Chapter 1

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SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT NO. 344

NEW YORK, August 5, 1882

Scientific American Supplement. Vol. XIV, No. 344.

Scientific American established 1845

Scientific American Supplement, $5 a year.

Scientific American and Supplement, $7 a year.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS.

I. ENGINEERING AND MECHANICS.--The Panama Canal. By MANUEL EISSLER. I.--Historical notes.--Spanish Discoveries in Central America.--Early explorations.--Nicaragua projects.--Panama railway, etc.

Improved Averaging Machine.

Compound Beam Engine. 4 figures.--Borsig's improved compound beam engine.

Power Hammers with Movable Fulcrum.--By DANIEL LONGWORTH. 5 figures.

The Bicheroux System of Furnaces Applied to the Puddling of Iron. 2 figures.

Gessner's Continuous Cloth Pressing Machine. 3 figures.

Novelties in Ring Spindles. 4 figures.

Improvements in Woolen Carding Engines.

II. NATURAL HISTORY.--Metamorphosis of the Deer's Antlers.--Annual changes. 9 figures.

Monkeys. By A.R. WALLACE.--Comparison of skeletons of man, orang outang, and chimpanzee.--Other anatomical resemblances and diversities.--The different kinds of monkeys and the countries they inhabit.--American monkeys.--Lemurs. --Distribution, affinities, and zoological rank of monkeys.

Silk Producing Bombyces and other Lepidoptera reared in 1881. By ALFRED WAILLY, Member Lauriat de la Societe d'Acclimatation de France.--An extended and important European, Asiatic, and American silk worms, and other silk producers.

III. MINERALOGY, METALLURGY, ETC.--The Mineralogical Localities In and Around New York City and the Minerals Occurring Therein.--By NELSON H. DARTON.--Chances for collecting within one hour's ride of New York.--Methods of collecting and testing.--Localities on Bergen Hill.--The Weehawken Tunnel.--Minerals and modes of occurrence.--Calcite.--Natrolite.--Pectolite.--Datholite. --Apopholite.--Phrenite.--Iron and copper pyrites. --Stilbite.--Laumonite.--Heulandite.

Antiseptics.

Crystallization and its Effects Upon Iron. By N.B. WOOD.-- Beauty of Crystals.--Nature of cohesion.--Cleavage.--Growth of crystals.--Some large crystals.--Cast iron.--Influence of phosphorus and sulphur.--Nature of steel.--Burnt steel.--Effect of annealing.

IV. ARCHITECTURE, ART, ETC.--The Cathedral of Burgos, Spain. --Full page illustration from photograph.

Description of Burgos Cathedral.

Photo-Engraving on Zinc and Copper. By LEON VIDAL.

Meridian Line.--A surveyor's method of finding the true meridian.--By R.W. MCFARLAND.

V. ELECTRICITY, ETC.--Electro Mania. By W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS.--Example of electrical exaggeration and delusion.--Early scientific attempts at electro-motors, electric lamps, etc.

Action of Magnets Upon the Voltaic Arc. By TH. DU MONCEL. 2 figures.

Volckmar's Secondary Batteries.

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METAMORPHOSIS OF THE DEER'S ANTLERS.

Every year in March the deer loses its antlers, and fresh ones immediately begin to grow, which exceed in size those that have just been lost. Few persons probably have been able to watch and observe the habits of the animal after it has lost its antlers. It will, therefore, be of interest to examine the accompanying drawings, by Mr. L. Beckmann, one of them showing a deer while shedding its antlers, and the other as the animal appears after losing them. In the first illustration the animal has just lost one of its antlers, and fright and pain cause it to throw its head upward and become disturbed and uneasy. The remaining antler draws down one side of the head and is very inconvenient for the animal. The remaining antler becomes soon detached from its base, and the deer turns--as if ashamed of having lost its ornament and weapon--lowers its head, and sorrowfully moves to the adjoining thicket, where it hides. A friend once observed a deer losing its antlers, but the circumstances were somewhat different. The animal was jumping over a ditch, and as soon as it touched the further bank it jumped high in the air, arched its back, bent its head to one side in the manner of an animal that has been wounded, and then sadly approached the nearest thicket, in the same manner as the artist has represented in the accompanying picture. Both antlers dropped off and fell into the ditch.

Strong antlers are generally found together, but weak ones are lost at intervals of two or three days. A few days after this loss the stumps upon which the antlers rested are covered with a skin, which grows upward very rapidly, and under which the fresh antlers are formed, so that by the end of July the bucks have new and strong antlers, from which they remove the fine hairy covering by rubbing them against young trees. It is peculiar that the huntsman, who knows everything in regard to deer, and has seventy-two signs by which he can tell whether a male or female deer passes through the woods, does not know at what age the deer gets its first antlers and how the antlers indicate the age of the animal. Prof. Altum, in Eberswalde, has given some valuable information in regard to the relation between the age of the deer and the forms of their antlers, but in some respects he has not expressed himself very clearly, and I think that my observations given in addition to his may be of importance. When the animal is a year old--that is, in June--the burrs of the antlers begin to form, and in July the animal has two protuberances of the size of walnuts, from which the first branches of the antlers rise; these branches having the length of a finger only, or being even shorter, as shown at 1, in diagram, on p. 5481. After the second year more branches are formed, which are considerably longer and much rougher at the lower ends than the first. The third pair of antlers is different from its predecessors, inasmuch as it has "roses," that is, annular ridges around the bases of the horn, which latter are now bent in the shape of a crescent. Either the antler has a single branch (Fig. 3, _a_), or besides the point it has another short end, which is a most rare shape, and is known as a "fork" (Fig. 3, _b_), or it has two forks (Fig. 3, _c_). In the following year the antlers take the form shown in Fig. 4, and then follows the antler shown in Fig. 5, _a_, which generally has "forks" in place of points, and is known as forked antler in contradistinction to the point antler shown in Fig. 5, _b_, which retains the shape of the antler, Fig. 4, but has additional or intermediate prongs or branches. The huntsmen designate the antlers by the number of ends or points on the two antlers. For instance, Fig. 4 is a six-ender; Fig. 5 shows an eight-ender, etc.; and antlers have been known to have as many as twenty-two ends. If the two antlers do not have the same number of ends the number of ends on the larger antler is multiplied by two and the word "odd" is placed before the word designating the number of ends. For instance, if one antler has three ends and the other four, the antler would be termed an "odd" eight-ender. The sixth antler shown in Fig. 6 is a ten-ender, and appears in two different forms, either with a fork at the upper end, as shown in Fig. 6, _a_, or with a crown, as shown in Fig. 6, _b_. In Fig. 7 an antler is shown which the animal carries from its seventh year until the month of March of its eighth year. From that time on the crowns only increase and change. The increase in the number of points is not always as regular as I have described it, for in years when food is scarce and poor the antlers are weak and small, and when food is plentiful and rich the antlers grow exceedingly large, and sometimes skip an entire year's growth.--_Karl Brandt, in Leipziger lllustrirte Zeitung_.

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MONKEYS.

By ALFRED R. WALLACE.

If the skeleton of an orang-outang and a chimpanzee be compared with that of a man, there will be found to be the most wonderful resemblance, together with a very marked diversity. Bone for bone, throughout the whole structure, will be found to agree in general form, position, and function, the only absolute differences being that the orang has nine wrist bones, whereas man and the chimpanzee have but eight; and the chimpanzee has thirteen pairs of ribs, whereas the orang, like man, has but twelve. With these two exceptions, the differences are those of shape, proportion, and direction only, though the resulting differences in the external form and motions are very considerable. The greatest of these are, that the feet of the anthropoid or man-like apes, as well as those of all monkeys, are formed like hands, with large opposable thumbs fitted to grasp the branches of trees, but unsuitable for erect walking, while the hands have weak, small thumbs, but very long and powerful fingers, forming a hook, rather than a hand, adapted for climbing up trees and suspending the whole weight from horizontal branches. The almost complete identity of the skeleton, however, and the close similarity of the muscles and of all the internal organs, have produced that striking and ludicrous resemblance to man, which every one recognizes in these higher apes, and, in a less degree, in the whole monkey tribe; the face and features, the motions, attitudes, and gestures being often a strange caricature of humanity. Let us, then, examine a little more closely in what the resemblance consists, and how far, and to what extent, these animals really differ from us.

Besides the face, which is often wonderfully human--although the absence of any protuberant nose gives it often a curiously infantile aspect, monkeys, and especially apes, resemble us most closely in the hand and arm. The hand has well-formed fingers, with nails, and the skin of the palm is lined and furrowed like our own. The thumb is, however, smaller and weaker than ours, and is not so much used in taking hold of anything. The monkey's hand is, therefore, not so well adapted as that of man for a variety of purposes, and cannot be applied with such precision in holding small objects, while it is unsuitable for performing delicate operations, such as tying a knot or writing with a pen. A monkey does not take hold of a nut with its forefinger and thumb, as we do, but grasps it between the fingers and the palm in a clumsy way, just as a baby does before it has acquired the proper use of its hand. Two groups of monkeys--one in Africa and one in South America--have no thumbs on their hands, and yet they do not seem to be in any respect inferior to other kinds which possess it. In most of the American monkeys the thumb bends in the same direction as the fingers, and in none is it so perfectly opposed to the fingers as our thumbs are; and all these circumstances show that the hand of the monkey is, both structurally and functionally, a very different and very inferior organ to that of man, since it is not applied to similar purposes, nor is it capable of being so applied.

When we look at the feet of monkeys we find a still greater difference, for these have much larger and more opposable thumbs, and are therefore more like our hands; and this is the case with all monkeys, so that even those which have no thumbs on their hands, or have them small and weak and parallel to the fingers, have always large and well-formed thumbs on their feet. It was on account of this peculiarity that the great French naturalist Cuvier named the whole group of monkeys Quadrumana, or four-handed animals, because, besides the two hands on their fore-limbs, they have also two hands in place of feet on their hind-limbs. Modern naturalists have given up the use of this term, because they say that the hind extremities of all monkeys are really feet, only these feet are shaped like hands; but this is a point of anatomy, or rather of nomenclature, which we need not here discuss.

Let us, however, before going further, inquire into the purpose and use of this peculiarity, and we shall then see that it is simply an adaptation to the mode of life of the animals which possess it. Monkeys, as a rule, live in trees, and are especially abundant in the great tropical forests. They feed chiefly upon fruits, and occasionally eat insects and birds'-eggs, as well as young birds, all of which they find in the trees; and, as they have no occasion to come down to the ground, they travel from tree to tree by jumping or swinging, and thus pass the greater part of their lives entirely among the leafy branches of lofty trees. For such a mode of existence, they require to be able to move with perfect ease upon large or small branches, and to climb up rapidly from one bough to another. As they use their hands for gathering fruit and catching insects or birds, they require some means of holding on with their feet, otherwise they would be liable to continual falls, and they are able to do this by means of their long finger-like toes and large opposable thumbs, which grasp a branch almost as securely as a bird grasps its perch. The true hands, on the contrary, are used chiefly to climb with, and to swing the whole weight of the body from one branch or one tree to another, and for this purpose the fingers are very long and strong, and in many species they are further strengthened by being partially joined together, as if the skin of our fingers grew together as far as the knuckles. This shows that the separate action of the fingers, which is so important to us, is little required by monkeys, whose hand is really an organ for climbing and seizing food, while their foot is required to support them firmly in any position on the branches of trees, and for this purpose it has become modified into a large and powerful grasping hand.

Another striking difference between monkeys and men is that the former never walk with ease in an erect posture, but always use their arms in climbing or in walking on all-fours like most quadrupeds. The monkeys that we see in the streets dressed up and walking erect, only do so after much drilling and teaching, just as dogs may be taught to walk in the same way; and the posture is almost as unnatural to the one animal as it is to the other. The largest and most man-like of the apes--the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang-outang--also walk usually on all-fours; but in these the arms are so long and the legs so short that the body appears half erect when walking; and they have the habit of resting on the knuckles of the hands, not on the palms like the smaller monkeys, whose arms and legs are more nearly of an equal length, which tends still further to give them a semi-erect position. Still they are never known to walk of their own accord on their hind legs only, though they can do so for short distances, and the story of their using a stick and walking erect by its help in the wild state is not true. Monkeys, then, are both four-handed and four-footed beasts; they possess four hands formed very much like our hands, and capable of picking up or holding any small object in the same manner; but they are also four-footed, because they use all four limbs for the purpose of walking, running, or climbing; and, being adapted to this double purpose, the hands want the delicacy of touch and the freedom as well as the precision of movement which ours possess. Man alone is so constructed that he walks erect with perfect ease, and has his hands free for any use to which he wishes to apply them; and this is the great and essential bodily distinction between monkeys and men.

We will now give some account of the different kinds of monkeys and the countries they inhabit.

THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF MONKEYS AND THE COUNTRIES THEY INHABIT.

Monkeys are usually divided into three kinds--apes, monkeys, and baboons; but these do not include the American monkeys, which are really more different from all those of the Old World than any of the latter are from each other. Naturalists, therefore, divide the whole monkey-tribe into two great families, inhabiting the Old and the New World respectively; and, if we learn to remember the kind of differences by which these several groups are distinguished, we shall be able to understand something of the classification of animals, and the difference between important and unimportant characters.

Taking first the Old World groups, they may be thus defined: apes have no tails; monkeys have tails, which are usually long; while baboons have short tails, and their faces, instead of being round and with a man-like expression as in apes and monkeys, are long and more dog-like. These differences are, however, by no means constant, and it is often difficult to tell whether an animal should be classed as an ape, a monkey, or a baboon. The Gibraltar ape, for example, though it has no tail, is really a monkey, because it has callosities, or hard pads of bare skin on which it sits, and cheek pouches in which it can stow away food; the latter character being always absent in the true apes, while both are present in most monkeys and baboons. All these animals, however, from the largest ape to the smallest monkey, have the same number of teeth as we have, and they are arranged in a similar manner, although the tusks or canine teeth of the males are often large, like those of a dog.

The American monkeys, on the other hand, with the exception of the marmosets, have four additional grinding teeth (one in each jaw on either side), and none of them have callosities, or cheek pouches. They never have prominent snouts like the baboons; their nostrils are placed wide apart and open sideways on the face; the tail, though sometimes short, is never quite absent; and the thumb bends the same way as the fingers, is generally very short and weak, and is often quite wanting. We thus see that these American monkeys differ in a great number of characters from those of the Eastern hemisphere; and they have this further peculiarity, that many of them have prehensile or grasping tails, which are never found in the monkeys of any other country. This curious organ serves the purpose of a fifth hand. It has so much muscular power that the animal can hang by it easily with the tip curled round a branch, while it can also be used to pick up small objects with almost as much ease and exactness as an elephant's trunk. In those species which have it most perfectly formed it is very long and powerful, and the end has the underside covered with bare skin, exactly resembling that of the finger or palm of the hand and apparently equally sensitive. One of the common kinds of monkeys that accompany street organ-players has a prehensile tail, but not of the most perfect kind; since in this species the tail is entirely clad with hair to the tip, and seems to be used chiefly to steady the animal when sitting on a branch by being twisted round another branch near it. The statement is often erroneously made that all American monkeys have prehensile tails; but the fact is that rather less than half the known kinds have them so, the remainder having this organ either short and bushy, or long and slender, but entirely without any power of grasping. All prehensile-tailed monkeys are American, but all American monkeys are not prehensile-tailed.

By remembering these characters it is easy, with a little observation, to tell whether any strange monkey comes from America or from the Old World. If it has bare seat-pads, or if when eating it fills its mouth till its cheeks swell out like little bags, we may be sure it comes from some part of Africa or Asia; while if it can curl up the end of its tail so as to take hold of anything, it is certainly American. As all the tailed monkeys of the Old World have seat-pads (or ischial callosities as they are called in scientific language), and as all the American monkeys have tails, but no seat-pads, this is the most constant external character by which to distinguish them; and having done so we can look for the other peculiarities of the American monkeys, especially the distance apart of the nostrils and their lateral position.

The whole monkey-tribe is especially tropical, only a few kinds being found in the warmer parts of the temperate zone. One inhabits the Rock of Gibraltar, and there is one very like it in Japan, and these are the two monkeys which live furthest from the equator. In the tropics they become very abundant and increase in numbers and variety as we approach the equator, where the climate is hot, moist, and equable, and where flowers, fruits, and insects are to be found throughout the year. Africa has about 55 different kinds, Asia and its islands about 60, while America has 114, or almost exactly the same as Asia and Africa together. Australia and its islands have no monkeys, nor has the great and luxuriant island of New Guinea, whose magnificent forests seem so well adapted for them. We will now give a short account of the different kinds of monkeys inhabiting each of the tropical continents.

Africa possesses two of the great man-like apes--the gorilla and the chimpanzee, the former being the largest ape known, and the one which, on the whole, perhaps most resembles man, though its countenance is less human than that of the chimpanzee. Both are found in West Africa, near the equator, but they also inhabit the interior wherever there are great forests; and Dr. Schweinfurth states that the chimpanzee inhabits the country about the sources of the Shari River in 28° E. long. and 4° N. lat.

The long-tailed monkeys of Africa are very numerous and varied. One group has no cheek pouches and no thumb on the hand, and many of these have long soft fur of varied colors. The most numerous group are the Guenons, rather small long-tailed monkeys, very active and lively, and often having their faces curiously marked with white or black, or ornamented with whiskers or other tufts of hair; and they all have large cheek pouches and good sized thumbs. Many of them are called green monkeys, from the greenish yellow tint of their fur, and most of them are well formed, pleasing animals. They are found only in tropical Africa.

The baboons are larger but less numerous. They resemble dogs in the general form and the length of the face or snout, but they have hands with well-developed thumbs on both the fore and hind limbs; and this, with something in the expression of the face and their habit of sitting up and using their hands in a very human fashion, at once shows that they belong to the monkey tribe. Many of them are very ugly, and in their wild state they are the fiercest and most dangerous of monkeys. Some have the tail very long, others of medium length, while it is sometimes reduced to a mere stump, and all have large cheek pouches and bare seat pads. They are found all over Africa, from Egypt to the Cape of Good Hope; while one species, called the hamadryas, extends from Abyssinia across the Red Sea into Arabia, and is the only baboon found out of Africa. This species was known to the ancients, and it is often represented in Egyptian sculptures, while mummies of it have been found in the catacombs. The largest and most remarkable of all the baboons is the mandrill of West Africa, whose swollen and hog-like face is ornamented with stripes of vivid blue and scarlet. This animal has a tail scarcely two inches long, while in size and strength it is not much inferior to the gorilla. The large baboons go in bands, and are said to be a match for any other animals in the African forests, and even to attack and drive away the elephants from the districts they inhabit.