microscope be clearly distinguished from the red blood corpuscles of the guinea pig and several other mammals. In the Medico-Legal Journal Prof. M. C. White, of the Medico-Legal Society of New Haven, Conn., discussing this question, comes to the conclusion that the following claims have been substantiated beyond any reasonable question:

"1. That in favorable cases blood stains can be so treated that reliable measurements and credible diagnosis of their origin can be given, as shown in the tables given and in others which might be referred to.

"2. That if error occurs on account of imperfect restoration of the form and diameter of the corpuscles obtained from a stain proved (by [a] the guaiacum test, [b] the spectroscope, [c] by the production of hæmin crystals) to be blood, the error, if any, will be to make human blood appear like that of one of the inferior animals, and never to mistake the blood of the ox, pig, horse, sheep or goat for human blood.

"3. In general, when a stain has been proved to be blood by the above tests, it may be decided certainly whether it is or is not mammalian blood. So also, a stain from the blood of the ox, pig, horse, sheep and goat may be distinguished from human blood; thus confirming the claim of an accused person in many cases that his clothes are not stained with human blood. This negative testimony is certainly quite as important in many cases as testimony inculpating a prisoner.

"Lastly, the expert can say, when the average of a suitable number of corpuscles from a blood stain corresponds with the average of fresh human corpuscles, that the stain is certainly not from the blood of the ox, pig, sheep or goat; and in other cases he can say, with great certainty, that a given stain is not human blood.

MR.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF RECREATION.

A Plea for Healthy Games. R. CHARLES ROBERTS, writing on the "Physiology of Recreation," in the Contemporary Review, gives some interesting information and makes some valuable suggestions as to amusements from the point of view of the physiologist. He thinks that women can play at most of the games that men amuse themselves with, but their inferior strength renders it impossible for them to compete with men on even terms after they are ten years of age. He says: "The average differences between fully grown men and women of the age of twenty-five years are: Women are about 5 inches shorter of stature, 24 pounds lighter in weight, and 36 pounds weaker in strength. The average drawing-power of men being 84 pounds and that of women 46 pounds, the ratio of the strength of women to men is as 1 to 1.82-or, in other words, an average man of twenty-five years has very nearly double the strength of arms of a woman of the same age. It is obvious, therefore, whether for labor or for recreative games requiring strength, that women are physically inferior to men. Moreover, there are anatomical changes at puberty which place women at a disadvantage. Women cannot walk or run as fast as men, and their lower limbs being attached at a wider angle to the trunk are more liable, if subjected to much strain, to deformities in the shape of flat-foot, knock-knee, bow-leg, and spinal curvatures."

The following table of different forms of recreation will be scrutinized by many of our readers, who will dissent widely from Mr. Roberts' judgment:

"The different forms of physical recreations are classified by Mr. Roberts according to their physiological value as follows:

Mr. Roberts, it will be seen, puts cycling very low down on the list. He laments that children don't know how to play unless they are taught, and he suggests that "teachers of both sexes should be required to pass an examination, theoretical and practical, in children's games as an essential qualification for their duties. Unfortunately, we have almost forgotten our old English games, and I know of no book which sufficiently describes them for the use of teachers and children. A recent French commission on physical education has, among other things, collected and described a considerable number of children's games, many of which I recognize

as English games with French variations. We have need of a similar commission in this country, but failing this, a committee of men and women interested in the subject might investigate and report on games suitable for school use, and bring pressure to bear on the Education Department to introduce them into training colleges and schools."

Another suggestion which Mr. Roberts makes is that churches should be more utilized for recreation than they are at present. "Of the outdoor exercises which are within almost every boy's and man's reach are rowing, swimming and walking; while of the indoor exercises dancing, billiards, dumb-bells and singing are within most people's means. It is most unfortunate that the admirable game of billiards should have become associated with the publichouse, but this is a proof of its attractiveness. A divine is credited with the saying, when he adopted a brighter and more cheerful set of tunes for his hymns, that it was no use letting the devil have all the best tunes, and I would say likewise, there is no use letting the devil have all the best games. Directly or indirectly, nearly the whole of our best games are associated with the public-house, and it is time they should be retrieved and placed on an independent footing. The Church might well do for games what it has done for music and singing."

THE BRAIN IN THE LIGHT OF SCIENCE.

DR. S. MILLINGTON MILLER, writing in the

New Science Review, presents some of the results of recent researches in neurology. His remarks on thought considered as a "habit of nerve cells" are suggestive.

"Little, if anything, has been written on the tremendous part played by habit in the lower and higher processes of the brain. Perhaps the most striking illustration of this force is what is generally known as 'presence of mind.' The least amount of thoughtful consideration will prove to the most skeptical that this condition of affairs does not originate de novo, that it is nothing more or less than the result of constant practice.

"The most alert and serviceable mind is undoubtedly that which accompanies a perfectly healthy body. Deficient or ill-regulated food supply, unfortunate environment, disturbances of digestion, or of circulation, or of any normal secretion, renders such a thing as 'presence of mind' absolutely out of the question. But given a child born of strong and intelligent parents, and under the intellectual supervision of a decided and intelligent mother, mental readiness is something of easy acquirement. The child learns altogether by imitation, and its first efforts in this line will be an exact copy of the mental processes of its educator. And that educator's will, in the shape of commands given to the child, must be exerted in the line of prompt appreciation of sensations and correct and immediate motion or action based upon them.

"The power to act instantly in the wisest and

most serviceable manner is impossible as an unpredicated action. If presence of mind were due to a something called 'intelligence' inhabiting the brain, but apart and entirely distinct from its structure, prompt action might reasonably follow as a primal act, but all analogy proves that this is not the case."

IN

HOW PARIS IS FED.

IN the fifth of a series of articles appearing in the Revue des Deux Mondes on "The Mechanism of Modern Life," by Vicomte d'Avenel, the writer describes how Paris is fed through the great shops and stores devoted to alimentation. The French nation are now noted for their delicate cooking, but in the Middle Ages they seem to have been very poorly fed.

A FAMOUS PARISIAN GROCER.

Of the great Paris grocers Felix Potin was the chief. His father, who cultivated his own land at Arpajon (Seine-et-Oise), desired to make a lawyer of his son, and Felix was put into an office at the age of sixteen; but the lad had an irresistible desire to become a grocer, and before he was twenty-four years old he had started in business. He is now perhaps the biggest grocer in the world. When he married he possessed about $2,000 and his bride brought a dowry of a similar amount. The couple lived above their first shop, in sloping rooms under the roof, and were obliged to collect each day their receipts from the till and pay them away in the evening for the purchase of their stock. But as time went on they grew wealthier and wealthier, thanks, it must be admitted, to a timely loan from M. Potin's father-in-law. Felix Potin acted splendidly during the siege of Paris. He refused to allow his stock of eatables-which had by that time become immense to be bought up by speculators, and he rationed carefully his supplies of food, which he doled out to the public at the same prices as before. It is sad to think this large-hearted man died in the year following the war at the early age of fifty-one.

THE MAISON DUVAL.

Neither butchers' meat nor bread has yet been subject to the methods of accumulation and distribution pursued in the grocery trade; but an immense establishment has been started in Paris by a M. Cléret for the making of sausages and black pudding, the price having been sensibly lowered by the concentration of manufacture. But these remarks only apply to pork. Reckoning that there are a thousand co-operative food supplies in France, four hundred are bakeries, and nineteen deal exclusively with the fresh meat trade. The famous Maison Duval possesses not only its restaurants of world wide fame, but three immense butchers' shops, distributing meat each year up to the value of a million of francs. It was founded by a very intelligent butcher at the time of the Exhibition of 1867, and may be regarded as a lasting triumph of successful organization. Scarce a visitor, or, indeed a resident in Paris, but has cause

to bless the world-famed Bouillons Duval, where a good meal is served at a maximum of comfort for a minimum of cost.

THE

THE OASES OF MARS.

HE so-called canals of Mars are probably not canals at all, but are strips of land irrigated by threads of water in the midst of these strips, the canals themselves being far too small to be perceptible, so we are told by Mr. Percival Lowell in the fourth of his series of papers on our nearest neighbor, now running in the Atlantic Monthly. What the astronomer, with his telescope trained on Mars, sees, therefore, are oases irrigated by canals and not the canals themselves. Mr. Lowell pieces together the various Martian phenomena he has observed in a very convincing manner: "Dotted all over the reddish-ochre ground of the great desert stretches of the planet, the so-called continents of Mars, are an innumerable number of dark circular or ovate spots. They appear, furthermore, always in intimate association with the canals. They constitute so many hubs to which the canals make spokes. These spots, together with the canals that lead to them, are the only markings to be seen anywhere on the continental regions. Otherwise, the great reddish-ochre areas are absolutely bare; of that pale fire opal hue which marks our own deserts seen from afar.

A SYSTEM OF IRRIGATION CANALS.

"That these two things, straight lines and roundish spots, should, with our present telescopic means, be the sole markings to appear on the vast desert regions of the planet is suggestive in itself.

"Another significant fact as to the character of either marking is the manifest association of the two. In spite of the great number of the spots, not one of them stands isolate. There is not a single instance of a spot that is not connected by a canal to the rest of the dark areas. This remarkable inability to stand alone shows that the spots and the canals are not unrelated phenomena, for were there no tie between them they must occasionally exist apart.

“Nor is this all. There is, apparently, no spot that is not joined to the rest of the system, not only by a canal, but by more than one; for though some spots, such as the Fountain of Youth, have appeared at first to be provided with but a single canal connection, later observation has revealed concurrence in the case. The spots are, therefore, not only part and parcel of the canal system, but terminal phenomena of the same.

"The majority of the spots are from 120 to 150 miles in diameter; thus presenting a certain uniformity in size as well as in shape. There are some smaller ones, not more than 75 miles across, or less."

INTELLIGENCE OR COINCIDENCE.

Reviewing the chain of reasoning by which he has been led to regard it probable that upon the surface

of Mars is to be seen the effects of local intelligence, Mr. Lowell says: "We find in the first place, that the broad physical conditions of the planet are not antagonistic to some form of life; secondly, that there is an apparent dearth of water upon the planet's sur face, and therefore if beings of sufficient intelligence inhabited it they would have to resort to irrigation to support life; thirdly, that there turns out to be a network of markings covering the disc precisely counterparting what a system of irrigation would look like; and, lastly, that there is a set of spots placed where we should expect to find the lands thus artificially fertilized, and behaving as such constructed oases should. All this, of course, may be a set of coincidences, signifying nothing; but the probability seems the other way. As to details of explanation, any we may adopt will undoubtedly be found, on closer acquaintance, to vary from the actual Martian state of things; for any Martian life must differ markedly from our own.

In the New England Magazine for August Mr. Lowell has an article on the same subject, illustrated with twelve plates reproduced from photographs of Mars taken near Flagstaff, Arizona, November, 1894.

"The machine which does the washing consists, in the first place, of a big cylinder of metal. Boiling water and steam pass in at the top and can be drawn away at the bottom. Inside there is another cylinder, made of metal rods and divided in the middle by a partition. The inner cylinder takes the clothes; into the outer some hot water is admitted. Then the machinery is set in motion, and the inner

cylinder revolves. By this means the clothes in the one half fall heavily upon the water, then rise again, while those contained in the other half fall in their turn. The force of the concussion drives the water through the material and cleanses it very thoroughly, so that the break-down,' which used to be effected by a whole night's soaking, is now carried out in ten minutes or thereabouts.

"The break-down' being accomplished, the water is drawn off, the washing compounds are admitted, and the water renewed. The door of the outer cylinder is closed, and, as the safety-valve shows, the pressure of steam soon becomes considerably over the normal. This means that the temperature is higher than that of boiling water, and that, as the clothes revolve, they are being to all intents and purposes disinfected as well as washed.

A HINT FROM A TWIRLING MOP.

"The centrifugal drying machine, invented by a German named Seyrig, is wonderfully quick, and

involves no exposure to the air. The inventor hit upon the idea through seeing a woman who was twirling a mop round and round to rid it of superfluous water. His machine consists, first of all,

of a sort of round tub of metal, having an outlet at the bottom. Inside is another round tub, whose sides are perforated. The clothes are packed away in this, and by means of machinery it is made to revolve, the pace increasing until the inner cylinder is moving at the rate of perhaps 1,200 revolutions to the minute.

"At the end of fifteen minutes, perhaps, the clothes have been so effectually dried that in some cases they only need to be ironed.

R. LOUIS ROBINSON devotes the third of his series of articles on Wild Traits in Tame Animals," now running in the North American Review, to the sheep and the goat. His answer to the question, "Where did the sheep get its wool from?" is intensely interesting.

66

He says: The wool was of course developed primarily to protect the sheep from cold. But from what cold? The cold of winter? That can scarcely be, since the wool persists and continues growing all the year round. The cold of Arctic climates? That also must be excluded, since no sheep, either tame or wild, thrives in the extreme North. On the contrary, in Australia and many other warm countries, the flocks flourish abundantly. Certain naturalists say that the so-called musk ox is really a sheep, but it is plain that that curious beast is a very distant relative of the familiar varieties. Neither this nor any other Arctic animal would long survive a removal to a sub-tropical region.

A BORN MOUNTAINEER.

"If we study the various kinds of wild sheep all the world over, we at once find an answer to the question. Without exception they are dwellers upon high mountains. Some live almost among perpetual snow. The Bighorn inhabits the Rockies, the Moufflon, the mountains of Corsica, the gigantic Ovis Poli, the Argali and the Burrhel make their home upon the high ranges of Siberia and Thibet. On the grassy slopes and terraces they find sustenance, and among the giddy precipices above they take refuge when danger threatens them. They took to the hills in the first place, like the wild asses, because the fierce carnivora of the lowlands were too many for them. Their cousins, the antelopes and deer, were swift enough to hold their own on the plains, but the only chance of survival which was open to the more sluggish Ovide was to take to the mountains. Many a human refugee, hunted by a human beast of prey, has had to do the same. Having once chosen their habitat, it was necessary that their instincts and structure should become adapted for the life of a mountaineer; and throughout long ages, by the survival of those individuals

best fitted to this kind of existence, and by the elimination or sifting out of the unfit, they have developed into what they now are.

66

As a protection against the cold of high altitudes they grew a thick wooly covering beneath their long coarse hair. The need of mounting steep slopes with rapidity, and of propelling their heavy bodies by leaps among the rocks, caused the muscles of the hinder quarters to become stout and fleshy. To the former fact we owe our woolen clothing, and to the latter, the succulent 'legs of mutton' which so often appear on our tables.

Now let us see what other relics of wild life can be found in the sheep. It is always, as I have said in a previous paper, worth while to examine immature animals, if we wish to find out the habits of their early ancestors. Young lambs have enormously developed legs and can run about smartly when only a few hours old. This at once suggests that they had to keep up with their parents when the flock moved from place to place, and were not hidden in secluded spots by their dams. They have a curious habit of following anything large and light colored which moves quickly away from them. A new born lamb will rush after a newspaper blown along by the wind, or, as Mr. Hudson says in his delightful book, The Naturalist in La Plata,' they will persistently gallop after a horseman on the Pampas. It is the old and most necessary instinct of following the flock when it was fleeing from an enemy, but the instinct is at fault in civilized regions. Doubtless on the tops of the Corsican or Thibetan mountains, both newspapers and horsemen are too rare to be taken account of in the formation of habits of self preservation. However white the fleeces of their elders may be, young lambs are usually of a dirty gray color, so as to harmonize with the rocks of their ancestral home. When at play they always seek the steepest parts of the field, and if there is a rock or a log lying about, they will skip on to it and butt at one another, as if playing King of the Castle.'

"If the dog was the first animal tamed by man, the sheep was certainly the second. The immense varieties of sheep and the widely different character they present, prove that they have been domesticated for a very long time."

THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF CHINESE LIFE.

ACCORDING to Julian Ralph, who, in Harper's,

is giving us a glimpse of the brighter side of Chinese life, China is one of the most charming places in the world in which to spend a few months; that is, if you carry with you, as did Mr. Ralph, a large stock of good nature. Wherever Mr. Ralph went he found the people, not preternat urally grave, as have all visitors before him, but full of fun and good humor; forever playing tricks, joking, exchanging wit, chasing one another, shoving and pushing and wrestling like schoolboys at home. They will live in his mind forever, he

rejoices to say, here and hereafter, as the jolliest, kindliest, most sympathetic, generous souls he ever found anywhere in all his roamings.

FEEDING THE MULTITUDE.

The way to reach the Chinese heart is through candy and pudding. Carry with you a bottle of ordinary mixed candy, distribute same generously, and you will have the multitude with you. This is what Mr. Ralph did; but if you don't happen to have any candy about you, tapioca pudding will do. "Our moon-faced cook, Ah Chow, had made a most excellent tapioca pudding, topped by a delicious layer of cream made of sugar, egg and milk. The Swallow was tied to the bank, and on the footpath squatted a long line of men, women and children, bent double so as to peer in at our cabin windows while we dined. Everything that we ate and handled was strange to them. Impulsively,

and full of friendliness toward them, I begged Mr. Weldon to join with me in abstaining from eating the pudding, and then, with a long plated spoon in one hand and the granite ware dish in the other, I leaped upon the towpath and offered the first spoonful to the first man on the line. The mothers who carried or led little boy children in every instance refused the food in favor of the children, and I had difficulty in getting them to taste it at all It must have made a funny picture-this spectacle of a solitary American feeding babies, and men old enough to be his grandfather, with mouthfuls of airy sweetened froth out of a long spoon. And it was even funnier to see how quickly we sailed away from there, lest one of those natives should take sick, and we be charged with poisoning by an angry mob of rioters."

TWO BLOCKS OF TAME DUCKS.

The Chinese farmer does not take his ducks to market in a hand-basket. "What would the reader think of seeing a farmer traveling to market with as many ducks as could be crowded into more than the space of the park between the City Hall and the Post Office in New York City-a mass of perhaps two city blocks of duck flesh and feathers? That was what was driven past us on the Grand Canal one day. Two men in two boats were driving the ducks before them, all as thick upon the water as they could swim. Each man carried a long slender bamboo rod with the heart of a palm leaf on the end of it. With this he kept the red and gray squawking mass in order. He whipped back into its place every duck that sagged out of the mass, or that lagged behind, or showed a disposition to make for the shore. Suddenly several boats came along in the opposite direction—a big chop-boat and two or three smaller vessels. They were sailing swiftly before a fresh breeze directly down upon the acre or two of ducks. There seemed no way of preventing a terrible slaughter of poultry. The big chop-boat, like a house blown before a gale, sped toward the advancing feathered host, and at last the birds that were in the way were almost under her bows. Then

a flutter seized many square yards of ducks, the immense flock broke apart, a crack in it opened before the chop-boat, and widened until the boat swept through a canal that divided the flock. Not one duck was run over."

PHOTOGRAPHING BIG GAME IN THE ROCKIES. COLORADO sportsman, Mr. A. G. Wallihan, describes in the August Cosmopolitan what he terms "A New Sport in the Rocky Mountains.” This new sport is nothing more nor less than the swift and ready handling of the camera in encounters with large game. Of course, this involves something more than the peaceable taking of an animal's portrait; the nerve of the marksman is required, as well as the skill of the photographer. According to the Cosmopolitan writer, the method of writing hunting stories will be wholly reconstructed, to meet the demands of the new style of sport.

"As children, we were thrilled by the accounts of the lion-hunters of South Africa and the tiger-hunters of India. We were by their sides in the long, damp grasses and dark jungles, and waited with them for the signal of the glowing eyeballs. We endured the terrible uncertainty between the first crack of the rifle, the spring of the wounded animal, and the final shot which sent him to certain death. In the future, the literary hunter will tell you of his emotions while arranging his camera, how he felt as he looked into the eyes of the advancing animal, measured the angle of the sun, calculated the shades and shadows, and prospected the chances of a good negative. Then, when the final moment arrived, how he snapped his camera, and, quickly reaching for his trusty rifle, planted one, two, three well-directed shots at the still advancing bruin, and saw him roll on the earth at the very foot of his tripod."

TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS OF ANTELOPE.

He

Mr. Wallihan's experiences have been varied. begins his narrative with an account of his first at tempts to photograph antelope, after having erected a blind for himself and his camera in a gulch which he had found to be frequented by these animals.

“Patience is a necessary ingredient of the character of the photographer, as well as of that of the hunter. As I waited, I shifted my tripod into all possible positions for sweeping the gulch, but as noiselessly as possible. Suddenly, by some impulse, I glanced over my shoulder, and there, peeping above the bank-for antelopes are curious-were half a dozen heads. Of course, a snort and a stampede followed, and I was forced to readjust the camera and possess my soul in sufferance. Presently, others came down in front, but they were out of range. Nevertheless, I held out motionless and expectant. At last, when my patience was almost gone, there was a slight movement directly on the other side of the gulch. Treading gingerly and scenting danger, they came over the bank straight toward me. The keen-eyed rascals did not see the