570 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



like root. "When in use, the weight was 

 slipped over the handle till it rested at about 

 the middle of the stick, like a collar. An old 

 woman living in a village of the San Buena- 

 ventura Indians, thirty miles distant, corrob- 

 orated the above statement as to the use of 

 the stones. When one was put into her 

 hands it at once excited her surprise and 

 interest. In reply to the question, "What 

 do you know of its use ? " she instantly seized 

 a small stick from the fireplace and slipped 

 the ring down to its middle, holding it there 

 with the left hand, and began to dig industri- 

 ously into the dirt floor. From an intelligent 

 half-breed of the same village, Mr. Henshaw 

 learned that many of the stone disks were 

 used in a game which was played as follows : 

 A piece of level ground was selected for a 

 court, and was made very smooth and hard. 

 At one corner of the court was stationed a 

 man whoso business it was to cast the disks. 

 The player, with a lance six or seven feet 

 long in his hand, stood on one side of the 

 court. Running a little distance, the bowler 

 rolled a disk swiftly across the court, when 

 the lance-thrower darted forward and cast 

 his lance, the object being to transfix the 

 disk as it rolled past. A successful throw 

 counted one point, ten being the game. Dr. 

 W. J. Hoffman was informed that at Santa 

 Barbara the bow and arrow were in use in 

 this game in place of the lance. The San 

 Buenaventura half-breed stated that some of 

 the perforated disks of hard stone were made 

 for the express purpose of fashioning pipes. 

 The end of the stone to be fashioned was in- 

 serted into the hole of a perforated stone 

 and turned by the hand till reduced to the 

 proper shape. The perforated stone hence 

 served as a kind of die. Mr. Ilenshaw has 

 found no evidence to show that these stones 

 were used as net-sinkers, spindle-whorls, or 

 club-heads. 



A Fatal "One Glass." — A new book, 

 called " Manners Makyth Man," gives a sto- 

 ry told by a bishop of how he persuaded 

 a man recovering from delirium tremens to 

 become a teetotaler. " Years went by, and 

 not a drop of intoxicating liquor entered his 

 mouth. Six, seven, eight years passed, and 

 his resolution remained unbroken. On the 

 anniversary of the eighth sober year his 

 friends, thinking the reformation complete, 



resolved to give a dinner in his honor. A 

 family circle, rendered happy by the tem- 

 perance of its head, received the congratu- 

 lations of intimate friends. But it was a 

 feast of deadly wine. Healths were pro- 

 posed, and he who was being honored was 

 told that to drink his own health in one glass 

 could certainly do him no harm after totally 

 abstaining for eight years. He drank the 

 glass, and two years afterward I was called 

 in to visit a poor drunkard who was on his 

 death-bed by reason of that one ' friendly 

 glass.' " 



Technical Education. — In a paper on 

 " Technical Education," G. S. Ramsay main- 

 tains that British workmen are not deficient 

 in technical skill in any mechanical depart- 

 ment, but, as a rule, distance those of most 

 other nations. British work is inferior to 

 foreign in two classes of departments : in 

 those connected with processes requiring a 

 scientific knowledge of chemistry of the high- 

 est kind, and in those in which success de- 

 pends essentially upon taste, and upon the 

 faculty of design. An instance under the 

 former category is given in the manufacture 

 of coal-tar dyes, which has been carried 

 off from " under the very noses " of the 

 British by the superior scientific skill and 

 industrial capacity of another nation. Brit- 

 ish manufacturers furnish the material ; 

 Germans, under the direction of trained 

 chemists, work it up, and sell back to the 

 British the products in the form of beautiful 

 colors and concentrated essences. Thus a 

 works near Basle employs a chemist of com- 

 prehensive training and experience, three 

 departmental chemists, and several assist- 

 ants. Another one, near Frankfort, em- 

 ploys fifty-one scientific chemists. The manu- 

 facture of beet-sugar has been developed in 

 Germany into a great trade by being treated 

 as a scientific business, " to be cariied on in 

 strict obedience to the commands of scien- 

 tific experts." In these operations the- tech- 

 nical part of the work is made subordinate 

 to the scientific principles on which it is 

 based. British butter and cheese are being 

 .superseded in the markets by American and 

 Canadian products, through the neglect of 

 scientific improvements at home and the intro- 

 duction of them in the competing countries. 

 " In each of these cases," says Mr. Ramsay, 



