that it is the plastron or ventral surface that he is striking, as shown by the notches in its forward and hinder edges, though the plates are incorrectly drawn. In the figure given by Mr. Saville the player is holding the turtle's shell in precisely that position that would enable him to strike the plastron. Even in Mr. Saville's figure the marginal plates of the shell are plainly indicated. By holding the figure face downward the shell is thrown in a normal position with the back uppermost, and what was mistaken for the string of the instrument is the outline of the back of the turtle correctly delineated. With the above figures I give the outline of the left arm and body of a friend who posed for me while holding a large South American turtle under his arm. I have drawn the plates of the carapace to more clearly indicate the position of the turtle's shell. In the original codex, as before remarked, this portion is colored blue. In this attitude the flat plastron forms the drumhead, so to speak, the carapace acting as a resonator. I am sure that Mr. Saville will agree with me that Mrs. Nuttall's attribution is the correct one.

Edward S. Morse.

Rebreathed Air as a Poison.– The following extracts are taken from an article by Dr. John Hartley, in the Lancet: "The fresh-air treatment of consumption" appears to be made up of three essential factors: (1) the discontinuance of the supply of bacilli from without; (2) the supply of an abundance of nutritive material to the tissues; and (3) the supply of an abundance of fresh air uncontaminated by the products of respiration. This seems to mean that the tissues, if not too enfeebled, may be trusted to deal with the bacilli already present if their metabolism is kept going at high pressure. Fresh air is now the "official" remedy in the treatment of tubercle. Why is it so ignored in the case of other diseases? Has the pneumonic or bronchitic no need of special ventilation because his microbe is of a different breed? The air was intended not only for phthisical patients or patients suffering from pneumonia but for all– diseased and healthy alike – and it is still the natural medium in which the poisonous products of tissue metabolism excreted by the lungs are further broken down and rendered harmless. Dr. A. Ransome has done great service not only by his onslaught on "air sewage" but also by his coinage of the term; for a thoroughly good opprobrious epithet resembles a good wall-poster in its power of arresting and enchaining the attention of the many. It was long ago pointed out that certain constituents of expired air are intensely powerful nerve poisons. These considerations should surely make us look on rebreathed air and sewer gas, not as mere carriers of accidental poisons, such as influenza and pneumonia and the like, but as poisons per se, and I wish to be allowed to record a few very imperfect observations made by myself during some years past chiefly on the subject of rebreathed air, with certain inferences which I think tend, however feebly and imperfectly, to show that the poisons we expire have per se very definite effects on tissue metabolism and need not a mere perfunctory admixture with fresh air but very large and very continuous dilution before they are rendered innocuous – that is to say, innocuous to all; for while some persons appear to be almost immune, others seem intensely susceptible. The first observation I will allude to was made in the autumn of 1896, in cool weather. I had to take a long night journey by rail after a long and hard day's work. The train was full and the compartment I entered was close; so, as I was tired and fagged, I sat in the corridor by an open window, well rugged up, throughout the journey. The compartment was completely shut off from the corridor by a glass door and windows, through which I could freely inspect its occupants. Two remarkably fresh-complexioned, wholesome-looking young fellows got into the compartment at York. They formed a remarkable contrast to the pallid and fagged-looking travelers already there. The windows and ventilators were carefully closed, and the newcomers, with the rest, settled off to sleep and slept soundly for nearly four hours, with the exception of a few minutes' interval at Grantham. When aroused on nearing London they, like the other occupants of the compartment, were haggard and leaden-hued, their fresh color was entirely gone, and they looked and moved as if exhausted. I examined my own face in the lavatory mirror at the beginning and end of the journey and could see but little alteration in my color; if anything, it was rather improved by the end of the journey. The second case occurred early in 1897. I was asked to see a woman, aged about forty-eight years, who had been treated in a neighboring town for many weeks for bronchitis and asthma following influenza. She had relapsed about a week when I first saw her. She was then sitting up in bed; her face was leaden-colored, her skin was clammy and sweating, with a feeble, quick pulse, and the heart sounds were indistinguishable owing to wheezing; there was some crepitation at the bases. The temperature was about 101° F. The weather was cold, but after wrapping her up, with a hot bottle to her feet, the window was well opened. Her color improved in a few minutes and the sweating ceased soon after. But it and the blueness returned if the window was shut for any time. It was directed to be kept open night and day, and I could see from my house that this order was carried out. Although on one night the thermometer showed 14° F. of frost the chest was clear of noises and she was convalescent in eight days. If fresh air needs warming she ought to have died. Why do most men feel so tired after an afternoon's work in a crowded out-patient room? Why is a long journey in a full railway carriage, even with a comfortable seat, so exhausting to many people? Personally an hour or two in a full carriage with the windows shut will give me numbness in my feet and legs and knock me up for the day, while a railway journey in an empty carriage with open windows does not affect me at all. But most people will be willing to admit that any kind of crowd is tiring. It is to me difficult to resist the impression than an overdose of waste products, whether of one's own or other people's, must generally interfere with the metabolism of nerve tissue. Women as they grow older are apt to live much indoors. I believe the fat, flabby, paunchy woman, whether purple or pale, with feeble, irritable heart and "inadequate" kidneys, is usually the victim of rebreathed air. A "close" room will infallibly give me an abdominal distention and borborygmi within half an hour, and I am inclined to think the purity of the air breathed by the dyspeptic quite as important as his regimen or his teeth. It must, I think, sooner or later be recognized that many of the increasing ills which it has been the fashion to charge on the "hurry and brain fag" incidental to a high state of civilisation and a large population are in reality due to the greater contamination of the air we breathe by the waste products of that population, and that toxines excreted by the lungs will in time take high rank among these as both potent and insidious. If this should come to pass, the present ideas anent ventilation must be abandoned as utterly futile, and the need will be felt, not of letting a little air in, but of letting waste products out.