22 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



kites till these games came across from Asia, when they took root at 

 once and became naturalized over Europe. The origin of kite-flying 

 seems to lie somewhere in southeast Asia, where it is a sport even of 

 grown-up men, who fight their kites by making them cut one an- 

 other's strings, and fly birds and monsters of the most fantastic shapes 

 and colors, especially in China, where old gentlemen may be seen 

 taking their evening stroll, kite-string in hand, as though they were 

 leading pet dogs. The English boy's kite appears thus an instance, 

 not of spontaneous play-instinct, but of the migration of an artificial 

 game from a distant center. Nor is this all it proves in the history of 

 civilization. Within a century, Europeans becoming acquainted with 

 the South Sea Islanders found them down to New Zealand adepts at fly- 

 ing kites, which they made of leaves or bark-cloth, and called mcinu, 

 or " bird," flying them in solemn form with accompaniment of tradi- 

 tional chants. It looks as though the toy reached Polynesia through 

 the Malay region, thus belonging to that drift of Asiatic culture 

 which is evident in many other points of South Sea Island life. The 

 geography of another of our childish diversions may be noticed as 

 matching with this. Mr. Wallace relates that, being one wet day in a 

 Dyak house in Borneo, he thought to amuse the lads by taking a 

 piece of string to show them cafs-cradle, but to his surprise he found 

 that they knew more about it than he did, going off into figures that 

 quite puzzled him. Other Polynesians are skilled in this nursery art, 

 especially the Maoris of New Zealand, who call it maui, from the 

 name of their national hero, by whom, according to their tradition, it 

 was invented ; its various patterns represent canoes, houses, people, 

 and even episodes in Maui's life, such as his fishing up New Zealand 

 from the bottom of the sea. In fact, they have their pictorial history 

 in cat's-cradle, and, whatever their traditions may be worth, they 

 stand good to show that the game was of the time of their forefathers, 

 not lately picked up from the Europeans. In the Sandwich Islands 

 and New Zealand it is on record that the natives were found playing 

 a kind of draughts which was not the European game, and which can 

 hardly be accounted for but as another result of the drift of Asiatic 

 civilization down into the Pacific. 



Once started, a game may last on almost indefinitely. Among the 

 children's sports of the present day are some which may be traced 

 back toward the limits of historical antiquity, and, for all we know, 

 may have been old then. Among the pictures of ancient Egyptian 

 games in the tombs of Beni Hassan, one shows a player with his head 

 down so that he can not see what the others are doing with their 

 clinched fists above his back. Here is obviously the game called in 

 English hot-cockles, in French niain-chaude, and better described by 

 its mediaeval name of qui fery ? or " who struck ? " the blindman 

 having to guess by whom he was hit, or with which hand. It was the 

 Greek kollabismos, or buffet-game, and carries with it a tragical asso- 



