Vol. XXIV. No. 5.] 
POPULAE scie:n^oe jn^ews. 
67 
at present, owing to greater heat and moisture dur- 
ing the Carboniferous Age; but the intermediate 
strata in which the coal is imbedded must also be 
taken into account. Herodotus had heard t>om the 
Egyptian priests that the mud beds of the Nile 
which formed below Memphis, hardly increased a 
yard in a hundred years. Recent investigations 
have shown that the increase is only from three to 
four inches. Now as the bed of the coal-slate clay 
is one of the finest mud deposits known, the deposit 
of this stratum seems to require periods of time 
which are amazingly great to calculate. 
In the great coal-pits of Wales, for example, they 
find in a depth of nearly eleven thousand feet, from 
fifty to one hundred distinct beds of coal, the one 
surmounting the other, and intermingled with 
layers of clay several feet thick. Now- every one of 
these beds represents an old forest, which had to 
grow, vegetate, and perish in the place ; or, at 
least, an enormous and various mass of floating 
wood must have been transported from a distance 
by the action of the courses of the water and depos- 
ited at the mouth of rivers or lakes. During these 
successive submersions, the gigantic ichthyosau- 
ruses, as also their marine companions, sported in 
the waters which rolled over the plains and moun- 
tains, and, when they had subsided, the monsters 
were buried in the deep clay of the counties of 
Oxford, Warwick, and Dorset. 
[Original in Popular Science News.] 
THE DWELLINGS OF THE INDIANS OF 
NEW MEXICO. 
BY MRS. M. J. GORTON. 
The Lehuas, or the Leguas, a tribe of Indians 
dwelling in New Mexico, are so manifestly — from 
the easily-compared authentic descriptions of the 
early Spanish explorers, Coronado (1540-43), Fran- 
cisco Sanchaz Charnuscado (1580), Espejo (1583), 
and Caspar Castano de Sosa (1590) — the same peo- 
ple who now dwell in the pueblo, or communal 
houses, that a visit was planned to the cave and 
cliff dwellings, beyond the Rio Grande, where their 
forefathers dwelt. 
A visit to these singular people who inhabit the 
pueblo, or community houses, was so full of inter- 
est, the strangeness of the idea of the queer four- 
story domiciles entered from the roof of the upper 
story, and showing the idea of the caves in the 
cliffs, modeled on the protective idea of a long 
by-gone age, suggested an unusual amount of use- 
ful knowledge in the evolution of such houses from 
the cave home in the cliffs. So we visited the caves 
in the cliffs. 
Jaded, travel-worn, and utterly weary from cross- 
ing the long stretches of the desert land which lie 
far to the north and east, — sandy, dry, arid, and 
cheerless wastes, stretching on and ever on to an 
ever-receding horizon ; all browns and blacks or 
grays shading into browns, with no green or living 
thing to relieve the general aridness; under a flat, 
opaque sky, in which a copper, fiery orb swung 
slowly, mercilessly above us, pressing downward 
with a pitiless glare that fell with a heavy, aching, 
oppressive weight, ever increasing; the only sign 
of life, now and then a skulking coyote or the cactus 
clump, — we travelled down, down into the valley of 
the Rio Grande. 
Beyond the Rio Grande, the deep, gulch-like 
canons of the Sierra del Valle open out towards 
Santa Clara. The scenery here is very striking; 
the whole mass of mountains seem to have been 
lifted up from 6,000 to S,ooo feet, not in one contin- 
uous chain, as the Las Vegas range, but in inde- 
pendent, broken masses, and these have been so 
(coriated and furrowed by the action of electric 
forces and by the elements as to leave myriads of 
sharp ridges and peaks, separated by declivitous 
almost unfathomable canons, cut to the depth of 
from 5,000 to 6,000 feet. In the friable volcanic 
tufa of which their sides are formed have been dug 
out innumerable caves, with an ingenuity and pains- 
taking care that seems incredible when the tools are 
taken into consideration. These artificial caves are" 
many of them of small size, but the grouping and 
the connecting pathways show that the inhabitants 
lived on the communal plan, and each group repre- 
sents a family or village, undoubtedly. And, as the 
caves are often dug out one above the other, each 
group of caves represents a pueblo itself, and imi- 
tating, as far as practicable, the system of the many- 
storied communal village. Other ruins are found 
on top of the mesas and at the base of the canon, 
which indicate the many-storied pueblo, such as are 
occupied at the pre.sent time by the Pueblos, the 
Lehuas, and by the Buni Indians. 
These ancient cave habitations, which, from the 
nature of the rock and also from the peculiarity of 
the locality, were of easier construction, and also 
more easily defended against the encroachments of 
depredators, than houses, still exhibit many traces 
of their human occupants. The pottery fragments 
show considerable advancement in the use of 
potters' clay, the hideous idols and quaint devices 
in earthenware fragments of broken pottery resem- 
bling the quaint vessels sold by the Indians of the 
present day. Indeed, when on our return, at the 
mouth of the deep canon, where it opens down to 
the river, several of the natives, clothed in the 
striped Navajo blankets and buckskin leggings and 
moccasins, with their heavy black elf-locks tied back 
with a strip of red flannel or some colored cast-oft" 
rag of civilization, and with the sad, immobile 
features of this doomed race, approached and offered 
for sale the usual collection of black obsidian and 
coarse-baked earthenware, and amidst the very com- 
mon lot in the collection was an image intended to 
represent an owl, of a much higher type of earthen- 
ware finish, exactly resembling a piece of broken 
pottery of the same kind of finish and the same bird 
which I held in my hand, and which, from its 
appearance, seemed centuries old. 
The ruins of the pueblo villages, of which there 
are quite a number, were also visited. The ruin of 
Valverde, near Golden, is quite distinct in its char- 
acteristics of the communal plan. A chain of four 
handsome ancient villages, some of them quite 
large, extends from west to east, along the southern 
" Cresto." These are the " Pueblo Largo," " Pueblo 
Colorado," " Pueblo de She," and " Pueblo Blanco." 
Of the Lehuas pueblos, Santa Clara (Capo) San 
lldefouso (O-jo-que) stands on a site about one mile 
from the Bo-ve of 1598. 
The community houses of the Pueblo Indians of 
today are of the same construction and formed upon 
the same plan, as nearly as can be ascertained by 
comparison of the ruins, as those of three centuries 
ago. They are three, four, and sometimes five 
stories high, are built of adobes, have port-holes for 
windows, and are entered from the roof. Ladders 
are placed on the ground, and the ascent of the low 
one-storied room is made; then, crossing this dirt 
sun-baked flat roof, another story is mounted, 
another roof crossed, and so on until the entrance 
is reached on the roof of the upper story. Poles or 
logs are placed upon the walls of the sun-dried 
bricks, these are covered with hay and leaves, and 
on this the mud is plastered, which makes a roof 
that, in a high, dry climate, answers every purpose. 
The houses are very cool in summer, and said to be 
warm in winter. Thither all the necessaries for 
life are stored. The lands on which the maize, 
beans, and 6ther produce is raised are in the valley 
some distance away, and Ihe crops are all irrigated. 
The small cattle are also pastured far away, so that 
life, even at the primitive stage of a Pueblo Indian, 
is one of severe trial. 
New Mexico is rich in archieological treasures ; 
the mesas, hills, the edges of the plains, and the 
cliffs and caves, are covered with the ruins of pre- 
historic cities, towns, and villages, the inhabitants 
of which lived their day and sank into oblivion, 
ages ago. 
There is very little difference in the culture of the 
inhabitants of New Mexico today and of those 
whom Antonio De Espejo found and described three 
centuries ago. In his journal he says: "From 
Couches, situated on the western border of Texas, 
(probably centering around where the river of the 
same name discharges into the Rio Grande), they 
followed their journey for the space of fifteen days 
without meeting any people, all that while passing 
through woods and groves of pine trees (pinon) 
bearing such fruits as those of Castile. At the end 
whereof, having travelled, to their judgment, four 
score leagues, they came unto a small hamlet or 
village (pueblos at or near Paso del Norte or San 
Elizario) of a few people, in whose poor cottages, 
covered with straw, they found many deer-skins, as 
well dressed as those of Flanders, with great store 
of excellent white salt. They gave our men good 
entertainment for the space of two days, while they 
remained there, after which they bare them com- 
pany about twelve leagues, into certain great towns, 
always travelling by the river called the Rio Del 
Norte, above said, until they came into the country 
called by them New Mexico." The account of 
Captain Espejo, which is to be found in excellent 
Spanish, gives an account of many villages and a 
population numbering many thousand souls, and 
that the Pueblo Indians, like the Pueblo Indians of 
today, possessed many of the characteristics- of civ- 
ilization. 
Many peoples from many climes, representatives 
from nearly every civilized nation in the world, are 
to be found in New Mexico; and yet medijeval con- 
servatism, and the successive steps from such life 
as was to be found in the cliff dwellings to the 
industrial methods of the ancient Egyptians, are 
awakened from the sleep of centuries by the on-rush 
of the locomotive and the mighty, onward, irresisti- 
ble awakening to modern civilization and modern 
houses. 
[Original in Popular Science News.] 
THE JDODDER. 
BY S. E. KENNEDY. 
An interesting plant, common in this locality, is 
the Cuscuta Grenovii, or, as it is usually called, the 
dodder. It belongs to the order convolvulaceae, and 
is the only order of the group. Although there are 
several species of the genus, this is said to be the 
only one found in New England. 
Its general appearance is that of a snarl of orange- 
colored twine. There is not a particle of green any- 
where about it. It is usually found twining about 
some coarse weed, as the nettle, cleavers, etc., and I 
have found it wound in interminable coils around 
the stalks of coarse grass. It is also often found 
on the willow. It is said that some parasites 
are restricted to a particular species of plants 
for support, and that their seeds germinate only 
when in contact with the stem or root of the 
species upon which they are destined to live; but 
the Cuscuta does not show such preference, as I 
have myself seen it upon several difterent kinds of 
plants in no wise related. Gray says that parasites 
are found only upon those plants whose elaborate 
juices furnish propitious nourishment. 
