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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



could buy tobacco and various useful little 

 things. Newcomers were confidentially ex- 

 horted and admonished on Sunday after- 

 noons by the pastor. Forty-nine men were 

 in the colony during Mr. Flynt's stay. In 

 winter there are more than three hundred. 

 The colonies are believed to be useful in dis- 

 tinguishing the deserving unemployed from 

 the undeserving, and helpful to the former. 



Diffnsion of an Aneient Symbol. The 



swastika a design resembling two Z's, nor- 

 mal or reversed, so arranged as to cross one 

 another is described and studied as " the 

 earliest known symbol " in a paper by Thomas 

 Wilson in the Proceedings of the United States 

 National Museum. It appears in various 

 shapes, derived from the original, and is the 

 parent of various scroll forms and ornaments. 

 Its origin and original bearing or application 

 are lost in the darkness of remote antiquity. 

 It denotes something good, and is an orna- 

 ment. It is found in the far East and the 

 classical East, in all the cities of Troy, in 

 Egypt, Algeria, and Ashantee, in the ancient 

 Grecian countries, in western Europe from 

 the bronze age down, on ancient coins, in 

 prehistoric America, and among the North 

 American Indians. Allied to it are meanders, 

 ogees, and spirals ; and associated with it 

 are various prehistoric objects in both hemi- 

 spheres. In America, the swastika of the 

 mound builders, or of the oldest civilization 

 we know here, is similar in every respect, ex- 

 cept material, to that of the still living Navajo 

 and Pueblo Indians. The two curious facts 

 are emphasized that the swastika had an 

 existence in America prior to any historic 

 knowledge we have of communication be- 

 tween the two hemispheres ; and that it is 

 continued in America, and used at the pres- 

 ent day, while the knowledge of it has long 

 since died out in Europe. Mr. Wilson's 

 chief study is to find how this symbol was 

 carried from one region to another. While 

 the theory that like features of life originate 

 naturally at like stages in the development 

 of different peoples, and the one that they 

 are carried by migrating hordes, may both be 

 true to a certain extent, neither should be 

 insisted upon as exclusive. Mr. Wilson 

 maintains that the swastika was carried, as 

 Bome other customs may have been, by teach- 

 ing, or by the transmission of the idea from 



one country to another much in the same 

 way as Greek art and architecture have come 

 down to us rather than by independent in- 

 vention or by migration of peoples. 



Richard Haklnyt. The Hakluyt Society 

 has recently celebrated in London the fiftieth 

 anniversary of its work in publishing vol- 

 umes, usually containing the texts of travelers 

 and voyagers in all parts of the world, which 

 were previously not known to the public. 

 It is named. Sir Clements Markham says, 

 after Richard Hakluyt, who was bom in 

 1553, acquired a love of geography from an 

 uncle of the same name, and assiduously 

 sought and read every narrative of adven- 

 ture he could procure, mastering six foreign 

 languages in order to be able to do so. He 

 strove to remedy the ignorance of seamen 

 of the scientific branch of their profession, 

 and to supply the absence of records for 

 want of which important voyages and travels 

 were allowed to -fall into oblivion, with a 

 measure of success that has given him rank 

 among the benefactors of their country. He 

 was irrepressible in seeking new informa- 

 tion. He rode two hundred miles to have 

 an interview with the last survivor of Master 

 Hose's Expedition to America in 1536. He 

 saved numerous journals and narratives from 

 destruction, and the deeds they record from 

 oblivion. His work gave a stimulus to colo- 

 nial and narrative enterprise, and inspired 

 literature. Shakespeare owed much to Prin- 

 cipal Navigators, his chief book. As the 

 years passed on, he, according to his own 

 quaint language, continued " to wade still 

 further and further in the sweat studie of 

 the historic of cosmographie," and achieved 

 his great task, which was " to incorporate 

 into one body the torn and scattered limbs 

 of our ancient and late navigations by sea." 

 He declared " geography and chronology to 

 be the sun and moon, the right eye and the 

 left, of all history." When he died, Novem- 

 ber 23, 1616, he was Archdeacon of West- 

 minster, and had reached his sixty-fourth 

 year. 



Prlmitiye Traveling. Of the motives 

 and lengths of the journeys of primitive man 

 Mr. 0. T. Mason observes, in his monograph 

 on Primitive Travel and Transportation, that 

 birds of passage made formerly longer jour- 



