28 



SCIENCE, 



[Vol. IX., No. 206 



stone, to which it may or may not be united by 

 means of pitch. Acorns are poured into this and 

 hulled, and afterward reduced to meal. In those 

 instances where the hopper is not fastened to the 

 stone, the hulls remain above, and the powdered 

 acorns sift down into the basket-tray. Water-tight 

 baskets for ' stone-boiling ' mush and for other cu- 

 linary operations are made by this tribe. The 

 mush-paddle of wood (fig. 1), the ladles of horn 

 (figs. 3, 3), and the small stone paint-mortar (fig. 

 4), must not be overlooked. 



The Pima or Cocopa miller (2) has for her out- 

 fit a carrying-net, a bean-crusher, a trough-mortar, 

 a granary, and a ' metate,' besides a great variety 

 of pottery, which the Hupa does not make. It 

 may be mentioned here that none of the great 

 Tinne stock, to which the Kutchin, Athapascan, 

 Apache, and Navajo belong, seem to have made 

 pottery at any time. The bean-crusher (fig. 10) is 

 a cone of coarse strong wattling set in the ground. 

 It is carried to the bean-trees, and in it the pods 

 are broken up by means of a long wooden pestle 

 (fig. 12), so that the miller can get a heavier load 

 into her net. In other words, her ' first process ' 

 is crushing the pods in the field. The carrying- 

 net of these tribes is most ingenious, consisting of 

 four frame-sticks, a hooped rim, and a net woven 

 in a very curious and difficult stitch. Besides the 

 net, there is a back-pad made of palm-leaf, a 

 padded head-band, and a forked rest-stick, which 

 the harvester-miller uses as a cane when carrying 

 her load. The gathered beans are stored in bee- 

 hive granaries (fig. 16) of various patterns, made 

 of straw se«ved in a continuous coil by means of 

 tough bark. The ' second process ' is the reduc- 

 tion of the broken pods to coarse meal in a wooden 

 trough or mortar (fig. 13). The last process is 

 that of the ' metate,' or mealing-slab (fig. 15). The 

 jars for holding the meal (fig. 14) are cream-col- 

 ored, decorated in black. In summer the miller 

 works in an open shed (fig. 17), but in cooler 

 weather she transfers the scene of her operations 

 to a mud-covered, wattled hut (fig. 18). 



Let us now turn to plate 2. In the eastern 

 part of the United States are found multitudes of 

 well-wrought pestles, such as those shown in fig. 

 3 ; but there is a scarcity of good mortars from 

 the same section. This scarcity can be accounted 

 for by the fact that the mortars were perishable, 

 being made of wood. It must not be forgotten 

 that this is the region of maize (fig. 2) and hominy, 

 and until very recently the hominy -logs or wooden 

 mortars (fig. 4) survived on our southern planta- 

 tions. Even at the present day it would not be 

 difficult to find them in use in the more remote 

 regions. Mr. Schoolcraft gives an illustration 

 (fig. 4), showing how the ingenious miller has in- 



voked the elasticity of a limb to lighten her task, 

 and it would be interesting to know whether the 

 miller or the bowyer was the first to make use of 

 this labor-saving device. 



The Sioux Indians formerly dried buffalo meat 

 until it could be reduced to meal or pemmican. 

 The outfit of the Sioux miller then consisted of a 

 bowl made of the toughest dried rawhide, and a 

 maul (fig. 1). The stone head of this maul was 

 bound to the slender wooden handle by means of 

 a hood of rawhide, put on green and allowed to 

 shrink. The Ute miller, living in the deserts of 

 the great interior basin, has to utilize every kind 

 of seed that will sustain life. Her set of tools in- 

 cludes a conical carrying-basket (figs. 8, 10), a 

 gathering-wand (fig. 9), a fanning and roasting 

 tray (fig. 7), and a ' metate,' or mealing slab (fig. 

 11). These mealing-slabs (figs. 11, 12, 13) are 

 common in tropical and sub-tropical America. 

 The conical basket is closely woven, with a buck- 

 skin bottom, and has a soft head-band for the 

 miller's forehead. The gathering- wand is an open- 

 work, spoon-shaped frame of twine basketry, and 

 is used for beating seeds into the carrying-basket, 

 as shown in fig, 8, The fanning and roasting tray 

 is shallow, and shaped like a cream-skimmer. It 

 is used to separate chaff from seeds, or to parch 

 the seeds, which are put into the tray with a hot 

 stone, and the whole deftly shaken together. The 

 parched seeds are afterwards reduced to powder 

 on the mealing-stone. 



There is scarcely a tribe or people that does not 

 invoke the services of the miller in some manner. 

 Many tribes use a greater variety of stone imple- 

 ments than do those mentioned, and all tribes 

 have their own separate devices for gathering, 

 storing, and grinding provisions. Take the wood 

 and other perishable substances away from these 

 millers' outfits, and we have left an archeological 

 cabinet. In a general and cautious way, add 

 these articles and attachments of animal and 

 vegetal origin to your collection of ancient mill- 

 ing-tools, and you will have a comprehensive 

 notion of the milling methods in the olden 

 times, O. T. Mason. 



PARIS LETTER. 

 Two of the many posts formerly held by the 

 eminent zoologist Henri Milne-Edwards were re- 

 cently filled by elections at the Academy of 

 sciences and the Sorbonne. Milne-Edwards's suc- 

 cessor in the former institution is M. Sappey, 

 who was recently removed from his professorship 

 in the medical school on account of his age. M. 

 Sappey 's principal competitor was M. Eanvier, the 

 well-known histologist, who, it must be conceded, 

 ranks higher as a scientist than his more fortunate 



