Part 18

=The Seventeen-Year and the Thirteen-Year Locusts.=--The periodical cicada, or seventeen-year locust, as it is called, is distinctly American, and has the longest life period of any known insect. It is especially remarkable, Mr. C. L. Marlatt observes in his memoir upon it, in its adolescent period, the features of particular divergence from other insects being its long subterranean life of thirteen or seventeen years, and the perfect regularity with which at the end of these periods every generation, though numbering millions of individuals, attains maturity almost at the same moment. At this moment the brood issue from the ground, leaving innumerable exit holes, and swarm over trees and shrubs, filling the air with their strident calls, and laying their eggs in slits which they cut in the trees. The larvæ, when hatched, fall to the ground, and quickly burrow out of sight, each "forming for itself a little subterranean chamber over some rootlet, where it remains through winter and summer, buried from sun, light, and air, and protected in a manner from cold and frost.... It lives thus alone in its moist earthen chamber," rarely changing its position unless some accident to the nourishing rootlet may necessitate its seeking another, passing the thirteen or seventeen years of its hypogeal existence in slow growth and preparation for a few weeks only of winged life in the air and light. Other cicadas appear every year, usually in comparatively small numbers. They are probably equally long in maturing, but the periods of their lives have from some cause or another been cast in "off" years. The thirteen-year broods are southern, and the shortening of their periods of development may possibly be accounted for by the longer season of warmth in the southern year giving them the number of hours or of aggregate degrees of warmth in thirteen years that the more northern broods can not receive in less than seventeen years. This, however, is only speculation, and there are difficulties in applying the supposition to make it fit all the facts; and many believe that the two races are specifically different. The late Prof. Charles V. Riley distinguished twenty-two different broods of cicadas in the United States, seven of which appertain to the thirteen-year period (_Cicada tredecem_).

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

The Bureau of Nature Study of Cornell University is making a praiseworthy effort to interest children in caring for birds, or, as its circular has it, treating them as "summer boarders." It publishes a leaflet entitled The Birds and I, which it sends free to teachers who ask for it and who will give it to their pupils. It has pictures of various styles of bird houses, which may serve as patterns for the construction of homes for the summer guests. "The kind of birds," the interesting circular of the bureau says, "that will set up housekeeping in the homes that you provide will harm no one. They are never cross, never throw stones or rob us, but are always happy and have cheerful songs. We are always kind to people having such dispositions, and why should we not be so to birds as well?" The bureau invites correspondence from boys and girls disposed to entertain birds.

The National Geographic Society offers prizes of one hundred and fifty dollars and seventy-five dollars severally for the first and second best essays relating to pre-Columbian discoveries and settlements of the Norsemen on the mainland of North America, and the location of the lands mentioned in the Icelandic Sagas, the competition to close December 31, 1899. The essays sent in should be typewritten in the English language, not exceeding six thousand words in length, and may be accompanied by maps and illustrations for explanation of the text, but not for embellishment. The committee of awards consists of Mr. Henry Gannett, Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart, Mrs. Anita Newcomb McGee, Prof. John Bach McMaster, and Coast Survey Superintendent Henry S. Pritchet.

Experiments by a German naturalist, Herr Albrecht Bethe, summarized in the _Revue Scientifique_, upon recognition of one another by ants, confirm the opinions of Lubbock, McCook, Forel, and others that they are guided by the sense of smell. Herr Bethe found that an ant "whitewashed" with liquid of ants of its own nest was well received by its fellows when it went among them; but when the liquid of ants of a different nest was applied it was attacked at once. An ant washed with alcohol, next with water, and then with the liquid of a strange species was well received in a nest of that species, although it was much smaller than any of the individuals composing it. Another ant washed with alcohol and water, dried, and immediately returned to its fellows of its own nest, was attacked by them; but when kept for twenty-four hours after drying, or long enough to recruit itself, was received by them.

The following tables are taken from a paper by Dr. J. Richardson Armstrong in a recent Lancet, describing his experience with diphtheria antitoxine in private practice in treating one hundred and twenty-two cases of diphtheria:

+------+----------+-------- | |Recovered.| Died. ------------------------+------+----------+-------- 1. | | | Total number of cases | | | treated from June | | | 21 to Dec. 17, 1897 | 42 | 36 | 6 Severe cases; antitoxine| | | injected | 22 | 20 | 2 Mild cases; antitoxine | | | not injected | 20 | 16 | 4 +======+==========+======== 2. | | | Total number of cases | | | treated, January 1 | | | to December 31, | | | 1898 | 80 | 77 | 3 Severe cases, injected | 55 | 54 | 1 Mild cases, non-injected| 25 | 23 | 2 ------------------------+------+----------+--------

In answer to the question, Should every case of diphtheria be treated with antitoxine, Dr. Armstrong says: "Some of the cases are sufficiently mild not to need it, so I will not go so far as to say that it is absolutely essential to inject in every case, although I would call it an excellent practice to do so, and the patients would make much more rapid recoveries. I think that injection ought to be insisted upon as early as possible in every case that is at all severe or likely to prove so, and I think that the medical man who does not employ antitoxine and who loses a large proportion of his cases is incurring a responsibility which is almost criminal. The earlier a patient is injected the greater is the chance of recovery, and the more rapid is the recovery."

Among the leading principles of forestry, as defined by the chief fire warden of Minnesota, are that the best agricultural land should not be devoted to forest while wood and timber can be profitably grown on soil that is unfit for farming purposes; that the management should be continuous, and no more timber should be taken out of the forest in one year, or in a series of ten or twenty years, than grows in the entire forest in the same period; that the cutting of timber should be in blocks or strips, so as to facilitate reproduction on the clear areas by seeds falling from the trees left standing; and that the forest, when young, must have in numbers vastly more trees than when it is mature. To make good timber, the forest, when young, must be crowded so as to secure height growth. Mixed wood, managed on forestry principles in the Black Forest of Germany, has per acre, at the age of twenty years, 3,960 trees; at the age of one hundred years, 262 trees.

A new process for the production of a textile material is thus described in Industries and Iron: "It consists of 'squirting,' in a fashion similar to that of making electric incandescent carbons, pure gelatin in threads of about one thousandth part of an inch in diameter, the thread being taken away on revolving tapes. The threads are wound upon reels and exposed to formalin vapor, which exercises a most remarkable effect on the gelatin, rendering it insoluble in any medium yet applied to it. The tensile qualities of the thread are also increased, while, in opposition to that produced under the Lehner process (which is simply forming nitrated cellulose into threads for weaving), it is capable of taking up any dye desired; and it is, of course, impervious to any hygroscopic influence."

NOTES.

Prof. E. C. Pickering, of the Harvard College Observatory, announces the discovery by Mrs. Fleming of a new variable star in Sagittarius. It was found on eight of the photographs in her large collection. On March 8, 1898, it was of the fifth magnitude, and on April 29, 1898, of the eighth magnitude. A plate taken on March 9, 1899, shows it still visible and of the tenth magnitude. Its spectrum resembles that of other new stars. The entire number of new stars discovered since 1885 is six, of which five have been found by Mrs. Fleming.

Because of the great loss by fire which occurs every year in the Russian villages, the government is making efforts to induce the peasantry, says the _Saturday Review_, to employ some less dangerous material than straw thatch for the roofing of their _izbas_. There has already been a large increase in the use of shingle, and this has led to a considerable importation from Belgium and Germany, and also from the United States, of simple and inexpensive shingle making machines, for use in rural districts. German manufacturers, whose "commercial intelligence department" is remarkably well informed, are now making redoubled efforts to meet the immense demand anticipated. An improved and inexpensive hand fire engine is also being provided. Roofing felt or paper is very generally used under the shingle, and the demand for this is also increasing.

A fourth specimen of the _Notornis Mantelli_, a bird of New Zealand supposed to have become extinct, was captured in August last, and has been prepared for the museum by Mr. W. B. Benham. The first specimen was obtained, recently slain, by Mr. W. Mantell, in 1849, and is preserved in the British Museum; the second was killed by Maoris in 1851, and is in the Colonial Collection; and the third, now in the Dresden Museum, was taken in 1879. All these birds were found in a single denuded region of the country. The present specimen was caught by a dog in the bushes near Lake Te Anan, still in the same region, and is a very fine young female.

A plant growing in the dense jungles of Langsuam, Siam, was described by H. Warington Smyth, in an address to the Royal Geographical Society, as having the property of setting up a great irritation in the skin of any person coming in contact with it. "It has a large, broad leaf, and the Siamese declare that, after being badly stung by it, the only remedy is the heat of a fire; to bathe in a stream, which is the natural impulse, is considered absolutely fatal. A spot on the Kra-Champawn trail is known as _Burmatai_, from the fact that a party of Burmese, coming across to harry their neighbors in the old fighting days, are said to have got into a thick growth of this plant, and to have bathed in the stream to allay the agony, with the result that they all died there." The Siamese call the plant _kalang-ton chang_.

In the western part of Belgium the dog has been employed as a beast of burden from time immemorial. The Belgian dog (known only by this name) is a large, compactly built animal, measuring from twenty to thirty inches in height; the hair is smooth and short, generally tan or dark brown in color. It is the custom to crop both ears and tail. The dogs are usually driven before carts weighing from one hundred to one hundred and twenty pounds, in teams of from two to six abreast. A harness very similar in arrangement to that of the horse is used. Six of these animals will draw from six to eight hundred pounds. They are put to work when about a year old. They vary in price from twenty-five to sixty shillings. There are over two thousand dogs in Ghent licensed as draught animals.

A plant described by M. Henri Chantrey as most probably answering to the manna found by the Hebrews in the desert is the thallophyte _Canona esculenta_, or edible lichen, which grows in the deserts of Persia, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and Sahara. It is a grayish cryptogam of about the size of a pea, bearing short bracteate appendages on its top; when cut, it resembles a mass of dull white flour paste. It is an ephemeral substance, and must be collected the morning it appears, as it will soon dry up; but when properly prepared it can be kept in a close vessel. It is highly appreciated by the wandering Arabs, who have often been saved by it from starvation, and they lay up stores of it when opportunity offers. It is easily collected, for it never adheres to any foreign body, and, so far as appearance goes, seems as if it might have been thrown on the ground. There is but little suggestion of the mushroom in its taste, which is rather starchy, with a slight flavor of sugar. Cattle are very fond of it. The Arabs boil it into a gelatinous paste, which they serve in various ways. They preserve it by drying it in the shade and pack it in bladders or skins. It is not a complete first-class food, but is very good for a few days till something better can be got.

The Jernkontoret of Sweden is an ironmasters' exchange at Stockholm, which was founded in 1747 for the financial convenience of the subscribers, and now possesses a reserve fund of about $1,500,000. The functions of the society have been considerably enlarged since its institution. It has organized a corps of mining engineers and metallurgists, who receive salaries from it, and further from manufacturers whom they may serve. They are often commissioned to go abroad and obtain information and practical hints bearing upon their profession. The institution is supported by a light assessment on the production of its constituency. It has a fine building, and publishes an annual volume in _Jernkontorets Annalen_, containing original memoirs and reports from technical agents, which is sent gratuitously to all the masters of forges in Sweden, and is sold abroad.

In a number of glass mirrors of the third and fourth centuries, examined by M. Berthelot, the glass was coated with a metallic substance and with a layer of whitish material. The metal proved to be lead, with no trace of gold, silver, copper, tin, antimony, or mercury, and no sign of organic substance was present. It was thus shown that no extraneous material was used to cement the lead to the glass. The mirrors appeared to have been cut from hollow blown glass globes, and it is possible that before the globe was cut the molten lead had been poured into the interior, and had adhered to the previously warmed glass. The whitish layer consisted of lead carbonate and lead oxide formed by the oxidation of the lead coating and calcium carbonate, which had been deposited from the water of the district in which the mirrors were found.

The list of recent deaths among men known in connection with science and its applications includes the names of Prof. Karl Müller, botanist, one of the founders of the German scientific weekly, _Die Natur_, February 9th, aged eighty-one years; Sir John Struthers, emeritus professor of anatomy in the University of Aberdeen, in his sixty-seventh year; John Kreusi, mechanical engineer and inventor, at Schenectady, N. Y., January 22d, aged fifty-six years; Thomas Cook, teacher of anatomy and author of works on the subject, in London, February 8th; Dr. A. Veitmeyer, civil engineer, in Berlin; Dr. Carl Schoenlein, of the Zoölogical Station at Naples, aged forty years; Major-General Joseph J. Reynolds, of the United States Army, formerly professor of mechanics and engineering at Washington University, St. Louis, February 26th, aged seventy-seven years; Dr. Alexandre Laboulbène, professor of the history of medicine in the University of Paris, and author of a treatise on pathological anatomy and a book on French entomological fauna, aged seventy-three years; Dr. Philipp J. J. Valentini, Americanist and student of ancient Mexican and Central American monuments and codices, in New York, March 16th, in his seventy-first year; Gustave Wiedmann, professor of physics and chemistry in the University of Leipsic, and writer on electricity and magnetism; and Major J. Evans, professor of pathology in the Calcutta Medical College, March 13th.

Transcriber's Notes:

Words surrounded by _ are italicized.

Words surrounded by = are bold.

Obvious printer's errors have been repaired, other inconsistent spellings have been kept, including inconsistent use of hyphen (e.g. "air ship" and "air-ship"), diacritical marks (e.g. "êtat" and "état"), and proper names (e.g. "Dostoievski" and "Dostoiewski").

Captions added to captionless illustrations.

Some illustrations were relocated to correspond to their references in the text.