Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1899: Volume LIV, No. 6, April 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1899: Volume LIV, No. 6, April 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The results of a study of the winter food of the chickadee by Clarence
M. Weed, of the New Hampshire College Agricultural Experiment Station,
shows that more than half of it consists of insects, a very large
proportion of which are taken in the form of eggs. Vegetation of
various sorts made up a little less than a quarter of the food; but
two thirds of this consisted of buds and bud scales that were
accidentally introduced along with plant-lice eggs. These eggs made up
more than one fifth of the entire food, and formed the most remarkable
element of the bill of fare. The destruction of these eggs of plant
lice is probably the most important service which the chickadee
renders during its winter residence. Insect eggs of many other kinds
were found in the food, among them those of the tent caterpillar and
the fall cankerworm, and the larvæ of several kinds of moths,
including those of the common apple worm.
The Merchants' Association of San Francisco has been trying the
experiment of sprinkling a street with sea water, and finds that such
water binds the dirt together between the paving stones, so that when
it is dry no loose dust is formed to be raised by the wind; that sea
water does not dry so quickly as fresh water, so that it has been
claimed when salt water has been used that one load of it is equal to
three loads of fresh water. The salt water which is deposited on the
street absorbs moisture from the air during the night, whereby the
street is thoroughly moist during the early morning, and has the
appearance of having been freshly sprinkled.
The Tarahumare people, who live in the most inaccessible part of
northern Mexico, were described by Dr. Krauss in the British
Association as ignorant and primitive, and many still living in caves.
What villages they have are at altitudes of about eight thousand feet
above the sea level. They are a small and wiry people, with great
powers of endurance. Their only food is _pinoli_, or maize, parched
and ground. They have a peculiar drink, called _teshuin_, also
produced from maize and manufactured with considerable ceremony, which
tastes like a mixture of sour milk and turpentine. Their language is
limited to about three hundred words. Their imperfect knowledge of
numbers renders them unable to count beyond ten. Their religion seems
to be a distorted and imperfect conception of Christian traditions,
mixed with some of their own ideas and superstitions.
The directory of the School of Anthropology of Paris, which consists
chiefly of the professors in the institution, has chosen Dr. Capitan,
professor of pathological anthropology, to succeed M. Gabriel de
Mortillet, deceased, as professor of prehistoric anthropology. Dr.
Capitan's former chair is suppressed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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