POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



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capturing and carrying off the bride as a 

 proof of courage and address. The author 

 calls this form marriage with capture instead 

 of marriage by capture. He thinks the lat- 

 ter was not in use among them, while mar- 

 riage by purchase may have existed among 

 them from the polished stone age. Capture 

 is sometimes resorted to to reduce the price 

 of a girl or to avoid payment, but is an inci- 

 dent of marriage by purchase. Among the 

 Manchus, according to a gentleman of that 

 people, the middle-man takes a large part in 

 arranging marriages. When he has brought 

 the parents of the pair to an agreement, a 

 solemn inspection of each party is made by 

 the mother of the other, to see that the 

 bridegroom is not dumb, the bride not lame, 

 etc. Then cards and presents are exchanged. 

 The marriage ceremony lasts three days. In 

 the bridal chamber the couple are fed with 

 " offspring dumpling " and " longevity 

 dough " ; and a " longevity lamp " is kept 

 burning. An important ceremony is the 

 uniting the cups, by the couple drinking 

 wine alternately from two cups tied to- 

 gether by a red string. Frequently children 

 are promised to each other in marriage while 

 still very young. 



Gypsy-carried Folk Lore. "Gypsies," 

 says Mr. Charles B. Leland, " have been the 

 colporteurs of witchcraft." A hundred con- 

 firmations, the Atheneeum observes, " might 

 be adduced of the saying. It is fifty years 

 now since old Mrs. Petulingro traveled Nor- 

 folk with her sparrow that told her all man- 

 ner of secrets ; to-day her descendants are 

 camping in Scotland, Ireland, America, and 

 New Zealand. Wherever they have wan- 

 dered they have carried with them both 

 gypsy and East-Anglian superstitions ; so 

 that you still find them counseling a Clydes- 

 dale beekeeper, who has just lost his wife, 

 to ' tell ' the bees and put crape upon his 

 hives, practicing their own strange methods 

 of ordeal and tabu, or plucking out the heart 

 from a live white pigeon at midnight and 

 casting it on a clear fire, as a gypsy girl 

 did five years since, to put a spell upon her 

 false lover. For gypsies both borrow and 

 lend: if they gull, they are gullible, and the 

 gentile 'wise man' has no more credulous 

 victims. Found as they were in Finland in 

 1580, in Shetland in 1612, and roaming as 



they do from Poland to China, from Hun- 

 gary to Algeria, the gypsies are a most dis- 

 turbing factor in the problems of folk lore. 

 How much they have done toward the dif- 

 fusion of magic and folk tales it were hard 

 to estimate ; that they may have done very 

 much is at least possible. Their tales pre- 

 sent all the familiar features (of swan-maid- 

 ens, forbidden chambers, the grateful dead, 

 etc.) ; their superstitions in eastern Europe 

 are often identical with those of our English 

 peasantry e. g., Transylvanian gypsies seek 

 out a drowned body with a loaf having 

 quicksilver in it. And only last summer a 

 member of the Gypsy Lore Society discov- 

 ered in Argyleshire a band of boat-dwelling 

 ' tinklers ' speaking good Romany." 



Phenomena of Stream Currents. In a 



paper on the flow and friction of water in 

 open channels, read by Dr. D. T. Smith at 

 the American Association, the questions 

 were asked : Why are there streams ? Why 

 are the channels of streams trough-shaped ? 

 Why are streams higher in the middle than at 

 the edges ? Why is the greatest speed of 

 streams not at the surface but at some dis- 

 tance beneath ? Why do streams flowing 

 into the sea through deltas have plural 

 mouths ? Why are the banks of rivers in 

 deltas raised above the adjacent lands ? 

 Why do rivers, flowing down steep inclines, 

 early come to an even rate of speed, and 

 not increase in speed to the bottom of the 

 incline as do solid bodies in falling ? Why 

 does drift move from the margins to the 

 middle of rapid streams ? Why are rivers 

 deep just before entering the sea, yet enter- 

 ing with the bottom sloping upward ? These 

 phenomena, it was claimed, are all pro- 

 duced by movements in the water due to 

 unequal friction. The particles of water 

 rubbing against the sides of the channel 

 are retarded more than those next within, 

 and, as those outside fall behind, those next 

 within move out and take their places, thus 

 preserving the width of the stream. Those 

 next within take the place of these, and so 

 on to the middle of the stream at the bot- 

 tom. As the water at the bottom moves 

 out, that above settles down in the middle. 

 As the water moves against the banks, it is 

 raised up by the force with which it strikes, 

 and the surface of the stream at this stage 



