426 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. I. No. IG. 



cleared of the joint septums, through which 

 light darts feathered with a tuft of down, 

 or pieces of pith, are propelled by the breath. 



The blow-gun is used for killing birds 

 and small mammals. Fi-equentlj' the ar- 

 rows are poisoned, rendering the light dart 

 effective on larger game. The chief merit 

 of the blow-gun is its accuracy and the 

 silence with which it may be employed. 



The penetration of the blow-gun dart is 

 greater than would be imagined. At the 

 distance of 50 feet I have driven a blunt 

 dart one-quarter of an inch into a pine plank. 

 It is stated that the range of the blow-gun 

 among some tribes is from 80 to 100 yards. 



Apropos to Professor Mason's paper con- 

 necting the Eastern Asiatics with the Amer- 

 icans along a great natural migration line, 

 the distribution of the blow-gun may be in- 

 teresting. 



The blow-gun is a tropical or sub-tropical 

 device, and may be looked for in regions 

 where bamboo or cane grows. Neverthe- 

 less these tubes are often made of hard wood, 

 single, or of two excavated pieces joined to- 

 gether, and frequently one tube is thrust 

 inside of another to secure rigidity. The 

 examination of many of these blow-guns in- 

 spires a great respect for the ingenuity and 

 mechanical skill of the workers. 



The curious fact of distribution, however, 

 is that the Malays and American aborigines 

 alone use the blow-gun. The Malay speci- 

 mens of the blow-gun existing in the Na- 

 tional Museum are from the Dyaks of 

 Borneo, the Javanese, the Kj'ans of Burma 

 and the Johore people from the Malay 

 peninsula. The literature also supplies 

 other Malay localities. 



The North American specimens are from 

 the Chetimachas of Louisiana, who fre- 

 quently combine the tubes in series, forming 

 a compound blow-gun and the Cherokees of 

 the Carolinas. From Central Amercia, the 

 Indians of Honduras and Costa Eica ; from 

 South America, several Amazon tribes from 



Equador east and from British Guiana em- 

 plojr the blow-gun. Walter Hough. 



PSYCHOLOGY* 



Psychology, as we all know, is the 

 'science of mind.' But such a definition 

 does little more than raise the question, 

 What is mind? We cannot take mind for 

 granted, for it is the very thing that psy- 

 chology has to investigate. And j'et, al- 

 though ' mind ' is one of those words 

 which it is impossible to define, everyone 

 is able to attach some sort of meaning to it. 

 What do j'ou yourselves mean when you 

 talk of 3^our ' mind ? ' You medn, probablj', 

 some particular group or set of j'our internal 

 experiences ; some tangle or other of feel- 

 ings, thoughts, desires, resolutions, ideas, 

 wishes, hopes, actions, emotions, impulses, 

 expectations, memories. There are plenty 

 of words, expressing diflferent ' sides ' of 

 mind, as they are called. Mind, then, is 

 the sum total of all these experiences — of all 

 these processes. There is no mind beyond 

 them ; the term is simply the collective 

 name of all such processes as those which I 

 have enumerated. 



I said, however, that when j^ou talk, in 

 an everyday way, of your ' mind,' you 

 probably refer to some special set or group 

 of these experiences. When you say, " I 

 cannot make up my mind whether to do it 

 or not," you mean that you cannot make up 

 your present mind. Now here the psj'chol- 

 ogist makes a distinction. We use the term 

 ' consciousness ' to express the mind of the 

 present moment. Thus if I were to ask 

 you to tell me something of your experiences 

 just now, I should say to you : " Look iutO' 

 your consciousness, and see whether so-and- 

 so is taking place or not." Or, again, if I 

 were to analyze for you your present state 

 of mind — to try and imagine what is going 



* A lecture delivered to the Class in General Phil- 

 osophy (Introductory ) in Cornell University, Decem- 

 ber, 1894. 



