POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



85: 



To end of first joint of third finger 7 3 ctni. 



" " " " " little " 71 ctm. 



" " fourth " 6 4 ctm. 



" " second " " ' " 9-8 ctm. 



The last two are the anchylosed phalanges 

 mentioned above. The subject under discus- 

 sion has one brother similarly affected, whose 

 webs are decidedly larger than in the present 

 instance. This brother has but one stiff 

 joint on each hand. The father has hands 

 somewhat webbed. A second brother has no 

 webs, nor has the mother, nor the paternal 

 or maternal grandparents. 



How Stone Arrowheads were Made. 



The guiding principle of Mr. F. H. Cushing's 

 fruitful researches in anthropology has been 

 " Put yourself in his place." When he 

 wished to learn how stone arrowheads were 

 made he became an arrow-maker himself. 

 As a result of his labors and researches he 

 was able to tell, in his address to the Anthro- 

 pological Section of the American Associa- 

 tion at Springfield, how primitive men made 

 their arrows. They first sought the material, 

 he said, mined it arduously from buried 

 ledges, with fire, mauls, and skids, or prefer- 

 ably sought it in banks of pebbles, digging 

 such as were fit freshly from the soil, if pos- 

 sible, and at once blocking out from them 

 blanks for their blades by splitting the 

 pebbles into suitable spalls. This was done 

 by holding the pebbles edgewise on a hard 

 base, and hitting them sharply and almost 

 directly on the peripheries, but with a one- 

 sided twist or turn of the maul or battering 

 stone. At each deft stroke of the maul a 

 spall was struck off sometimes twenty from 

 a single cobble or block of moderate size. 

 These were, with almost incredible rapidity, 

 trimmed to the leaf-shaped basis of all primi- 

 tive chipped tools, by knapping them with 

 a horn, bone, or very soft, tough, granular 

 stone hammer, mounted in a light handle. 

 For this the spall was placed flatwise on the 

 knee, or on a padded hammer-stone, so 

 called, and held down by the base of the 

 thumb of one hand, and rapidly struck along 

 the edge transversely and obliquely to its 

 axis, lengthwise, with the outwardly twist- 

 ing kind of blows used in the splitting. 

 The blanks thus formed were then carried 

 "home for leisurely or opportune finishing; 

 and carefully buried in damp soil, not to 

 vol. xlvii. 70 



hide them, as has boon usually Bupposed, 

 but to keep them even-tempered, uniformlj 

 saturated or full of sap and life, as these 

 ancients thought whence the so-called 

 'caches" of numerous leaf shaped blades 

 which are now and then found throughout 

 old Indian ranges. To show that making 

 arrowheads is not such a slow and laborious 

 process as many have supposed Mr. Cushing 

 stated that he had succeeded from the time 

 he found a suitable pebble of fine grained, 

 ringing, cold and fresh quartzite, in making 

 seven finished knife and arrow blades in ex- 

 actly thirty-eight minutes ; and he had often 

 made from obsidian or glass a very small 

 and delicate arrow point the most easily 

 made in less than two minutes. 



Chemistry advanced by the Industries. 



In showing how pure science had been pro- 

 moted by industrial operations and require- 

 ments, which was the theme of his vice- 

 presidential address before the American 

 Association, Mr. William McMurtrie cited an 

 interesting example from Hoffmann, who 

 says, "It is not generally known that the 

 theory of substitution owes its source to a 

 soiree in the Tuileries." Dumas had been 

 called upon by his father-in-law, Alexandre 

 Brongniart, who was director of the Sevres 

 porcelain works, and, as Hoffmann says, in a 

 measure a member of the royal household, 

 to examine into the cause of the irritating 

 vapors from candles burned in the ballroom, 

 a demand to which Dumas readily acceded, 

 because he had already done some work 

 upon the examination of wax which could 

 not be bleached and was therefore unmer- 

 chantable. He was readily led to the con- 

 clusion that the candles used in the palace 

 had been made with wax that had been 

 bleached with chlorine, and that the vapors 

 were hydrochloric acid generated in the 

 burning of the candles. But examination of 

 the wax of the candles showed that the 

 quantity of chlorine found was greater than 

 could be accounted by for its presence as a 

 mechanical impurity, and from it Dumas was 

 led to experiments which showed that many 

 organic substances when heated with chlo- 

 rine have the power to fix it, and from these 

 results he was in turn led to the further 

 generalization concerning the law of substi- 

 tution. It was an incident similar to that 



