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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



weaving ; previous to that age they spend a 

 year or so on the board watching the other 

 women so that they may get accustomed to 

 the work. If a young woman who has been 

 brought up to the loom gets married, the 

 first thing she docs is to try and obtain an 

 order for a carpet, so that the weaving of 

 carpets passes from one generation to an- 

 other. Every stitch in the carpet is made 

 separately, and it is afterward clipped with 

 the scissors and beaten down. In a good 

 carpet there are about ten thousand stitches 

 to every square foot. The clipping must be 

 done every time with equal care, otherwise 

 when the carpet is finished the pile will be 

 short in some places and longer in others. 

 Upon the beating down depends tiie close- 

 ness of the texture ; the more a weaver beats 

 her stitches down, the finer, of course, the 

 carpet is. She knows how many stitches she 

 has to weave to every quarter of a Persian 

 yard ; but she generally makes less, in order 

 to save wool, time, and trouble. The designs 

 are the individual property of the weavers, 

 and are protected by law. The shades of 

 color are a matter of importance, and atten- 

 tion is paid to having them in harmony with 

 the varying tastes of the European mar- 

 kets. Besides woolen carpets, rugs are ex- 

 ported, woven entirely of silk. The weaving 

 of such rugs is done in the same way as the 

 weaving of carpets, but the labor is far 

 greater in proportion, as they are always of a 

 very fine make. Such rugs can be used as 

 table or sofa covers, portieres, etc., but, as 

 they are made of pure silk, they are very 

 costly. 



Holy Stones of Ihc East and the West. — 



A curious paper was read by Mr. Charles G. 

 Leland at the International Congress of Ori- 

 entalists concerning the salagrama stone of 

 India and the salagrana of the Toscana Ro- 

 mana, as a curious link connecting the East 

 and West. The Indian salagrama is a kind 

 of ammonite, the size of an orange, and hav- 

 ing a hole in it. According to the legend, 

 Vishnu the Preserver, when pursued by the 

 Destroyer, was changed by Maya into the 

 stone, through the hole of which the De- 

 stroyer as a worm wound his way. The Ital- 

 ian salagrana is a stalagmite, which is be- 

 lieved by the people, on account of its re- 

 semblance to the little mounds thrown up 



by earthworms, to be such a mound petri- 

 fied. They carry it in a red bag, along with 

 certain magical herbs, and pronounce over 

 it an incantation to the effect that the irreg- 

 ularities and cavities in it have the property 

 of bewildering the evil eye and depriving it 

 of its power. The author was informed by 

 believers in such things that anything like 

 grains, irregular and confused surfaces, in- 

 terlaced serpents, or intricate works, blunted 

 the evil eye. Interlaced cords are sold in 

 Florence as charms. Even the convolvulus 

 is grown in gardens against the evil eye. 

 In the Norse mythology, Odin as a worm 

 bored his head through a stone in order to 

 get at "the mead of poetry." Hence all 

 stones with holes in them are known as 

 Odin stones, also as " holy stones," and are 

 much used at the North as amulets. Hung 

 at the head of the bed, they are supposed 

 to drive away nightmare. Possibly there is 

 a connection with the salagrana here. So 

 interlacings in decoration may be originally 

 designed to avert the evil eye and bad luck. 

 A recent traveler in Persia was told that 

 the patterns on carpets in that country were 

 made intricate so that the evil eye might 

 be bewildered. In the salagrana of Italy 

 the number of grains or protuberances must 

 be counted one by one before the witch 

 can do evil. In the Arabian Nights the 

 ghoul Amina must eat her rice grain by 

 grain ; and in South Carolina the negroes 

 protect a person who is bedridden or night- 

 mared by strewing rice round his bed, which 

 the witch, when she comes, must count grain 

 by grain before she can touch her victim. 



Two Ancient Races. — Describing, in the 

 International Oriental Congress, his excava- 

 tion of the pyramid of Medum — the tomb of 

 King Senefru, of the third Egyptian dynasty, 

 and the oldest known building in the world 

 — Mr. H. Flinders Petrie spoke of the entire 

 skeletons which had been obtained of men 

 of that remote period (some 4000 years b. c.) 

 as providing an anatomical study of impor- 

 tance for ethnology. The peculiar mode of 

 interment of most of these persons shows 

 that a religious difference then existed. The 

 bodies of the highest class or race were in- 

 terred, extended at full length, with vases of 

 pottery or stone, and head-rests ; while the 

 greater number of the bodies were interred 



