rvoL. v., »o. lis
��dren; and the community- was liounil Lo feed Llieni iiQder the uatne of Eiimotan children, who spenl three days iu the bau8«g o( the richer mem hers o( the oom- munlty, two days in those at the moderately wealthy, XiDd one day with the pooraat. But of late the caatom has arUen of selling children, and especially girls, to Olekmlnsk merchanU, who sell them further to the Takutea and Tungusea of the Olekmlnsk district. The parents sell giris for from thirty to forly roubles (from three to four pounds); and in Olekmir they are re-sold for sixty roubles, sometimes eighty roubles. Of course, this trade Is made under the cover of ' taking children to bring up.' The Irkutsk society bavhig taken interest in this communication, it has received Information from Yakutsk authorities, and from a well-known student of Takul* life, Mr. Gorok- boff. It appears from these communications that such trade really exisia ; the chief impulse to It being given lees by the work a purchased girt might do than by the possibility of receiving for her Che kalym, Ihat la, the money paid by men for purchasing a wife. Woman labor is at so low u price that one might have a woman in bis household and pay her half a piece of cnLton, * for a shirt,' per year. But the kalj/m reaches very high prices. One rich Yakule has re- cently sold his daughter to a Tungus for .1,000 rein- deer, and the same price was recently given by a half-Idiotic Yakute for the daughter of another Yakuts. Middendorfi quotes also several instances of a very high katj/m [uiid for giris. Its average being about 000 roubles. When a Buasian priest sold a girl whom be had educated, for five sables and ten skins, it was considered as a very low price. Altogether, the kalya ia Che chief cause of maintaining the trade in girls, together with the gradual irapoveriahment of the Yakuies.
— The second part of this season's course of I^Curday scientific lectures In Washington opened March 28, with the following programme: President J. C. Welling, Oldest history In the light of newest sclfjice; Mr. Frederick W. True, Ornitborhyncbus, a mammal that lays eggs; Medical Director A. L. Gihon, U.S.N., Sanitary Ignorance among bigb and low: Mr. J. S. Diller, A trip to Mount Shasta, Cali- fornia; Dr. D. E. Salmon, Our invisible enemies, the plagues of animal life; Prof. T. C. Mendenball, Weighing the earth.
— Capt. L. U. Herendeen of San Francisco com- niimlc-ites the following notes on prehistoric struc- tures in Mlcronesln. Ami^rlcan nilsslonarles recently settled at Ponapj, may. It Is hoped, furnish additional details Uareaf ler.
A few yrars ago I visited PonapiS Island In the Pacific, in east longitude 158° 22', and north latitude ffi 50'. The island Is surrounded by a reef, tvith a broad ship-channel between It and the island. At places in the reef there were natural breaks. Chat sen'ed as entrances to the harlwrs. In these stalp- ebanuels there were a number of islands, many of which were surrounded by a wall of stone five or six feet high; and on these Islands there stood a great many low Itouacs, Imilt of the same kind of stone as tbe walls abonC thcni. These structures seem to
��have heeu used as temples and fnrls. TheslngularT feature of these islands h that the walls are a foot or more below the water. When they were built, they were evidently above the water, and connected with the mainland; but they have gradually sunk until the sea has risen a foot or more around them. The natives on the island do not know when these works were built: it is so far back in the past, that they have even no tradition of the structures. Yet the works show signs of great skill, and certainly prove that whoever built them knew thoroughly how to transport and lift heavy blocks of stone. Up in the mountains of the island there is a quarry of the same kind of stone that was used in building the wall about the islands; and in that quarry to-day there are great blocks of stone that have been hewn out, ready for transportation. The natives have no tra- dition touching the quarry,—who hewed the stone, when it was done, or why the work ceased. They are in greater ignorance of the great phenomena that are going on about them than the white man who touches on their island for a few hours for water, There is no doubt in my mind that the island was once inhabited by an intelligent race of people, who built the temples and forts of heavy masonry on the high bluffs of the shore of the island, and that, as the land gradually subsided, these bluffs became islands. They stand to-day with a solid wall of stone around them, partly submerged in water.
— J. Borodin describes, in the journal of the Boyal microscopical society, what he believes to be the long-sought pure chlorophyl. He obtains it in a crystalline form, by slow evaporation of an alcoholic solution, though he has not yet been able to isolate the crystals. They are doubly refractive, giving a beautiful green sheen in polarlized light. Their physical properties differ from those of the dark- green crystals of hypochlorine hitherto obtained,
— American zofiloglsts will be Interested to learn what Is to become of the great collections in Cen- tral-American ornithology and entomology amasBcd by Messrs. Salvin and Godman. A recent noie In Nature announces that a part of it is already given to the British museum, and that the rcaC is to follow. One collection, presented on certain conditions not speclfled by Natvre, comprises the entire series of American birds brought together by those genUemen, numbering upwards of twenty thousand specimens, and iUustrating, more than any other collection in existence, the life-biatory and geograplilcal distri- bution of the birds of tropical America. No labor or expense has been spared in the formation of this splendid group of ornithological rarities. The other gift, which is unconditional, comprises a very fins coUectlon of Central- American ColeopCera of lbs families of Cicindclidae and Carabidae. It contain* OBB species, and, moreover, 7,678 examples, of which more than four hundre<I are types of new speclw described in the work entitled 'Biologia Centrali Americana,' now in course of publication by Mcasrs. Salvin and Goduian. To this collection will be ulti- mately added, by gift, the remaining fajnllie* at Coleopleta, with other entomological specimens.
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