636 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lies from accumulating wealth. It is the great desire of every chief 

 and even of every man to collect a large amount of property, and then 

 to give a great potlatch, a feast in which all is distributed among 

 his friends, and, if possible, among the neighboring tribes. These 

 feasts are so closely connected with the religious ideas of the natives, 

 and regulate their mode of life to such an extent, that the Christian 

 tribes near Victoria have not given them up. Every present received 

 at a potlateh has to be returned at another potlateh, and a man who 

 would not give his feast in due time would be considered as not pay- 

 ing his debts. Therefore the law is not a good one, and can not be 

 enforced without causing general discontent. Besides, the Govern- 

 ment is unable to enforce it. The settlements are so numerous, and 

 the Indian agencies so large, that there is nobody to prevent the In- 

 dians doing whatsoever they like. 



The efforts of the Canadian Government to introduce agriculture 

 are likewise not very successful. It is true that in some districts the 

 extent of farming-land is considerable. But the Indian does not want 

 to till the soil. The sea yields fish and seals ; the woods furnish 

 roots, berries, and deer ; and the articles of European manufacture 

 which he wants are either obtained by barter or by a few weeks of 

 work in the canneries, saw-mills, hop-fields, or on ships. The indus- 

 tries to which the Indians of that region take readily are carpentry, 

 canning salmon, etc.; and the introduction of proper methods of fish- 

 ing and canning fish, of lumbering, and of trades connected with it, 

 would be more probable to lead to satisfactory results than that of 

 agriculture. 



EYOLUTION": WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS. 



Tj^VERYBODY nowadays talks about evolution. Like electricity, 

 -J— ^ the cholera-germ, woman's rights, the great mining boom, and 

 the Eastern question, it is " in the air." It pervades society every- 

 where with its subtile essence ; it infects small talk with its familiar 

 catchwords and its slang phrases ; it even permeates that last strong- 

 hold of rampant Philistinism, the third leader in the penny pajiers. 

 Everybody believes he knows all about it, and discusses it as glibly 

 in his every-day conversation as he discusses the points of race-horses 

 he has never seen, the charms of peeresses he has never spoken to, and 

 the demerits of authors he has never read. Everybody is aware, in a 

 dim and nebulous semi-conscious fashion, that it M-as all invented by 

 the late Mr. Darwin, and reduced to a system by Mr. Herbert Spencer, 

 don't you know, and a lot more of those scientific fellows. It is gen- 

 erally understood in the best-informed circles that evolutionism con- 

 sists for the most part in a belief about Nature at large essentially 

 similar to that applied by Topsy to her own origin and early history. 



