UNIVERSITY COURIER.
6.
Dr. Gray estimates that there are ten thousand species of flowering plants in North America, north of Mexico.
In an article in the Kansas City Review some new light is thrown on the subject of the wild horse of America. It has been generally supposed that the horse was introduced into America by the Spaniards. The article goes to show that drawings made by Cabot prior to 1546-47, while exploring the rivers La Plata and Parana, have the horse pictured with the other wild animals of the plains.
The brain of Gambetta is deposited in the laboratory of the school of higher studies, and will be described by M. Mathias Duval of the society of mutual autopsy, to which M. Gambetta also belonged
According to L. Simonin in the year 2200 A.D. the centre of population of North America will agree with the centre of surface. When the year arrives it will be greeted by 1,600,000,000 souls in the United States, more than the present estimated population of the world.
Mr. Charles A. Townsend called attention in the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia to a number of rare albino birds among which was mentioned the red-tailed hawk. Of this bird the Kansas State University contains a very handsome albino specimen.
LAUGHTER IN LOWER ANIMALS:-In a discussion upon specimens of the orang and chimpanzee, M. Dally remarks that young negroes are very gay and frolicsome, but no one has ever seen a negro aged over thirty or forty years show gaiety,-in which respect there is a strong resemblance between them and the anthropoids, the latter being frolicsome in youth and morose when adult. This statement is startling to persons familiar with negroes in America, who at all ages are noticeably light-hearted and merry. Nothing is more common here than the broad grin and loud laughter of the white-headed and coal-black negro. Indeed, the contrast between the inveterate and irrational merriment of the blacks, and the prevailing anxious, if not sad, expression of our adult white population, would present an argument regarding their relative inferiority in precise opposition to that urged by M. Dally.(Bull. soc. anthrop. Paris.)
NORMAL.
On the westward slope of a sunny prairie, some fifteen miles within the border of the Indian Territory, dwell all that is now left of a once pround nation.
With straight dark hair and piercing eye; broad of shoulder and lithe of limb, the Modoc Warrior a monarch stands, though in the pales of civilization.
Ten years ago he roamed the wilds of Oregon free as the mountain air. To-day a prisoner of war, by honest toil, he makes the earth bring forth.
It is the old, old story again repeated. The white men wanted his lands, and tempted the Indians with gold and trinkets. In 71 a treaty was made, the terms of which, the Modocs but vaguely understood; and when called upon to vacate their ancestral hunting grounds, washed by the rippling waves of Lake Klamath, they refused to go.
But, what cared the white man for this? Too long had he followed the fading race to be stopped by a hundred warriors. Law and might were on his side. and
clutching fast his parchment treaty he backed his claim by force of arms. Bloodshed was the result. The responsibility of which, each party has since tried to lay at the feet of his adversary. Be this as it may, in the spring
of 73 driven into the volcanic caverns of the Lava Beds, and surrounded by soldiers the Modoes consented to meet Gen. Canby in council. Three from each party met in parley, but the Indians becoming enraged at the terms of peace offered, savagely violated the truce, murdered Canby and Thomas, and left Meacham on the field for dead.
War was renewed. A nation of fifty millions arrayed against a nation two hundred strong. But let us lightly pass the ghastly details. Before the tribe was vanquished; before those determined braves gave up the soil made sacred by memory's tender ties, more soldiers had fallen than the entire number of individuals in the Modoc nation. And it was poor revenge which made Captain Jack and three of his valiant follows step from the scaffold into eternity.
The remnant of the tribe was then removed to the Indian Territory where they now dwell.
Discouraged, despondent, sick at heart, and weary with hardships, many fell victims to disease. Strangers in a strange land, they came leaving with them the superstitions, the religious rites, and the haughty pride of their ancestors.
When a son was born the happy father fasted for the space of five days; for a daughter he did penance two days longer. After the fast a feast was spread and all partook in the festivities.
They mourned their dead for seven days. One long, monotonous wail in which the virtues of the departed were recounted. The nearest and dearest of the deceased endured the ordeal of sweating. Wrapped in blankets he lay in an earth covered cave whose bottom had been paved with heated rocks, lightly spread o'er with sticks and straw. In this living tomb five days and nights he sweat, until from very weakness his griefs and sorrows had vanished.
Their dead were not buried, but on a large flat rock, by a peaceful brook surrounded by majestic elms, the body, with the warrior's steed and arms was burned. Thirty bodies have passed from the smoke of that funeral pile to the Hunting Grounds above.
How different now! Visit with me that cluster of log built houses, skirted on the north by well fenced fields of Indian corn. Westward across a grassy dell, and by a crystal spring a neat, white school house invites the dusky youth; while oft within those walls ascends the fervent, but simple worship of a once savage people.
They now dress in the garb of civilization. Polygamy has been discarded, many have embraced Christianity, and forty out of the ninety-five-now left can read. Two years ago, one peaceful Sabbath day I saw thirty of the tribe unite with the Society of Friends in church fellowship. Their progress has been truly wonderful. They have far out-stripped the neighboring tribes. And now let us look at the secret of all this.
They came not as other tribes came -pensioners, or with vast estates held in trust, but as prisoners of war; and as such instead of being pampered, and provided for, they have been taught to work, to depend upon their own exertions. Government employs a farmer to teach them how to till the soil. Land, in parcels, has