216 PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



savage harvester to an arrow-straight Italian ^yater-carrier, About the 

 middle of October the Indians of uorthern California beat the acorns 

 from the trees with long poles, and carry them home in deep conical 

 baskets. The squaws remove the hulls by holding an acorn on a stone 

 and giving it a slight tap with a stone pestle. The nuts are then dried 

 and beaten to powder in a hollow of a rock. The flour is soaked a few 

 hours in a large hollow scooped in the sand. The water draining off 

 carries away the bitterness. It is then cooked into a kind of mush in 

 baskets by means of hot stones, or baked into bread in an underground 

 oven. (Cont. jST. A. Ethuol. Til, 421.) If the harvest is of seeds rather 

 than of acorns, they must be winnowed. This is done in a shallow bowl 

 tray of the closest twined basketry, which the good woman has not failed 

 to decorate with geometric patterns, following that incomparable artistic 

 instinct which is the heritage of all the people who breathe the air from 

 the Pacific Ocean. Further inland among the Ute tribes a hot stone is 

 trundled around in this tray to partially roast the seed 'as well as to 

 consume the chaff. 



If the harv^est of seeds or acorns is not immediately needed, it is 

 stored in close granaries or in open-work baskets. (Plate vii, Figs. 53 

 and 54. 



The miller's apparatus is the most intricate in the evolutionary series 

 short of the quern, and consists of five parts, the mat or tray at the 

 bottom (Plate VII, 52a), the mortar-stone (52&), the hopper (52c) the 

 pestle (Fig. 56 and 52rZ), and the grass-root broom for sweeping up the 

 grist (52(7). This affair is quite widespread, including the territory 

 of two classes of basket- weavers, those that twine and those that coil 

 their work. (See paper on basketry, Sm. Eep. 1884, II.) 



The basket-tray plays the part of the cloth under the hand- mill to 

 receive the grist when the hopper and stone are not glued together. 



The bowl-shaped basket hoppers vary slightly in size and much in 

 adornment. But Ray's specimen is 10 inches wide at the top and has an 

 opening 3^- inches in the bottom. (Plate vri. Fig. 55, also Fig. 52c.) The 

 weaving of this specimen is very intricate. Tiie wirp is of osier radiated. 

 Commencing at the lower edge the weft proceeds as follows: Two rows 

 of j)lain twined osier; four rows of three-ply twine, commencing with two 

 strands of osier and one of brown bast, and ending with three of brown. 

 The greater part of the body is made of brown and black bast twined in 

 two-ply, but the white color is produced by overlaying either of these 

 two colors with a strip of grass leaf which the weaver knows how to re- 

 veal or conceal on the outer portion. The geometric figures are in black, 

 brown, and grass color. The margin is very curiously wrought, as fol- 

 lows: The ends of the warp osiers are bent downward and plaited into 

 an eight-ply braid and the ends cut off on the inside. As the braid 

 passes each warp osier it is plaited in and one cut off. This braid forms 

 a margin at an angle of 45 degrees. Under the cut ends, a hoop of wil- 

 low is bound. This hopper is used as follows : A large shallow basket is 



