POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



569 



wands, tubes, banners, stones, amulets, pend- 

 ants, butterfly gorgets, ear bobs, bracelets, 

 breastplates, beads, buttons, headdresses, 

 labrets, nose rings, charms, and a score 

 of others, they are delineated iu many vol- 

 umes. To ascribe a purpose to any pattern, 

 unless a similar one has been seen in actual 

 service, would be as presumptuous as the at- 

 tempt by a person entirely ignorant of mod- 

 ern secret societies to explain the meaning 

 of badges, pins, or regalia. No doubt some 

 of them owe their form to a whim or fancy 

 of the maker; others were purely decora- 

 tive ; while many of them were symbolic, or 

 for use in the manifold dances, parades, cele- 

 brations, superstitious ceremonies, and other 

 observances so dear to the minds of an un- 

 cultured people. The manner of perforation 

 in some indicates that they were for suspen- 

 sion by cord ; in othei's, that they were to be 

 placed upon a staff; still others, unperfo- 

 rated, may have been secured in various ways. 

 Nearly all are made of material that would 

 break if carelessly handled ; many are of 

 such size or shape that no particular use for 

 them can be imagined. There is less trouble 

 in regard to the utensils, weapons, or imple- 

 ments for ordinary work, comprising articles 

 necessary in agriculture, hunting, warfare, or 

 domestic affairs. What sort of work the pre- 

 historic people may have done in wood, textile 

 fabrics, feathers, fur, robes, skins, or other 

 perishable material, can never be known ; 

 but judging from the few scraps remaining, 

 and from such other specimens as have been 

 preserved, it was probably on a par with 

 that of the present day among tribes but lit- 

 tle changed from their condition when first 

 known to the whites. Mi-. Fowke's notes are 

 published, with plates, by Robert Clai'ke & 

 Co., Cincinnati. 



Roger Bacoa's Dream of Steam and of 

 iir-S!iips. An essay by Roger Bacon, pub- 

 lished in It) 18, has been brought to atten- 

 tion by M. de Fonvielle, which contains dim 

 predictions of steam power and the naviga- 

 tion of the air. " Instruments," the author 

 says in this essay, " may be made for navi- 

 gating without any men pulling the oars, 

 with a single man governing, and going 

 quicker than if they were full of pulling 

 men. . . . Wagons can also be made, that 

 without any horse they should be moved with 



such a velocity that it should be impossible 

 to measure it. . . . It is possible also to de- 

 vise instruments for flying, such that a man 

 being iu the center if revolving something 

 by which artificial wings are made to beat 

 the air in the fashion of birds. ... It is also 

 possible to devise instruments which will 

 permit persons to walk on the bottom of the 

 sea. . . . All these things have been done 

 in old times and in our times, except the in- 

 strument for flying, which I have not seen, 

 and I have not known any man who saw it 

 done." 



The Test of Exactness. Admitting that 

 the prevailing opinion that great advances 

 have recently been made in astronomy is 

 correct so far as the fields of spectrum anal- 

 ysis and the measurement of minute quanti- 

 ties of radiant heat are concerned. Dr. Wil- 

 liam Harkness showed in his vice-presidential 

 address at the American Association that 

 the solution of the vast majority of astro- 

 nomical problems depends upon the exact 

 measurement of angles, and in that little or 

 no progress has been made. Bradley, with 

 his zenith sector a hundred and fifty years 

 ago, and Bessel and Struve, with their circles 

 and transit instruments seventy years ago, 

 made observations not sensibly inferior to 

 those of the present day, and indeed it would 

 have been surprising if they had not done 

 so. The essentials for accurately determin- 

 ing star places are a skilled observer, a clock, 

 and a transit circle, the latter consisting of a 

 telescope, a divided circle, and four microm- 

 eter microscopes. Surely no one will claim 

 that we have to-day any more skillful ob- 

 servers than were Bessel, Bradley, and Struve, 

 and the only way in which we have improved 

 upon the telescopes made by Uollond one 

 hundred and thirty years ago is by increas- 

 ing their aperture and relatively diminishing 

 their focal distance. The most famous di- 

 viding engine now in existence was made by 

 the elder Repsold seventy-five years ago ; but, 

 as the errors of divided circles and their mi- 

 crometer microscopes are always carefully 

 determined, the accuracy of the measured 

 angles is quite independent of any small im- 

 provement in the accuracy of the divisions or 

 of the micrometer screws. Only in the matter 

 of clocks has there been some advance, and 

 even that is not very great. On the whole, 



