7 o 4 * POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the subjects treated and others by the natures of the mate- 

 rials used. 



For form's sake it is requisite to say that here as always those 

 units of a society who make themselves distinct by performing 

 functions of a certain kind, presently, along with separation from 

 the rest, begin to unite with one another. The specialized individ- 

 uals form a specialized aggregate. 



When in the Middle Ages the artists employed as assistants to 

 priests for ecclesiastical decoration became a class, they grew into 

 something like guilds. Levasseur, quoting Laborde, says they 

 were hardly distinguished from artisans : like them they formed 

 corporations under the name of paintres, tailleurs d'ymaiges et 

 voirriers. In Italy during the fourteenth century a Brotherhood 

 of Painters arose, which, taking for its patron St. Luke the Evan- 

 gelist, had for its purpose, partly mutual instruction and partly 

 mutual assistance and protection. 



That in modern times the tendency to integration has been 

 illustrated all know. It needs only further to remark that the 

 growth of the chief art corporations has been followed by the 

 growth of minor art corporations, some of them specialized by the 

 kinds of art practiced ; and also that embodiment of the profession 

 is now aided by art periodicals, and especially by one, The Artist, 

 devoted to professional culture and interests. 



MENTION is made in Prof. Frederick Starr's Comparative Religion Notes, 

 in the Biblical World, of the important place in the ceremonials of the 

 Indian tribes of the Southwest occupied by curious pictures or mosaics 

 made of sand. Different colored sands are procured by pounding up the 

 various kinds of rocks. The designs are made by qualified persons, accord- 

 ing to a prescribed method, after preparatory purification. Colors and 

 designs are symbolical. In making them the sand taken in the hand is 

 allowed to run out between the thumb and forefinger along the lines to be 

 produced. The practice is found among various pueblo peoples and among 

 the Navajos ; and notice is made of similar observances among the Hindus 

 and Parsees ; and sand pictures are made as a street amusement in Japan. 



THE London Spectator gathers from a number of letters it has received 

 that u a great many cultivated people like their small superstitions. . . . 

 Some dislike trusting their reason wholly, because, they think, that way 

 agnosticism may lie; some feel in their superstitious beliefs an antiquarian 

 charm, or relation to their forebears; while others appear to have the feel- 

 ing that, if they cleared the superstitions wholly out, their mental scenery 

 would be rendered base and marred by sameness. . . . They do not all put 

 the question, but all we think are inclined to ask us, as one rather clever 

 old lady has done, what harm the petty superstitions do ? Why not throw 

 salt over your shoulder if you spill it ?" 



