POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



421 



carried in the car. The invention was crude 

 and of little practical value, " but the idea was 

 there." Three years later, Robert Davidson, 

 of Aberdeen, Scotland, began experiments in 

 order to supplant the steam railway locomotive 

 by the electric locomotive. He constructed a 

 powerful electric motor which was run suc- 

 cessfully on several railways in Scotland, at- 

 taining a speed of four miles an hour. In 

 1849 Moses Farmer exhibited an electric 

 engine which drew a small car containing 

 two persons. In 1851 Dr. C. G. Page, of 

 Salem, Mass., constructed an electric engine 

 of considerable power, which drew a car on 

 the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, between 

 Washington and Bladensburg, with a high- 

 est speed attained of nineteen miles an hour. 

 In the same year Thomas Hall, of Boston, 

 built an electric locomotive in which the 

 current was conducted from a stationary 

 source through the rails and the wheels to 

 the motor. Dr. Joseph R. Finney, of Pitts- 

 burg, about this time devised a trolley appa- 

 ratus. In 1879 Messrs. Siemens and Halske 

 exhibited their electric railway at Berlin. 

 The car carried about twenty passengers at 

 about eight miles an hour. In 1880 Mr. 

 Edison worked an experimental road at Menlo 

 Park, N. J. The first commercial electric 

 railway was constructed at Lichterfeld, Ger- 

 many, in 1881. It is operated by the third 

 rail system. Since then the development of 

 the electric railway has been rapid. 



An Indian Girl's Life. — Prayed over at 

 birth, Dr. Shufeldt says, the pueblo girl of 

 Wolpai (Moquis) must have her delicate baby 

 skin well rubbed with fine wood ashes, or 

 else her bones might become loose as she 

 grows older. Very soon she is strapped in 

 her portable cradle and toted about upon her 

 mother's back, but while in the house must, 

 in the same apparatus, be either stood up 

 against the wall or even hung up, where for 

 an hour or more together, in either situation, 

 her sole amusement consists in peering about 

 the " living-room." As soon as she is able 

 to walk she is permitted to toddle about 

 everywhere, and to ascend and descend the 

 house ladder before the second summer has 

 passed over her head. She has no end of 

 toys and playthings to amuse her. Till 

 about seven years old " her days are spent 

 mostly in romping and playing with the nu- 



merous children in the pueblo. Innocent of 

 all clothing, and possessing a wholesome 

 dread of water for any other purpose than to 

 drink, she is at this age as wild as a moun- 

 tain sheep, and can with almost equal celerity 

 run up and down the steep, rocky crags that 

 so abruptly slope down from the pueblo on 

 all sides save one." After her tenth year 

 she assumes the costume of her elder sisters 

 and her girl companions, and is instructed 

 in the duties that pertain to the kitchen, and 

 in pottery and basket-work ; and as she 

 grows stronger, in carding and dyeing wool 

 and weaving blankets, mantles, petticoats, 

 garters, and sashes of cotton or wool. At 

 or a little before fifteen she is considered 

 nubile. " She can bake, sew, dye, card, 

 weave, and spin ; her nimble fingers fashion 

 the plastic clays into every shape needed for 

 use or ornament ; the tender shoots of the 

 willow or the pliable roots of the grasses re- 

 spond to her fairy touch and round them- 

 selves into beautiful baskets, vivid with col- 

 oring and repeating the sacred emblems of 

 the butterfly, deer, or thunder-bird. In the 

 number of stews, ragouts, and broths which 

 she knows how to compound of the flesh of 

 the kid or sheep, and such vegetables as the 

 onion, bean, and the aromatic chile, or in the 

 endless diversity of hominy mush, popcorn, 

 and piki bread, she will hold her own with 

 the most ingenious American housewife." 



The Eskimo Woman's Knife. — The ulu, 

 or woman's knife of the Eskimo, as described 

 in Mr. Otis T. Masons's paper on the subject, 

 finds its modern representative in the sad- 

 dler's and shoemaker's knives, the tailor's 

 shears, the butcher's and fishmonger's 

 knives, and the kitchen chopping knife. 

 The last presents a curious survival of form 

 with change of function. There are a great 

 many examples of the ulu in the National 

 Museum, and there are thousands of pieces 

 of slate, shell, quartzite, and other stone 

 which correspond exactly with the blades 

 of the Eskimo woman's knife. They have 

 been gathered in countless numbers from the 

 places where relics are found ; for every 

 woman and every girl among the American 

 aborigines had one or more of these indis- 

 pensable implements. While some of the 

 number are of a very primitive character, 

 the ulu as it now exists is a complex affair, 



