8 io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the desired fineness. This tedious and laborious method has 

 been practiced without improvement from time immemorial, and 

 in some of the arts the Zunians have actually retrograded." * 



The above is a faithful description of one of the pueblan mills ; 

 I observed a great many of them at Zuni, and elsewhere have said 

 that I " saw standing behind one of the stone slabs where they 

 grind their corn, a pretty Zuni girl, not a day over a year old, and 

 as naked as the hour she was born, with the stone grinder in her 

 hands, playfully showing her mother, who watched her with no lit- 

 tle pride in her face, how to grind the corn. The picture was a 

 charming one, and if the expressions of all could have been caught 

 at the proper moment, what a study it would have made ! " f 



The tiers of houses at Zuili, in common with a number of the 

 other New Mexican and Arizonian pueblos, are clustered about 

 two open squares or public plazas of no very great size, a por- 

 tion of one of them being used as a graveyard in front of the 

 abandoned mission church in Zuni. In Fig. 5 of the present 

 article I give the court at Laguna Pueblo of New Mexico, which 

 is there kept clean and neat. This picture well shows the ar- 

 rangement and relation to each other of these conglomerate 

 homes. In this engraving the annual " corn-dance " of the La- 

 gunas is being performed a very interesting ceremony. 



Thus in the present account I have passed briefly in review 

 the study of the homes which the American Indians build for 

 themselves in these days. The subject could easily be enlarged 

 upon, and, indeed, treated in detail, would fill three or four ample 

 volumes. My labor, however, will have been well repaid should 

 it be the means of inciting the student in anthropology, with a 

 knowledge of the present literature of the subject, to broaden the 

 field by published accounts of his or her own observations. Much 

 yet remains to be carefully studied and compared, much that is 

 yet obscure or totally unknown to science. It must be done in 

 the near future, for already many of the facts are rapidly fading 

 upon the unturned pages of aboriginal American history. 



The forests of Chaga, the temperate zone of Mount Kilimandjaro, Africa, as 

 described by Dr. W. L. Abbott, have a most curious appearance. The trees, al- 

 though often of very thick trunks, are not tall but somewhat stunted. The 

 trunks and larger branches are completely covered with orchids, lichens, ferns, 

 and moss. From every limb and twig hang long festoons of gray moss, while the 

 ground is thickly carpeted with ferns of a species resembling "love in a tangle." 

 Some of the huge tree-trunks are perfect botanical gardens, from the number and 

 variety of the plants growing upon them. 



* Lewis H. Morgan's report, p. 140. 



\ Shufeldt, R. W. Zuni as it is. Forest and Stream, New York and London, July 2, 

 1885, pp. 446-448. 



