POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



573 



girth, which makes a ring of wood of only 

 one eighth of an inch in thickness, adds to 

 its bulk at the rate of rather more than one 

 cubic foot of timber annually for every ten 

 feet of the length of its stem ; or, in other 

 words, such a tree, if its stem be thirty feet 

 in height, will, in thirty years, have increased 

 in bulk by at least one hundred feet 01 solid 

 timber. At the same time, during these 

 thirty years, the young trees which are 

 springing up will have become perfectly 

 hardy, and capable of supporting the whole 

 force of the summer heat and winter frost. 



Marriage Cnstoms of the Kae heen. Mr. 



R. Gordon, who has been exploring among 

 the sources of the Irrawaddy River, has given 

 to the Royal Geographical Society some ad- 

 ditional facts concerning the marriage cus- 

 toms of the Kacheen, the curious Burmese 

 tribe who were described by Lieutenant 

 Kreitler in the July number of " The Popu- 

 lar Science Monthly " : " When a man and 

 woman set up house, the man has to give 

 to the parents of the woman cattle, pigs, 

 gongs, muskets, das, slaves, clothes, spears, 

 and money ; and for his wife's use he has 

 to give coral beads, tameings, jackets, 

 broadcloths, etc., according to his circum- 

 stances. After the gifts the woman is 

 brought to the man's house, and the man 

 has to feast the bringers of the woman with 

 rice, and curry, and spirits, and liquors. 

 To the elders, also, he has to give blue 

 waist-cloths, turbans, das, or spears, accord- 

 ing to their degree. The man then shows 

 the woman all the work to be done in the 

 house, and bids her do the work. After 

 having lived together for a long period, if 

 the man dies, the woman can not marry 

 any one ; but the elder or younger brother 

 has to set up house with her. If there be 

 no brother, the deceased man's father (the 

 woman's father-in-law) takes possession of 

 her, and makes her his wife. If an elder 

 brother dies, the younger brother takes 

 over his wife. If the father dies, the son 

 takes over his father's wives, and makes 

 them his own, except his own mother. If 

 a wife dies, the husband goes to her parents 

 and asks for another wife, and they have to 

 give him her elder or younger sister a 

 woman who is unmarried. If there be no 

 sister to give, they have to give a female 



relative. Husbands and wives must not be 

 at enmity with each other. Divorce is un- 

 known as a custom. However bad hus- 

 band or wife may be, they can not separate, 

 unless, in the case of the husband, he gives 

 double the amount of what he originally 

 gave her, and, in the case of the wife, un- 

 less she gives quadruple the amount she 

 originally received. If the man sets aside 

 his wife and takes another, the head wife 

 has the right to take possession of all the 

 property of the younger wife, as well as to 

 sell her. The young unmarried men and 

 women, so long as they are not brothers 

 and sisters, act as they please inside the 

 apartments of the house." The Kacheen 

 women wear waist-cloths dyed black and 

 blue, five hands long and not very wide. 

 The jackets are close-fitting, and over them 

 they have a looser one set off with cowries. 

 This is probably full dress. Round their 

 waists they have perforated cowries on three 

 or four hoops of rattan. From their knees 

 down to their calves they wear hoops of 

 rattan. Some women, the wives of the 

 principal men, tattoo their legs from the 

 knee to the ankle. 



European Technical Schools. Mr. Ed- 

 ward C. Robins has presented to the British 

 Society of Arts the results of the inquiries 

 he has made into the causes of the differ- 

 ences in the degree in which different coun- 

 tries have profited from technical education. 

 The clew is not found in differences in pri- 

 mary education ; but, when the provisions 

 made in foreign colleges for higher educa- 

 tion are examined, something will be found 

 in them so superior to anything in England 

 as to afford a lesson of value. The intel- 

 lectual and social condition of the industrial 

 population, he premises, and the character 

 of the education it should receive to fit the 

 national mind to cope with the national 

 progress, can not be met by an extension of 

 scholastic institutions, based on the require- 

 ments of the middle ages. Yet this is the 

 principle which has dominated the universi- 

 ties, " and, until very lately, no concessions 

 have been made to the reasonable demands 

 of progressive civilization." Secondary and 

 primary education are left in no better con- 

 dition with reference to this point. The 

 improvement in the technical education of 



