664 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



square miles in the West where the wind has covered the land 

 with monuments of its undisputed reign, the ever-changing sand 

 hills, very little is known as to the quantity of the work per- 

 formed by the wind in such regions, or as to the relation between 

 this work and prevailing wind velocities. It is evident, also, that 

 a considerable quantity of fine debris is removed by the wind in 

 such places, but observations are wanting as to what becomes of 

 this product of trituration after it is raised from the creeping 

 sand, how far it is carried, or where it is deposited. The atmos- 

 phere is known to carry appreciable quantities of dust, as already 

 stated, even in low winds, but on this work the study of the dust 

 storms and sand storms has no bearing. The study of the geo- 

 logical work of the atmosphere evidently requires a wider basis 

 of facts. 



THE "NEW WOMAN" AND HER DEBTS. 



Br CLARE de GRAFFENRIED. 



WE delight to glorify the " new woman," the advanced woman. 

 If, however, we study Prof. Otis T. Mason's book, Woman's 

 Share in Primitive Culture, we find the " new woman " to be only 

 a revival of a very ancient type. Prof. Mason says that, for the 

 highest ideals of civilization, in humanitarianism, education, and 

 government, the way was prepared in savagery by mothers and 

 the female clan groups. While men were the inventors of every 

 murderous art, women were the actual inventors of the peaceful 

 arts, and excelled in weaving, pottery, agriculture, the prepara- 

 tion of foods, and the substitution of other forces to do the work 

 of the human muscles. Woman made rough looms. She tamed 

 the present domestic animals. The first empirical physicians 

 were not the sorcerers but the herb women, who collected also the 

 earliest materia medica. Savage woman founded all the modern 

 crafts. She was the butcher, the cook and server, the skin curer 

 and dresser, the furrier, tailor, carver, cobbler, the hat and dress 

 maker. She it was who made possible the great modern textile 

 industries. In weaving, dyeing, embroidery, molding, modeling, 

 and painting, in the origination first of geometric patterns and 

 then of free-hand drawing, primitive women elaborated aesthetic 

 art. They were also the earliest linguists, the founders of society 

 as distinguished from savagery, the home-makers, and the patrons 

 of religion. 



Undeniably in those days woman was emancipated. In an- 

 cient civilizations her industrial skill was astonishing, as among 

 the Egyptians, where, too, her legal and political rights were care- 

 fully guarded. But as clan groups made way for larger political 



