46 



NOTES — ORIGINAL AND SELECTED. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 A "Wooden Age" in Russia. — It is stated, in connection 

 with the estabhshment by ^I. Witte, the Minister of Finance, of 

 a Committee at St. Petersburg to famiUarise the muzhik with 

 the use of iron, and to bring iron implements within his reach, 

 that the peasant in many parts of the country does not possess, 

 all told, a shilling's-worth of iron in any form. His plough is 

 w^ood, with a \vooden share sometimes shod with any bit of metal 

 handy ; his harrow is entirely wood ; his cart is pegged together 

 with wooden dowels, and has often not a scrap of the 

 nobler metal in its entire composition ; his harness is rope 

 and straps ; the latter never have buckles, the straps being 

 wound round and round until they grip, while his horse has very 

 often not so much as its bit of iron. To turn to other articles, 

 the muzhik uses wooden spoons, spades, eating bowls ; cooking 

 pots of clay lifted out of the fire by two forms of iron hook of the 

 value, perhaps, of twopence ; his hatchet is metal, of course, but 

 his skill in its use has taught him to use dovetails and coarser 

 joints everywhere in place of a nail. His dress is innocent of any 

 use of metal ; he does not wear boots the greater part of the year, 

 and they have no metal in them for the most part when he does 

 wear them, on great holidays ; his girdle is a sash without buckle, 

 and his buttons are wood, or knots and loops. Altogether, the 

 inhabitant of another planet dropped into some districts of Russia 

 would never, perhaps, realise that the metal ages had yet arrived 

 upon this earth, and in characteristic Russian fashion the Minister 

 of Finance is setting to work to remedy the evil, and provide in 

 this w^ay a home market which will suffice to keep alive the iron 

 industry of the Empire when the Government ceases to build 

 raihvays. — Standard, jNIarch ist, 1903. 



Primitive Fishing-Hooks. — In the Amateuv Photogvaphcy 

 for February 5th, 1903, there is a 

 note on wooden fish-hooks, which 

 is confirmatory of Mr. E. Levitt's 

 observations in the Essex Nat- 

 uralist (vol. X. p. 300, and vol. xii. 

 p. 28), on the use of such hooks on the Essex Coast and in 



France. The writer, " Menevia," says : — 



"I was very surprised recently at Laugharne, a small Welsh fishing village 

 which possesses a most picturesque old castle, to come on some fishennen using 



V Ir r t 



