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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



proportion of the damage suffered by the 

 forests as the lumbermen pretend that they 

 do. Mr. Coleman, Commissioner of Agri- 

 culture, proposed the appointment of a 

 committee to draft suitable forestry bills 

 to be made laws by the General and State 

 governments, and to labor with legislative 

 committees to secure attention to them. 



Among the otiier special topics con- 

 sidered in the papers were "Facts in re- 

 gard to the Present State of American 

 Forestry: State of Forest Legislation in the 

 United States," N. II. Egleston ; "What 

 have the Different States done in regard to 

 their Forests?" J. S. Hicks; "What are 

 the Requisites of an Effective Forest-Fire 

 Legislation ? " S. W. Powell ; " Lumbering 

 Interests — their Dependence on Systematic 

 Forestry," J. E. Ilobbs ; " Trees as Edu- 

 cators," Professor Edward North ; "Profits 

 of Forest-Culture," B. P. Poore ; " Need of 

 a National Forest Policy," Hon. Warner 

 Miller; "Profits of Forest-Culture: State 

 of Forest Legislation in the State of New 

 York," Hon. U. R. Low. 



The History of a Game.— Mr. J. W. 



Crombie read a paper before the British 

 Association on what he styled "A Game 

 with a History " — hop-seoteh. As chil- 

 dren in their play generally imitated some- 

 thing they had observed to be done by 

 their elders, and a game once introduced 

 was handed down from generation to gen- 

 eration, many innocent-looking children's 

 games concealed strange records of ancient 

 ages and pagan times. The game of hop- 

 scotch was one of considerable antiquity, 

 having been known in England for more 

 than two centuries, and it was played all 

 over Europe under different names. Signor 

 Pitre's solar explanation of its origin ap- 

 peared improbable, for not only was the 

 evidence in its favor extremely weak, but it 

 would require the original number of di- 

 visions in the figure to have been twelve in- 

 stead of seven, the number indicated by a 

 considerable body of evidence. It would 

 seem more probable that the game at one 

 time represented the progress of the soul 

 from earth to heaven through various inter- 

 mediate states, the name given to the last 

 court being most freciuently paradise or an 

 equivalent, such as crown or glory, while 



the names of the other courts corresponded 

 with the eschatological ideas prevalent in 

 the early days of Christianity. Some such 

 game existed before Christianity, and the 

 author considered it had been derived from 

 several ancient games. Possibly the strange 

 myths of the Labyrinths might have had 

 something to do with hop-scotch, and a va- 

 riety of the game played in England, under 

 the name of " round hop-scotch," was almost 

 identical with a game described by Pliny as 

 being played by the boys of his day. The 

 author believed that the early Chiistians 

 adopted the general idea of the ancient 

 game, but they not only converted it into 

 an allegory of heaven, with Christian be- 

 liefs and Christian names, they Christian- 

 ized the figure also. They abandoned the 

 heathen labyrinth and replaced it by the 

 form of the basilica, the early Christian 

 church, dividing it into seven parts, as 

 they believed heaven to be divided, and 

 placing paradise, the inner sanctum of 

 heaven, in the position of the altar, the in- 

 ner sanctum of the early church. 



The Indians of Monnt Roraima. — Mr. 



E. F. Im Thurm read some notes, in the 

 Anthropological Section of the British Asso- 

 ciation, on the red-men about Mount Rorai- 

 ma, in British Guiana. He had found them 

 still in the stone age, but not in the ex- 

 tremely primitive condition he had antici- 

 pated. There was no other place in British 

 Guiana where the stone age still subsisted. 

 These Indians live in small conical huts 

 clustered into villages, and including a 

 church, where they imitated, without under- 

 standing, the religious services they had 

 seen at some far-off mission. They were 

 generally ugly, some even repulsive, but 

 hospitable and kind, and the reception the 

 speaker's party had met with could not be 

 surpassed in courtesy in the most civilized 

 community. They made stone implements 

 of a remarkable kind, such as adzes and 

 axes, but stones were more usually fash- 

 ioned, by a process of rubbing, into imita- 

 tions of fish and articles of ornament. 

 Their games were very interesting, some of 

 them being imitations of animals, and oth- 

 ers a kind of rhythmic swinging to a slow 

 chant. The isolation of tribes, and even 

 that of families, was remarkable. It had 



