P OP ULAR MIS CELL ANY. 



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others when paid for it. They make their 

 living by hunting wild fowl and animals, of 

 which the most valuable to them appears to 

 be the rabbit. Their clothing was chiefly 

 made of rabbit and reindeer-skins before 

 they came in contact with the white men. 

 Rabbit-skins sewed together make the warm- 

 est of blankets, even though the fingers may 

 be pushed through them anywhere, and an 

 Indian child dressed up in them, like " baby 

 bunting," is a funny-looking but very cozy 

 creature. The Indian babies seem never to 

 cry, never to squall, as more civilized babies 

 are in the habit of doing, and are never 

 chastised. " It would be thought very un- 

 natural and cruel in a mother to flog or 

 strike her child." All the Indians treat with 

 much ceremony and respect the body of any 

 bear they may have killed. He is placed 

 in a sitting posture against a tree, and long 

 speeches are made of apology and regret 

 for having been under the disagreeable 

 necessity of killing him. Then, as the bear 

 may come to life again even after he has 

 been disemboweled, a stick is put into his 

 mouth to keep it wide open, and a profuse 

 and humble apology is made to him for the 

 additional indignity. The supposed neces- 

 sity for this precaution is believed to have 

 arisen from the fact that a bear, thought to 

 be dead, came to life again while being car- 

 ried home, and took a mouthful out of one 

 of his Indian bearers. With a small tribe 

 called the Dog-ribs, or slaves, the custom 

 prevails of wrestling for the right to a wife, 

 " the lady sitting by, an appai-ently careless 

 and indifferent spectator of the struggle for 

 possession. No other ceremony is required 

 than that the victor, whether her former 

 husband or not, claims his wife." Another 

 custom, and an unfortunate one, is that on 

 the death of a near relative these Indians 

 must destroy every article of property of 

 value that they possess, excepting perhaps 

 an old deer-skin robe and a few other arti- 

 cles. They, moreover, can not hunt during 

 the season in which the loss occurs, and are 

 thus exposed to great poverty. With nearly 

 all the Indians, a certain favorite piece of 

 deer or bird is tabooed to the women, and 

 they dare not taste it, or even come near 

 where it is cooking, under a severe penalty. 

 With the Chippewas it is the moose-nose, 

 with the Wood Crees some part of the wild- 



goose, and with the Dog-ribs the reindeer 

 head. A peculiarity of the Hudson Bay 

 Company's tariff, which has been considera- 

 bly misrepresented, is that far higher prices, 

 in proportion to their value, are paid to the 

 Indians for inferior furs than for the finer 

 ones. The object of this regulation is sim- 

 ply to prevent the undue hunting of the 

 more expensive . furs. " I fear," says Dr. 

 Rae, " that little can be done for these 

 northern Indians, unless they can be rea- 

 soned out of their prejudices and supersti- 

 tions, which, with their imprudences and 

 wastefulness, are the cause of their being 

 so poor." 



Ass's Milk for Infants. M. Parrot, phy- 

 sician at the Hospital for Assisted Children 

 in Paris, has recently made a report of the 

 success which has attended the efforts he 

 has made to introduce an improved system 

 of alimentation into the nursery of that in- 

 stitution. His conclusions, confirmed as 

 they are by the observations of his colleague, 

 M. Tarnier, who had the charge of an im- 

 portant class of young nurses, deserve the 

 particular attention of hospital and munici- 

 pal administrations. Good nurses are very 

 scarce, and it is hard to keep a strict watch 

 upon the children consigned by the public 

 charities to their care. On the other hand, 

 a goodly number of these poor little ones 

 come into the world afflicted with diseases 

 which forbid their being committed to a 

 nurse, because they would be in danger of 

 infecting her. At the Children's Hospital, 

 where the proportion of these wretched in- 

 fants is always considerable, it has been 

 found necessary to feed them from the bot- 

 tle in the halls of the infirmary. Notwith- 

 standing the most intelligent care, this means 

 has not been efficient to restore the strength 

 of the infants, who were, in fact, nearly 

 moribund with disease contracted in their 

 mother's womb. M. Parrot had a single 

 chance to save them and tried it ; it was 

 to nurse them directly at the teat of an 

 animal. The nursery which has been es- 

 tablished in the gardens of the Hospital 

 for Assisted Children has been in operation 

 for about a year, and the results of the ex- 

 periments have been so satisfactory that no 

 reason exists for waiting for a longer trial 

 before making them known. In the face 



