32 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 393. 



first intercourse with Europeans. That there 

 is little evidence of the use of coiled basketry 

 among them at that time is not surprising, 

 for the early writers were not technologists 

 and were satisfied with recording incidentally 

 the most meager facts concerning the arts 

 and customs of the natives with whom they 

 came in contact. 



Basketry of any kind is rarely found in 

 graves or its impressions upon pottery east 

 of the Eocky Mountains. The burial caves 

 have, however, furnished a very few examples 

 of the widely distributed twined weaving, but 

 so far as I know, no examples of the coiled 

 pattern. We must look therefore to existing 

 tribes for the principal evidences of the occur- 

 rence in ancient times of difTerent types of 

 this branch of textile art. 



The isolated examples of coiled basketry 

 occurring east of the Rocky Mountains noted 

 by Professor Mason may be supplemented by 

 a number of specimens in the Peabody Mu- 

 seum at Cambridge obtained twenty-seven 

 years ago from the Ojibwa Indians of Lake 

 Superior. The coils are of sweet grass and 

 are about one-fourth of an inch in diameter. 

 They are joined with common sewing thread, 

 the stitches being continued from the edge 

 towards the center of the basket, and not fol- 

 lowing the coils as is usual, the mode of con- 

 struction having somewhat degenerated. 



I see no good reason for attributing this 

 form of basketry among the Ojibwa to Euro- 

 pean influence. The Algonquians in early 

 historic days were expert basket makers. The 

 excellence and variety of the old basket work 

 of the New England Indians for example is 

 represented to-day only by the degenerate 

 splint basketry which is not worthy of a place 

 upon the shelves of a museum. 



There is not to my knowledge a single ex- 

 ample of woven basketry extant from New 

 England that may be considered typical of any 

 one of the many primitive types from these 

 states referred to in the early records. Gookin, 

 writing in 1674, tells us of "several sorts of 

 baskets, great and small; some will hold four 

 bushels or more, and so downward to a pint. 

 * * * Some of these baskets are made of 

 rushes: some of bents [coarse grass], others of 



maize husks, others of a kind of silk grass ; 

 others of a kind of wild hemp; and some of 

 the barks of trees, many of these very neat and 

 artificial, with the portraitures of birds, beasts, 

 fishes and flowers upon them in colors." The 

 soldiers under Capt. Underbill, after destroy- 

 ing the Pequot fort in Connecticut, in 1637, 

 broiight back with them 'several delightful 

 baskets.' Brereton (1602) found baskets of 

 twigs 'not unlike our osier.' Champlain saw 

 corn stored in 'large grass sacks.' Josselyn 

 writes of 'baskets, bags and mats woven with 

 sparke, bark of the lime tree and rushes of 

 several kinds dyed as before, some black, 

 blue, red, yellow.' In 1620 the Pilgrims found 

 in a cache at Cape Cod a 'great new basket,' 

 round and narrow at the top, and containing 

 three or four bushels of shelled corn, with 

 thirty-six goodly ears unshelled. The New 

 England Indians were probably not more ex- 

 pert basket makers than other tribes to the 

 west and south. 



Does not the fact that the three distinct 

 forms of weaving, twined, checker and coiled, 

 are still found among the Ojibwas seem to 

 indicate a survival "of these types from pre- 

 historic times? Charles C. Willoughby. 



Peabody Museum. 



ItODESCENT CLOUDS. 



To THE Editor of Science : Iridescent 

 clouds are such comparatively rare phenomena 

 that notes on individual occurrences of them 

 are not superfluous. On June 11, I had an 

 opportunity to see some wonderfully flne ex- 

 amples of these interesting clouds. It was a 

 fine summer day; the sky a deep blue, with 

 scattered cirro-stratus patches drifting across 

 it from west to east, and the wind SW. About 

 11. ."0 A.M. a small detached cirro-stratus cloud, 

 roughly oblong in shape, and at that time 

 about 15° to 20° from the sun, attracted my 

 attention because of its dazzling whiteness, 

 quite unlike the appearance of ordinary clouds. 

 Very soon colors began to appear, and at the 

 end of about five minutes there were developed 

 some faint bands of color, a faint pinkish 

 tint being uppermost; then a yellowish-green, 

 and then below that a delicate bluish green. 

 These bands were roughly parallel with tlie 



