Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 by Various
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Various >> Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882
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10 Produced by Olaf Voss, Don Kretz, Juliet Sutherland,
Charles Franks and the DP Team
[Illustration]
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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.
[Illustration: METAMORPHOSIS OF DEER'S ANTLERS.--FIRST STAGE.]
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_.
[Illustration: METAMORPHOSIS OF DEER'S ANTLERS.--SECOND STAGE.]
[Illustration]
* * * * *
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.
Turning now to Asia, we have first one of the best known of the large
man-like apes--the orang-outang, found only in the two large islands,
Borneo and Sumatra. The name is Malay, signifying "man of the woods,"
and it should be pronounced σrang-σotan, the accent being on the first
syllable of both words. It is a very curious circumstance that, whereas
the gorilla and chimpanzee are both black, like the negroes of the same
country, the orang-outang is red or reddish brown, closely resembling
the color of the Malays and Dyaks who live in the Bornean forests.
Though very large and powerful, it is a harmless creature, feeding on
fruit, and never attacking any other animal except in self-defense. A
full-grown male orang-outang is rather more than four feet high, but
with a body as large as that of a stout man, and with enormously long
and powerful arms.
Another group of true apes inhabit Asia and the larger Asiatic islands,
and are in some respects the most remarkable of the whole family. These
are the Gibbons, or long-armed apes, which are generally of small size
and of a gentle disposition, but possessing the most wonderful agility.
In these creatures the arms are as long as the body and legs together,
and are so powerful that a gibbon will hang for hours suspended from
a branch, or swing to and fro and then throw itself a great distance
through the air. The arms, in fact, completely take the place of the
legs for traveling. Instead of jumping from bough to bough and running
on the branches, like other apes and monkeys, the gibbons move along
while hanging suspended in the air, stretching their arms from bough to
bough, and thus going hand over hand as a very active sailor will climb
along a rope. The strength of their arms is, however, so prodigious,
and their hold so sure, that they often loose one hand before they have
caught a bough with the other, thus seeming almost to fly through the
air by a series of swinging leaps; and they travel among the network of
interlacing boughs a hundred feet above the earth with as much ease and
certainty as we walk or run upon level ground, and with even greater
speed. These little animals scarcely ever come down to the ground of
their own accord; but when obliged to do so they run along almost erect,
with their long arms swinging round and round, as if trying to find some
tree or other object to climb upon. They are the only apes who naturally
walk without using their hands as well as their feet; but this does not
make them more like men, for it is evident that the attitude is not an
easy one, and is only adopted because the arms are habitually used to
swing by, and are therefore naturally held upward, instead of downward,
as they must be when walking on them.
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