57° 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



closely now." A botanical collection made 

 by Paul Lucas, in the reign of Louis XIV, 

 is mentioned by Prof. Bureau as still exist- 

 ing in the Museum of Natural History in 

 Paris. Tournefort was sent by this king on 

 a botanical expedition to the Levant, with 

 very precise instructions — among others, to 

 collect and observe the plants mentioned by 

 the ancients. He formed a complete herba- 

 rium ; and the artist Aubriet, who accom- 

 panied him, brought back a large collection 

 of colored sketches. Both of these are pre- 

 served in the museum. 



Primitive Marital Customs. — The pro- 

 verbial hostility of a man or woman to a 

 mother-in-law may be a survival from a so- 

 cial custom of our primitive ancestors simi- 

 lar to one which exists now among uncivil- 

 ized peoples. This is the quaint and some- 

 what comic point of barbaric etiquette be- 

 tween husbands and their wives' relatives, 

 and vice versa ; they may not look at one 

 another, much less speak, and they even 

 avoid mentioning one another's names. 

 Among the avoidance customs cited by Mr. 

 E. B. Tylor, in a recent essay, is that de- 

 scribed by John Tanner, the adopted Ojibwa, 

 who tells of his being taken by a friendly 

 Assinaboin into his lodge, and seeing how, at 

 his companion's entrance, the old father-in- 

 law and mother-in-law covered their heads 

 with their blankets till their son-in-law got 

 into the compartment reserved for him, where 

 his wife brought him his food. Another 

 comes from Australia. Mr. Howitt relates 

 that he inadvertently told a native to call his 

 mother-in-law, who was passing at some lit- 

 tle distance ; but the black fellow sent the 

 order round by a third party, saying re- 

 proachfully to Mr. Howitt, "You know I 

 could not speak to that old woman." This 

 custom is not a rare one, for Mr. Tylor finds 

 it to be practiced by sixty-six peoples in 

 various regions, or more than one sixth of 

 the peoples of the world, and he points out 

 a relation between it and the customs as to 

 place of residence after marriage. Another 

 odd practice of certain savages is that of 

 naming the parent from the child. Thus 

 when Moffat, the missionary, was in Africa, 

 he was spoken to and of, according to native 

 usage, as Ra-Mary— i. e., father of Mary. 

 Among the Kasias of India, Colonel Yule 



found the same rule ; for instance, there 

 being a boy named Bobon, his father was 

 known as Pabobon. There are above thirty 

 peoples spread over the earth who thus name 

 the father, and, though less often, the 

 mother. Mr. Tylor finds this practice to be 

 closely connected with the custom of the 

 husband residing in his wife's family. The 

 couvade, which has been a favorite subject 

 of ridicule for centuries, consists in the 

 father, on the birth of his child, making a 

 ceremonial pretence of standing in a relation 

 to it similar to that of the mother. He is 

 nursed and taken care of, and performs such 

 rites as fasting and abstaining from certain 

 kinds of food or occupation, lest the new- 

 born should suffer thereby. This custom is 

 known in the four quarters of the globe. 

 How sincerely it is still accepted appears in 

 a story of Mr. Im Thurn, who on a forest 

 journey in British Guiana noticed that one 

 of his Indians refused to help haul the ca- 

 noes, and on inquiry found that the man's 

 objection was that a child must have been 

 born to him at home about this time, and he 

 must not exert himself so as to hurt the in- 

 fant. In the Mediterranean district the cou- 

 vade has prevailed even into modern times. 

 In the Basque country, Zamacolo, in 1818, 

 mentions as but a little time since that the 

 mother used to get up and the father take 

 the child to bed. " Knowing the tenacity of 

 these customs," says Mr. Tylor, " I should 

 not be surprised if traces of couvade might 

 be found in that district still." He accepts 

 the interpretation of Bachonan that the cou- 

 vade was originally an acknowledgment of 

 paternity. 



Ancient Men of the Potomac. — Prof. 

 Otis T. Mason's survey of the archaeology of 

 the Potomac region covers that part of the 

 valley which is situated below the rapids of 

 the several tributary streams that mark the 

 limits of tide-water. In the fresh-water por- 

 tion of the lower Chesapeake drainage — the 

 region between salt water and the cataracts 

 — stone implements are found in the great- 

 est profusion. It is easy to account for this 

 when it is remembered that the country fur- 

 nished abundant natural fruit supply. To 

 one accustomed to exploration among the 

 mounds of the Ohio Valley or in the West 

 Indies, the stone implements are in appear- 



