country may be gathered from a consideration of the changes and extensions pertaining to the Central Office. The spring of last year saw the commencement of the preparations, and at that time the instrument room located on the third floor of the new post office building in St. Martin's-le-Grand contained 720 sets of apparatus, working 685 wires or circuits. These communicated with 230 provincial towns and 424 offices in the metropolitan district. In addition to these there were 49 pneumatic tubes working between the Central Office and several of the adjacent busy offices. The sets of apparatus included 160 single-needle instruments, 425 Morse sounder and printing instruments (of which 188 were worked on the duplex system), 80 sets of Wheatstone automatic fast speed apparatus (these also including 27 on the duplex system), 16 sets of quadruplex apparatus (sending two messages each way simultaneously upon a single wire), and 4 Wheatstone A B C instruments. To work these a staff of 1,730 clerks was employed at various hours of the day and night, the tubes being worked by a staff of 34 attendants.

Within the past eighteen months 172 new wires have been erected, 48 of them being single-needle circuits, 122 Morse sounder or printer circuits, and 2 Wheatstone automatic circuits; 95 provincial towns and 77 metropolitan offices are involved in these extensions. Besides these, many existing circuits have been duplexed, or their carrying capacity in some other way increased; so that at the present time there are altogether 908 sets of apparatus, of which 151 are single-needles, 591 Morse sounders and printers (307, or more than half of them, being duplexed), 57 Wheatstone automatic instruments (all of them duplexed), 18 quadruplex instruments, and 4 Wheatstone A B C instruments. Numerous additions have also been made to the number of pneumatic tubes. The instrument-room as it existed last year was

414 words in a minute, while an iron wire can only carry 345 words.

A second system to the north, known as the west coast route, is also furnished with eighteen wires, the road passing through Aylesbury, Weedon, Stafford, Nantwich, Preston, &c.

Twenty wires now leave London by what is called the Bristol Road Line, passing through Slough, Reading, Marlborough, Chippenham, and Bristol, and thence on to South Wales and the West of England.

Another system leaves London by the South Western Railway, passing along the line to Salisbury, where it "takes the road," and supplies Exeter, Plymouth, Penzance, The Channel Islands, &c. Similar but smaller extensions have been made in the South and SouthEastern divisions, but it is characteristic of the telegraph wires that they all pass through London in underground pipes. Some of them are carried as far as Barnet, others beyond Uxbridge, and others to Hounslow before they "take the open." Such are a few of the details concerning the Central Office, and similar work has been involved elsewhere, altogether, upwards of 20,000 miles of wires having been added to those already existing. It remains to be seen whether the anticipa tion of an increase of thirty per cent. on the number of messages (24,000,000) annually transmitted will be realised or exceeded.

HUMAN REMAINS FOUND NEAR MEXICO.

BY MARIANO DE LA BARCENA.

ever, contains a series of long tables, which furnish together 2,885 ft. of desk-space. A new, or fourth, floor has been added, and its single room contains 1,400 ft. of instrument-tables, which are burdened already with 468 sets of apparatus working to the offices in the metropolitan district. The staff has been largely increased, and at the present time numbers nearly two thousand.

The large central hall, on the ground floor of the building, has been appropriated for the pneumatic tubes, the removal of which from the instrument-room increases the possible accommodation there very considerably.

The new wires which have been erected have been, in the main, carried along the high roads, comparatively few extensions having been made on the various railway routes. Road" wires now span the country in all directions, the recent additions including eighteen wires to the north, pursuing a path known as the east coast route, through Biggleswade, Baldock, Peterborough, Doncaster, Newcastle, &c. One of these wires working to Newcastle is of hard-drawn copper, the cost of which, on account of its thinness, is about the same as that of an iron wire, while the working capacity is considerably higher. Mr. Preece, in a paper read at the recent meeting of the British Association, ventured the opinion that copper responds more readily to rapid changes of electric currents than iron. He suggested that the magnetic susceptibility of the iron is the cause of this, the magnetism of the iron acting as a kind of drag on the currents. The paragraph in last week's "Miscellanea " reveals that the copper wire is capable of transmitting

the small hill known as "Peñon de los Baños," some four kilomètres east of the City of Mexico. The excavations were made with the object of quarrying building stone for the Military Shooting School, which is being constructed near the Peñon and under the supervision of Colonel Don Adolfo Obregon. This gentleman, at the beginning of January, was informed that among the rocks loosened by the dynamite some bones were to be found, and he accordingly collected and delivered them to the Minister of Public Works, Don Carlos Pacheco, who appointed the writer to make a study of them. The preliminary examination being made, I presented them to the Mexican Society of Natural History, giving at the same time public notice of so important a discovery.

Some days afterwards I explored the formation in which the bones were found, continuing my studies with the co-operation of Don Antonio del Castillo, professor of geology, whom I invited to take part in my investigations; both making up a report which has lately been published in Mexico.

The human remains are firmly imbedded in a rock formed of silicified calcareous tufa, very hard and of a brownish-grey colour. The cranium, with the lower and upper maxillæ and fragments of the collar-bone, vertebræ, ribs and bones from the upper and lower limbs are exposed. The bones lie in disorder, proving that the rock in which the skeleton was found suffered an upheaval before consolidation, a circumstance which an examination of the ground further verifies. bones present a yellowish appearance, and the characteristic aspects of fossilisation, it being noteworthy that

The

they are not coated with layers of the calcareous rock as is observed in the recent deposits, but are firmly imbedded in the stone, which also fills the cells of the tissue.

Several distinct formations and rocks are seen in the locality where the bones were found; towards the centre rises the small hill, "del Penon," consisting of volcanic porphyries; on the base to the north there appear first a clearly recent formation made up of vegetable earth, marl, and ceramical remains, which in the upper part are modern, and in the lower belong to the Aztec ceramics. Under this recent formation are the calcareous layers in which the human remains were found.

These layers crop out with a rise toward the northern boundary, forming the end of an esplanade which surrounds the hill, and is three mètres above the actual level of the waters of Lake Tezcoco. The layer of hardened rock does not extend with regularity the whole distance from the before-mentioned edge to the foot of the hill, some intervening spaces occurring in which this rock does not appear, the resulting hollows being filled with recent ground. This circumstance, as well as the appearance of the layers of calcareous tufa, prove that this rock was upheaved after the deposit of the human bones, by the igneous rocks which crop out in the neighbourhood of the hill, forming dykes. This upheaval is also verified by the numerous small veins which are found in different directions on the ground.

In order to clearly establish the age which the deposit of the human bones might have, the best scientific method would be to find some animal fossil remains in the same formation which would distinctly mark the age of the layers of that calcareous rock; but until now, notwithstanding the many searches made, it has not yet been possible to find any traces of extinct animals; neither has there been found any vestige of ceramics or other remains that might indicate that these rocks were clearly modern, as among them the only things found were the human bones, roots converted into menilite, and some small indeterminable lacustrine shells formed by the same calcareous substance. These shells belong to genera which have lived in Quaternary as well as present waters, it having been impossible to determine their species on account of the bad state of preservation in which they were found.

In the region to the south of the hill more modern calcareous rocks are seen, and thicker deposits of recent ground with remains of Aztec ceramics.

Not being, therefore, able to utilise the paleontological data for determining the age of these calcareous layers, we must fall back on the inspection of the ground.

Two facts seem at once to reveal that, even supposing the formation to belong to the present age, it must be of remote antiquity. These facts are: the elevation of the ground above the actual level of the Lake of Tezcoco, and the remarkable hardness of the rock in which the bones are found, different from the other calcareous rocks that contain remains of ceramics or roots of plants clearly modern. The upheaval of the lacustrine layers which contain the human remains might have taken place through the diminution and retirement of the waters of the lake, or by the upheaval of volcanic rocks.

In the first case it could have been occasioned either by a violent filtration of the water, or a slow evaporation; but nowhere in the valley of Mexico are any traces to be found of a crack or opening through which the waters could have escaped, and which ought to appear outside of the present level of the lake, as, if it were below, all the water would have disappeared. If the

lowering of level was due to evaporation, a theory which would be more admissible, because from the time of the conquest of Mexico to the present the submerged surfaces have notably diminished, the time necessary to have elapsed in order that the level of the lake might fall three mètres to its present one must have been very long. What is most probable is, that the upheaval is due to volcanic action; for, although until now no basalt has been discovered immediately underneath the place occupied by the hardened layers, yet dykes of that rock are to be seen in different directions at the foot of the hill, and even the volcanic masses which constitute it are found upheaved and inclined, demonstrating the succession of geological phenomena in that vicinity.

Let us now trace the origin of the silicified calcareous rock in which the bones were found, and which is different from the majority of the lacustrine rocks which occupy the valley of Mexico, these latter being, for the most part, thick and extensive layers of pumice, tufas, marls, volcanic ashes, clays, and alluvions.

In order to proceed with more certainty in this investigation, I compared the calcareous rock in question with those which resembled it most from other parts of Mexico, and found it could only be considered similar to those which are clearly of a hydrothermal origin.

The hot-water spring which exists in the eastern part of the hill del Peñon forms sediments somewhat similar to the silicified calcareous tufa; but these are on a small scale, and their formation is so slow as to preclude the belief that this spring could have filled all the immediate surroundings of the hill with deposits of such magnitude. What is most probable is, that in remote times there were great emissions of mineral thermal waters through different fissures, and in several directions, whose appearance was simultaneous with the basaltic masses that form dykes at the foot of the hill, as in the faces of the rocks sedimentations similar to the referred ones are perceived, there being, furthermore, many small veins which cut through the basaltic masses and even the calcareous rock.

By this it is seen that a series of vocanic phenomena must have taken place in that spot, beginning before the human remains were deposited, and which further continued when the material which received them was but little consolidated.

The succession of these phenomena took place, without doubt, in the following way :

:

1. Emission of thermal waters and appearance of basaltic rocks, upheaving the masses that formed the hill, These waters mixed with those of the lake which surrounded the hill and extended over a large area of the valley of Mexico; the calcareous deposits gradually accumulated around the hill, and being still soft the human corpse was deposited upon them.

2. When the bones were already imbedded in the lacustrine deposit there came a new volcanic upheaval which raised this deposit, as the higher level which it now occupies proves, and the disorder in which the bones of the skeleton appear.

3. In the gaps which were left after this upheaval, modern lacustrine deposits were formed, which increase even at the present time.

It is to be remarked that in other parts of the valley of Mexico in connection with the Lake of Tezcoco, isolated deposits of this silicified calcareous rock are seen, showing that the volcanic upheaval extended over a large surface, and that the thermal waters appeared several times. One of these deposits is to be found at the height of two mètres above the present ground among rocks of the hill del Tepeyac, north of the City of Mexico.

The geological circumstances of the event once determined, and not withstanding that the paleontological data are wanting that might mark with precision the relative age of that deposit, it is to be believed that it must be of remote antiquity, considering the circumstances which the mentioned rocks present, as well as the geological phenomena which have there taken place and of which no notice is given in the hieroglyphics or traditions of the ancient Mexicans.

These are, at present, all the data I can give relative to the man del Peñon. On my return to Mexico I will continue with a further investigation of the ground where the discovery was made, and will communicate anything new that may be found, in order to determine the anthropological importance which these human remains may have.

FIRST STAR LESSONS.

BY RICHARD A. PROCTOR.

HE constellations included in the twenty-four maps

This consideration alone is enough to believe that the man of the Peñon is pre-historic. The odontological characteristics indicate that this man belonged to an unmixed race, the teeth being set with regularity and corresponding perfectly the upper with the lower. They present the peculiarity besides, that the canine teeth are not conical, but have the same shape as the incisors; a peculiarity which has been observed in other teeth found in very ancient graves of the Toltecs.

The size and shape of the bones of the limbs are those corresponding to a man of ordinary stature, and from the appearance of the teeth the man must have been about forty years old.

The greater part of the cranium having been destroyed, it was not possible to determine its diameters and thus classify it. The stratigraphical and lithological characteristics of the ground seem to indicate that the formation belongs to the upper Quaternary, or at least to the base of the present geological age.

It may as well be remarked that at the foot of the steep slope of the Tepeyac hill, near the place where the calcareous sediments are to be seen among the rocks of the hill, as was previously mentioned, some excavations were made, and Professor Don Antonio del Castillo found various bones of Quaternary animals enveloped in a calcareous rock similar to that of the Peñon. The distance between this hill and the Tepeyac is nearly three miles. The excavations continue at the foot of the hill del Peñon, with the object of quarrying building stone, and this will allow in the course of time some other data to be discovered which will clearly mark the geological age of the event; a tooth of a mastodon or an object of the present age would at once be the landmark assigning it a fixed page in the history of the earth. The authenticity of the fossil is not only determined by the report of Señor Obregon and the identity of the rock which contains the remains with the blocks that are being at present quarried at the foot of the hill, but I, myself, have determined this authenticity, having found part of the human remains still imbedded in the ground rock.

I will conclude by mentioning other facts that indicate the antiquity of man in the valley of Mexico. Twelve years ago, in executing some works for the drainage of the valley, in the direction of Tequisquiac, numerous deposits were discovered belonging to Quaternary animals, such as elephants, mastodons, glyptodons, &c., and among one of these deposits a fossil bone was found carved by human hand and imitating an animal's head. Unfortunately no care was taken to determine if it was found simultaneously with the bones of the Quaternary animals. The appearance of the carved bone, and of the cuts and incisions which it has, denote a remarkable antiquity, and it has characteristics of fossilisation. Two years ago I discovered some remains of ancient ceramics in the pumice tufa which is under the basaltic lava formation found in the south-eastern part of the valley of Mexico; the lava occupies a large area, and in some points its thickness is over two mètres. No tradition makes any mention of this volcanic cataclysm before the existence of man in the valley of Mexico.

Ursa Major, the Greater
Bear (a, ẞ, the Pointers).

Canes Venatici, the Hunting
Dogs (a, Cor Caroli).
9. Coma Berenices,
Berenice's Hair.

Queen

22. Cancer, the Crab (the cluster is the Beehive).

23. Leo, the Lion (a, Regulus). 24. Virgo, the Virgin (a, Spica)25. Libra, the Scales. the 26. Ophiuchus,

Serpent

Holder. 27. Aquila, the Eagle (a, Altair). 28. Delphinus, the Dolphin. 29. Aquarius, the Water Carrier. 30. Pisces. the Fishes.

31. Cetus, the Sea Monster (0, Mira, remarkable riable).

THE

ROPE RAILWAY AT GENOA.*

HE construction of a rope railway on the Agudio system, at Genoa, from Balzaneto to the Madona della Guardia, has been sanctioned by the Minister of Public Works. One of the most important features in this scheme, and in which it differs from the line now in operation, on the Agudio plan, from Turin to the Superga, is that no stationary engine will be quired, as Mr. Agudio, the engineer, intends utilising the power of the same locomotive that will be employed for bringing the train from Balzaneto to the foot of the incline to the Sanctuary, a vertical height of 700 mètres (2,296 feet). This power will be transmitted, as is the case with the Superga line, by an endless wire rope, driven at a high speed, to a specially-constructed apparatus, or "locomotore," which receives the energy thus conveyed to it, and utilises it for the direct haulage of the train. In this way, one of the principal drawbacks in the application of this system will be avoided, as the traffic on such lines is very variable, and the expense of keeping a stationary engine of at least 250 horse-power forms a serious item in the working expenses, and especially so on week-days or during the winter months, when the traffic must be small. The locomotive, which will weigh about twenty-six tons, will, after having brought the train from Genoa to the foot of the incline, be disconnected, and taken on to a siding, where, by a suitable arrangement, it will be lifted off the rails, and its driving-wheels will, bear on and be supported by other wheels revolving in fixed bearings placed below the level of the rails. The motion of the driving-wheels of the engine will be thus communicated to the wheels below, which, being connected by suitable gearing with the pullies for driving the rope, will thus transmit the energy developed by the locomotive to the "locomotore," or driving-car attached to the train, and use it for hauling up the train.

Under these conditions, the locomotive will, whilst working as a fixed engine, no longer have a large proportion of its power absorbed in drawing its own dead weight, and, therefore, if only 150 horse-power are utilised whilst drawing the train, consisting of three passenger carriages, containing 150 persons, its useful power will easily be increased to 250 horse-power when it no longer has a dead weight of twenty-six tons to drag.

HE origin of sacrifice, human and otherwise, is lost

THE

in the dim obscurity of the past. When first we hear of it in connection with the sacrificial acts of Cain and Abel it is spoken of as a familiar thing, a matter of course, and its previous enactment or existence is taken for granted. It was subsequently practised as a part of the ceremonial observance or law of the Jews, and other primitive or pagan worships, and it is now, as every one knows, the mainstay and corner-stone of the Greek, Roman, and other Christian denominations or rituals. That human beings were formerly sacrificed to appease the

anger of some offended god, or remove such diseases as leprosy, small-pox, epilepsy, &c., is tolerably certain. They were also sacrificed for the purpose of staying the ravages of the plague, enabling their votaries to over

* Society of Arts Journal,

come their enemies in battle, and bring back fertility to their exhausted fields or flocks.* It would not, indeed, be easy to define the conditions under which they were not resorted to at one time or another by different tribes or peoples, and the whole subject is learnedly discussed in the "Victima Humana" of Jacob Gensius, of Groninghen, to which I am indebted for some of the illustrations recorded below. It is certain from this and other sources that the enforced or voluntary live-burial of human beings formed no inconsiderable part of these

cruel rites.

That interruption to the true course of conjugal love that is caused by the death of the husband was probably the first cause of these immolations. The bereaved wife could not or would not survive her husband. The family crone or the family priest was at hand to encourage her in the practice of this laudable vow or wish; and Pomponius Mela expressly tells us that the wives of the polygamous Scythians contended amongst themselves as to which of them should first be buried along with her lord and master. Herodotus and Lucian are equally explicit in their ascription of a similar spirit of contention to the wives of the Thracians and Thrausians; and it is now generally understood that the original idea of saté was simply that of sending a favourite wife to keep company with her husband after death. When the ancient Scythians buried a king-says Mr. Wheelertthey strangled one of his concubines and buried her with him, together with his cup-bearer, groom, &c. Amongst the Thracians there existed a still more significant custom. Every Thracian had several wives, and whenever a man died a sharp contest ensued between his wives as to which of them he loved the best. She who by her vows or wailings enlisted the largest amount of sympathy or support from the assembled crowd of courtiers won the coveted prize, and marched exultingly to her horrid doom.

Peter Martyr who had special opportunities of knowing the facts-tells us that the ancient Americans buried the living babe in the same grave with its dead mother; and Saxo Grammaticus informs us that an acquaintance of his, one Asmundus, had himself shut up in the tomb that covered the remains of his friend Avitus. Similar stories are told by travellers of the struggles that took place for this privilege among the retainers of certain African kings. The main incident of the play of "The Illustrious Stranger" turns upon an episode of this kind; and it is, I fear, pretty certain that similar scenes may still be witnessed at the Court of Dahomey and elsewhere in the interior of that dark continent. Many savage peoples also buried their captive enemies alive, especially so if they had previously lost several

Another and, I believe, an erroneous motive has been assigned by Mr. John Morley for the employment of this practice among savages. Alluding to the treatment of Sir Stafford Northcote by Lord Salisbury, he is reported in the Standard of July 14th last, to have said that, "when it was conceived by these savages that their old people had lived long enough, or, if they had the indelicacy not to recognise this fact themselves, and refused to make a choice between strangulation and being buried alive, then, without further ceremony, the tribe took the matter into their own hands" and buried their recalcitrant old kinsfolk alive. They did no such thing, Mr. Morley. They were not such fools as you take them to be, and such an exhibition of disinterestedness, decency, or humanity would be scouted by your Fuegian, Figian, or other "aboriginal" savage of that type. They would eat them instead; and I am not sure that civilisation has yet hit upon any more economic expedient for disposing of the dead, or more sanitary mode of sepulture than

this is.

"The History of India from the Earliest Period,” vol. i. pp. 69-70. See also Ibid, vol. iii. pp. 89-91, in the same direction,