Robert Neilson Stephens - "Tales From Bohemia"

Various - "Short Stories of Various Types"

J. Endell Tyler - "Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1"

James Boswell - "Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883

V >> Various >> Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883




These insects seek the light, and are attracted by an artificial one,
describing concentric circles around it and finally falling into it and
being burnt up. Their bodies on falling into the water constitute a food
which is eagerly sought by fishes, and which is made use of by fishermen
as a bait.

But the above is not the only state of Ephemerids, for their entire
existence really lasts a year. Linnaeus has thus summed up the total life
of these little creatures: "The larvae swim in water; and, in becoming
winged insects, have only the shortest kind of joy, for they often
celebrate in a single day their wedding, parturition, and funeral
obsequies." The eggs, in fact, give birth to more or less elongated
larvae, which are always provided with three filaments at the end of
the abdomen, and which breathe the oxygen dissolved in the water by
tracheo-branchiae along the sides of the body. They are carnivorous, and
live on small animal prey. The most recent authors who have studied
them are Mr. Eaton, in England, and Mr. Vayssiere, of the Faculte des
Sciences, at Marseilles.

_A propos_ of the larvae of Ephemera or May-flies, we must speak of one
of the entomological rarities of France, the nature and zoological place
of which it has taken more than a century to demonstrate. Geoffroy, the
old historian of the insects of the vicinity of Paris, was the first to
find in the waters of the Seine a small animal resembling one of the
Daphnids. This animal has six short and slender thoracic legs, which
terminate in a hook and are borne on the under side of the cephalic
shield. This latter is provided above with two slender six-jointed
antennae, two very large faceted eyes at the side, and three ocelli
forming a triangle. The large thoraceo-abdominal shield is hollowed out
behind into two movable valves which cover the first five segments of
the abdomen (Fig. 1). The last four segments, of decreasing breadth,
are retractile beneath the carapax, as is also the broad plume that
terminates them, and which is formed of three short, transparent, and
elegantly ciliated bristles. These are the locomotive organs of the
animal, whose total length, with the segments of the tail expanded, does
not exceed seven to eight millimeters. The animal is found in running
waters, at a depth of from half a meter to a meter and a half. It hides
under stones of all sizes, and, as soon as it is touched, its first care
is to fix itself by the breast to their rough surface, and then to swim
off to a more quiet place. It fastens itself so firmly to the stone that
it is necessary to pass a thin knife-blade under it in order to detach
it.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--LARVA OF MAY FLY. (Magnified 12 times.)]

Geoffroy, because of the two large eyes, and without paying attention to
the ocelli, named this larva the "feather-tailed binocle." C. Dumeril,
in 1876, found it again in pools that formed after rains, and named the
creature (which is of a bluish color passing to red) the "pisciform
binocle." Since then, this larva has been found in the Seine at
Point-du-Jour, Bas-Meudon, and between Epone and Mantes. Latreille,
in 1832, decided it to be a crustacean, and named it _Prosopistoma
foliaceum_. In September, 1868, the animal was found at Toulouse by Dr.
E. Joly in the nearly dry Garonne. Finally, in 1880, Mr. Vayssiere met
with it in abundance in the Rhone, near Avignon.

The abnormal existence of a six-legged crustacean occupied the
attention of naturalists considerably. In 1869, Messrs. N. and E. Joly
demonstrated that the famous "feather-tailed binocle" was the larva of
an insect. They found in its mouth the buccal pieces of the Neuroptera,
and, under the carapax, five pairs of branchial tufts attached to the
segments that are invisible outwardly. Inside the animal were found
tracheae, the digestic tube of an insect, and malpighian canals.
Finally, in June, 1880, Mr. Vayssiere was enabled to establish the fact
definitely that the insect belonged among the Ephemerids. Two of the
larvae that he raised in water became, from yellowish, gradually brown.
Then they crawled up a stone partially out of water, the carapax
gradually split, and the adults readily issued therefrom--the head
first, then the legs, and finally the abdomen. At the same time, the
wings, which were in three folds in the direction of their length,
spread out in their definite form (Fig. 2). The insects finally flew
away to alight at a distance from the water. The wings of the insect,
which are of an iron gray, are covered with a down of fine hairs. The
posterior ones soon disappear.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--MAY-FLY (adult magnified 14 times).]

Perhaps the subimago in this genus of Ephemerids, as in certain others,
is the permanent aerial state of the female.--_La Nature_.

* * * * *

Connecticut is rapidly advancing in the cultivation of oysters. About
90,000 acres are now planted, and thirty steamers and many sailing
vessels are engaged in the trade.

* * * * *




THE COLOR OF WATER.


It is well known that the water of different lakes and rivers differs in
color. The Mediterranean Sea is indigo blue, the ocean sky blue, Lake
Geneva is azure, while the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons and Lake
Constance, in Switzerland, as well as the river Rhine, are chrome green,
and Kloenthaler Lake is grass green.

Tyndall thought that the blue color of water had a similar cause as
the blue color of the air, being blue by reflected light and red by
transmitted light. W. Spring has recently communicated to the Belgian
Academy the results of his investigations upon the color of water.
He proved that perfectly pure water in a tube 10 meters long had a
distinctly blue color, while it ought, according to Tyndall, to look
red. Spring also showed that water in which carbonate of lime, silica,
clay, and salts were suspended in a fine state of division offered a
resistance to the passage of light that was not inconsiderable. Since
the red and violet light of the spectrum are much more feeble than the
yellow, the former will be completely absorbed, while the latter passes
through, producing, with the blue of the water itself, different shades
of green.

* * * * *

There is to be held in Paris this year, from the 1st to the 22d of July,
an insect exhibition, organized by the Central Society of Agriculture
and Insectology. It will include (1) useful insects; (2) their products,
raw, and in the first transformations; (3) apparatus and instruments
used in the preparation of these products; (4) injurious insects and
the various processes for destroying them; (5) everything relating to
insectology.

* * * * *

A catalogue, containing brief notices of many important scientific
papers heretofore published in the SUPPLEMENT, may be had gratis at this
office.

* * * * *




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