i 3 8 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The successors of the Manchu conquerors 

 are now reigning in China, and it can hardly 

 be said that any Manchus exist in Asia. 

 Those who serve are treated at the court 

 like slaves, while the powers are very care- 

 ful not to show any lack of respect to the 

 Chinese. The Manchu language, in spite of 

 efforts to give it some literary and political 

 importance, has been thrown into the back- 

 ground, and is hardly more than one of the 

 rude jargons of central Asia. 



The Baskets of Lichtenfels. One of the 



largest basket markets in the world is situ- 

 ated in the little town of Lichtenfels, in the 

 mountains of upper Franconia, Bavaria. The 

 industry was introduced there toward the 

 close of the last century by a citizen who, 

 desiring to take advantage of the fine growth 

 of willow trees in the neighboring valley of 

 the chain, began weaving baskets on a small 

 scale corresponding with his means. The 

 business gradually developed in extent and 

 in variety and artistic character of the de- 

 signs ; the products were sent to the larger 

 markets, and even France was almost exclu- 

 sively supplied from Lichtenfels till the war 

 of 1870, and is still supplied thence to a con- 

 siderable extent. The gradually increasing 

 demands soon made it necessary to procure 

 foreign raw material. The finer varieties of 

 willow reeds had to be imported from Hun- 

 gary and France and from countries beyond 

 the sea. Straw for the finer woven articles 

 was ordered from Spain and Italy, and the 

 palm leaves used for ornamenting the better 

 class of wares from the tropics. In this 

 manner the evolution of the house industry, 

 as it is called, of Lichtenfels proceeded, and 

 has resulted in the employment at this time 

 of about sixteen thousand men, women, and 

 children, who produce every variety of bas- 

 ket from the simplest to the most elegant. 

 Factories, as usually spoken of, are few. The 

 manufacturer delivers the raw material to 

 the people who are to make the baskets at 

 their own home that is, he weighs out for 

 them the willow reeds, colored straw, palm 

 leaves, etc., and gives them the designs ac- 

 cording to which they are to be made, and at 

 a stated time the workers who mostly live 

 in neighboring villages bring their work to 

 the manufacturer and receive their pay. The 

 industry is encouraged through the schools 



of design that have been established and are 

 supported by the state, in which the young 

 people of the neighborhood are educated in 

 all branches of it. 



Fjords, Fjords, and Fohrden. Fjords 

 according to a memoir by Herr P. Dinse, of 

 Berlin, are long, narrow bays or sea inlets, 

 penetrating an elevated or mountainous coast ; 

 their sides slope steeply both above and be- 

 low water, giving a troughlike cross-section, 

 while the longitudinal section shows an ir- 

 regular relief of gentle ridges and shallow 

 troughs. In all true fjords the depth inside 

 is greater than that of the stretch of sea 

 immediately beyond the mouth. There are 

 several varieties of this type. Thus, two 

 fjords entering the coast at an angle may 

 meet/forming a sound separating an island. 

 Again, the bar of the mouth may be slightly 

 elevated so as to become dry land, and a 

 fjord lake or loch results. Minor subdivi- 

 sions include the f jard and scharen types by 

 the Gulf of Bothnia, differing only in the 

 relative frequency of islands and continuous 

 coast and the fohrden type of the low coasts 

 of Denmark. These are entirely different 

 from the inlets of the ria type, which occur 

 on the coasts of Spain, northwestern Ireland, 

 and elsewhere. A ria is a more or less 

 wedge-shaped inlet, gradually widening and 

 uniformly deepening from its head to the sea, 

 showing no trace of an included basin. It 

 is noted, however, that prolonged sedimenta- 

 tion might ultimately convert a fjord into 

 a ria. The distribution of fjords as dis- 

 tinguished from rias is subject to the gen- 

 eral statement that there are no fjords except 

 on the coasts of lands which show signs of 

 recent glacial action. The coasts where they 

 occur are those of Scandinavia, the west 

 of Scotland, northwest of Ireland, Iceland, 

 Greenland, Labrador, and the coast of Maine, 

 the west coast of North America from Alaska 

 to Vancouver Island, the west coast of South 

 America from Chiloe to Cape Horn, Ker- 

 guelen, the antarctic lands, and the southern 

 part of the west coast of the South Island in 

 New Zealand. 



Cave Exploration. Spelaeology is the 

 name given by M. E. A. Martel to the study 

 of caves a study which he regards as of 

 much greater significance than has hitherto 



