435 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Measure 

 Mechanics 



over the back of the hand to the wrist bone. 

 I have examined many hundreds of quivers, 

 and have always found the arrows to be of 

 the same length, while those of the tribe re- 

 semble in general appearance, but vary 

 slightly in length for each man. Dr. Dorsey 

 found the Naltunne, on Siletz Agency, in 

 Oregon, using the double arm's length, the 

 single arm's length, half the span, the cubit, 

 the half-cubit, the hand-length, the hand- 

 width, the finger-width, and from the tip of 

 the elbow across the body to the end of the 

 middle finger of the other hand. In most 

 of these cases the starting-point is the 

 meeting of the tips of the thumb and index- 

 finger. . . . 



Quite a series of measures were recog- 

 nized from the ground to the upper portions 

 of the body, to the ankle, to the upper por- 

 tion of the calf, to the knee-cap, to the 

 girdle, etc. MASON Aboriginal American 

 Mechanics (Memoirs of the International 

 Congress of Anthropology, p. 77). (Sch. 

 P. C.) 



21 3D. MEASURES, ANCIENT The 

 Human Body Furnished the Early Stand- 

 ards The Cubit, Foot, Span, Nail, Ell, and 

 Pace. It may be fairly guessed that man 

 first measured, as he first counted, on his 

 own body. When barbarians tried by finger- 

 breadths how much one spear was longer 

 than another, or when in building huts they 

 saw how to put one foot before the other to 

 get the distance right between two stakes, 

 they had brought mensuration to its first 

 stage. We sometimes use this method still 

 for rough work, as in taking a horse's height 

 by hands, or stepping out the size of a car- 

 pet. If care is taken to choose men of av- 

 erage size as measures, some approach may 

 be made to fair measurement in this way. 

 That it was the primitive way can hardly be 

 doubted, for civilized nations who have more 

 exact means still use the names of the body- 

 measures. Besides the cubit, hand, foot, 

 span, nail, . . . we have in English the 

 ell (of which the early meaning of arm or 

 forearm is seen in eZ-bow, the arm-bend), 

 also the fathom or cord stretched by the out- 

 spread arms in sailors' fashion, and the pace 

 or double step (Latin passus) of which a 

 thousand (mille) made the mile. TYLOB 

 Anthropology, ch. 13, p. 316. (A., 1899.) 



2131. MECHANIC MASTER OF THE 

 EARTH Wonders Wrought by Command of 

 Natural Forces. A mechanic is one who is 

 skilled in the use of tools, who works habitu- 

 ally in some kind of material to shape it, 

 who makes thereof something useful. He is, 

 therefore, an artisan or artificer. He prac- 

 tises always some kind of elaborative indus- 

 try, by which materials are changed in form 

 to adapt them to the use of others. Finally, 

 he is a utilitarian. His works are designed 

 to supply some need. As distinguished from 

 an artist, who works in order to give pleas- 

 ure, this man toils to feed the hungry, to 

 clothe the naked, to house the shelterless, to 

 enable all mankind to do their work, what- 



ever it may be. The modern mechanic is 

 absolute master of the earth. There is little 

 that he cannot lift, remove, dissolve, pene- 

 trate, transform. A catalog of his tools and 

 appliances would define all the trades and 

 industries of the world. All the material 

 resources of the earth, mineral, vegetable, 

 animal, are his. The winds, the waters, the 

 fire, the sunlight, the lightning are his serv- 

 ants. He understands the nature and 

 transformations of forces, "the constitution 

 and molecular activities of matter, the na- 

 ture of living beings. He has devised means 

 of multiplying himself, of converting space 

 and time and weight, one into the other. 

 And now he dreams of new applications of 

 force and combines with his fellows to con- 

 struct and govern society. The most fa- 

 vored nations have not always been so blest, 

 but the mechanic, like every other product 

 of Nature or of culture, is the result of 

 many evolutions. MASON Aboriginal Ameri- 

 can Mechanics (Memoirs of International 

 Congress of Anthropology, p. 69). (Sch. 

 P. C.) 



2132. MECHANICS, A MONKEY'S 

 COMPREHENSION OF Perseverance in 

 Learning. To-day he [a brown capuchin 

 monkey] obtained possession of a hearth- 

 brush, one of the kind which has the handle 

 screwed into the brush. He soon found the 

 way to unscrew the handle, and having done 

 that he immediately began to try to find out 

 the way to screw it in again. This he in 

 time accomplished. At first he put the 

 wrong end of the handle into the hole, but 

 turned it round and round the right way for 

 screwing. Finding it did not hold, he turned 

 the other end of the handle and carefully 

 stuck it into the hole, and began again to 

 turn it the right way. It was of course a 

 very difficult feat for him to perform, for 

 he required both his hands to hold the 

 handle in the proper position and to turn it 

 between his hands in order to screw it in, 

 and the long bristles of the brush prevented 

 it from remaining steady or with the right 

 side up. He held the brush with his hind 

 hand, but even so it was very difficult for 

 him to get the first turn of the screw to fit 

 into the thread; he worked at it, however, 

 with the most unwearying perseverance un- 

 til he got the first turn of the screw to 

 catch, and he then quickly turned it round 

 and round until it was screwed up to the 

 end. The most remarkable thing was that, 

 however often he was disappointed in the 

 beginning, he never was induced to try turn- 

 ing the handle the wrong way; he always 

 screwed it from right to left. As soon as he 

 had accomplished his wish, he unscrewed it 

 again, and then screwed it in again the sec- 

 ond time rather more easily than the first, 

 and so on many times. When he had be- 

 come by practise tolerably perfect in screw- 

 ing and unscrewing, he gave it up and took 

 to some other amusement. One remarkable 

 thing is that he should take so much trouble 

 to do that which is no material benefit to 



