718 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



point of view, and must never forget, he 

 says, that it is the real work which ap- 

 peals to him, and not the particular ex- 

 ercise or the typical use of the tool. As 

 Dr. Henderson says, it is not necessary 

 to be forever suggesting to him that he is 

 being educated. "' We must see, feel, and 

 think with the worker, and so introduce 

 our disciplinary exercises that he prac- 

 tices them correctly while still carrying 

 out his own dearest desire. In this way 

 only can he get the greatest benefit from 

 any exercise. We must constantly bear 

 in mind that we are aiming at a well- 

 developed producer rather than a per- 

 fect product. . . . Whenever a piece of 

 work, however poor in itself, stands for 

 a chikUs best effort, it is a highly sat- 

 isfactory production from the true teach- 

 er's point of view. He must remember 

 also to keep constantly before us the fact 

 that independence and self-reliance are 

 to be cultivated from the outset." Sloyd 

 claims to be peculiar in aiming at ethical 

 rather than technical results, and at gen- 

 eral organic development rather than 

 special skill; in employing only peda- 

 gogically trained teachers; in using ra- 

 tionally progressive courses of exercises 

 applied on objects of good form which 

 are also of special use to the worker; 

 in striving after gymnastically correct 

 working positions in encouraging the 

 use of both the left and right sides of 

 the body; and in giving to each indi- 

 vidual opportunity to progress according 

 to his peculiar ability. These points 

 have been emphasized in Sloyd from its 

 beginning in Sweden more than twenty- 

 five vears ago. 



Hawaiian Reptiles. — It is shown, 

 in a paper on the subject by Dr. Leon- 

 hard Stcjneger, published by the United 

 States jS'ational Museum, that there are 

 no true land reptiles in the Hawaiian 

 archipelago other than a few species of 

 lizards, all belonging to the cosmopoli- 

 tan families — the geckoes (four species) 

 and the skinks (three species). All of 

 these, except one of the geckoes, belong 

 to species widely distributed over the 

 Indo-Polynesian island world, while the 

 gecko excepted has close relatives in 

 New Caledonia, Java, Sumatra, and Cey- 

 lon. This distribution is regarded by 

 the author as not sustaining the theory 

 of a once continuous land connection be- 

 tween the various island groups, but 

 rather, by the limited number of species, 

 as indicating that at the time of the im- 

 migration of the lizards the islands were 

 separated from other lands. Yet these 

 land creatures could not have been dis- 

 tributed over thousands of miles of ocean 

 by ordinary means, and the agency of 

 man has to be invoked. From various 

 considerations it is permissible to con- 

 clude that they came to the islands with 

 the ancestors of the Hawaiians. No rec- 

 ords are known of any of the marine 

 snakes having been taken at the Sand- 

 wich Islands. Marine turtles live in the 

 seas surrounding the archipelago and 

 breed upon some of its outlying islands, 

 but little is known of them. There are 

 no indigenous batrachians in the group, 

 but frogs and toads are said to have 

 been brought, intentionally, from China, 

 Japan, and America to assist in the 

 fight against mosquitoes. 



MIXOR PARAGRAPnS. 



Miss Kingsi-ey defines one of the 

 fundamental doctrines of African fetich 

 as being that the connection of a certain 

 spirit with a certain mass of matter, a 

 material object, is not permanent. " The 

 African will point out to you a lightning- 

 stricken tree and tell you that its spirit 

 has been killed; he will tell you when 

 the cooking pot has gone to bits that it 

 has lost its spirit; if his weapon fails, it 

 is because some one has stolen or made 

 sick its spirit by means of witchcraft. 

 In every action of his daily life he shows 

 you how he lives with a great, powerful 

 spirit world around him. You will see 

 him, before starting out to hunt or fight, 



rubbing medicine into liis M'capons to 

 strengthen the spirit within them, talk- 

 ing the while, telling them what care he 

 has taken of them, reminding them of 

 the gifts he has given them, though those 

 gifts were hard to give, and begging 

 them in the hour of his dire necessity not 

 to fail him. You will see him bending 

 over the face of a river, talking to its 

 spirit with proper incantations, asking 

 it when it meets a man who is an enemy 

 of his to upset his canoe or drown him, 

 or asking it to carry down with it some 

 curse to the village below which has an- 

 gered him, and in a thousand other ways 

 he shows you what he believes if you 



