POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



571 



world over, in the prices which it brings as 

 compared with other flours. Wheat grown 

 in this latitude has so large a proportion of 

 gluten and phosphates that it is gradually 

 but surely crowding more starchy flours to 

 the wall. When Mr. Pillsbury began milling 

 twenty years ago, he secretly brought flour 

 from St. Louis to use in his own family. 

 Minneapolis flour sold very much below that 

 made in other sections of this country, and 

 stood at the foot of the list in market quo- 

 tations. Now it stands at the top of the 

 list. A Board of Trade report, of the city 

 of Minneapolis, for 1866, stated that the 

 production of flour in the city during that 

 year was 172,000 barrels; now it is forty 

 times as much. Only eleven years ago the 

 amount of flour made in Minneapolis and 

 exported from this country was 109,183 bar- 

 rels ; now it is over 3,000,000, or thirty 

 times as much. It is the improvement 

 which has been made in milling in this sec- 

 tion which has accomplished these results. 

 It has also made the rapid settlement of the 

 Northwest possible, as wheat is by all odds 

 the chief crop of that region. On the other 

 hand, the rapid increase of the farming pop- 

 ulation in the tributary country has made 

 possible the rapid increase of mills in Min- 

 neapolis. Another thing that has contrib- 

 uted largely to this result is cheap trans- 

 portation to the East. A few years ago the 

 millers were paying one dollar and a half a 

 barrel to get their flour carried to the sea- 

 board ; now the rate is only fifty-five cents. 

 Mr. Pillsbury deems it quite possible that 

 the flour industry of the Northwest is even 

 yet in its infancy, as probably not more 

 than ten per cent of the available land trib- 

 utary to Minneapolis has been placed under 

 cultivation. 



Aboriginal Mounds in Manitoba. The 



Winnipeg mound region, as described in 

 the American Association, by Prof. George 

 Byles, of Manitoba College, includes a dis- 

 trict some four hundred miles long from 

 east to west, and running from the interna- 

 tional boundary north to at least latitude 50. 

 The author had seen some sixty mounds 

 and had opened ten, working usually in con- 

 nection with the Manitoba Historical Society. 

 Numerous skeletons have been exhumed. Un- 

 manufactured articles found included large 



quantities of charcoal red and yellow ochre 

 and birch bark charred. Manufactured ar- 

 ticles : Stone implements, scrapers, gouges, 

 chisels, axes, malls, conjurers' tubes, and a 

 set of gaming stones. Bones : Breast orna- 

 ments of various kinds, whistles, beads, etc. 

 Shells : Columella of conch from trophies, 

 tropical natica and marginetta shells made 

 into beads, wampum, and breast ornaments. 

 Horn : Fish-spear, pottery, numerous marked 

 fragments, various copper implements, and 

 near one skeleton two lumps of arsenical 

 pyrites, no doubt used as sacred objects. 

 All mounds were circular, and all on promi- 

 nent headlands. The majority contained 

 skeletons, probably of Mandans of the Mis- 

 souri, who fifty years ago were almost ex- 

 terminated by small-pox. Certain mounds, 

 from the state of the bones and certain topo- 

 graphical and geological considerations, are 

 likely to date from the beginning of their 

 central parts four hundred years back. 



Tapestries. The word tapestry has pri- 

 mary reference to carpets. As now used, 

 we learn from a lecture by Mr. Alan S. Cole 

 upon the subject, it may be read in two 

 senses : one in which it refers to hangings 

 generally ; and the other in which it implies 

 a special method of producing a textile fab- 

 ric. In making carpet by hand, as in ordi- 

 nary weaving, a stretched warp is necessary ; 

 but the warp-threads play no visible part in 

 the face of the carpet. They are covered 

 with weft-threads. Instead of a shuttle 

 with a weft, as in weaving, various sets of 

 thread are used, which are looped, knotted, 

 and intertwined upon the warp-threads. In 

 making carpets with a pile, the ends of the 

 threads which have been knotted upon the 

 warp are cut. From above these knotted 

 threads, and across and in between the warp- 

 threads, a stout thread is thrown. This is 

 pressed down with a comb, so as to com- 

 pact the whole fabric. A fresh series of 

 knottings is then made, and the previous 

 operations are repeated. In another closely 

 allied process for making carpets and hang- 

 ings, a stout cord is thrown across and in 

 between the warp-threads ; no scissors are 

 used to cut the ends of knotted warp-threads, 

 and no pile is produced. This process re- 

 quires the variously colored wefts to be in- 

 tertwisted between groups of the warp- 



