162 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



(4) It is iudeed a cradle, to be bung upon tbe limbs to rock, answer- 

 ing literally to the nursery rhyme : 



Rock a-bye baby upon the tree top, 

 When the wind blows the cradle will rock, 

 When the bough bends the cradle will fall, 

 Down will come baby, and cradle, and all. 



(5) It is also a play-house and baby-jumper. On many, nearly all, 

 specimens may be seen dangling objects to evoke the senses, foot-rests 

 by means of which the little one may exercise its legs, besides other 

 conveniences anticipatory of the child's needs. 



(6) The last set of functions to which the frame is devoted are those 

 relating to what we may call the graduation of infancy, when the pap- 

 poose crawls out of its chrysalis little by little, and then abandons it 

 altogether. The child is next seen standing partly on the mother's 

 cincture and partly hanging to her neck or resting like a pig in a poke 

 within the folds of her blanket. 



An exhaustive treatment of this subject would include a careful 

 study of the bed and especially of the pillow, in every instance, as well 

 as of the frame. But collectors have been extremely careless in this 

 regard. Very few cradles in the National Museum are accompanied 

 with the beds and pillows. Were it not that here and there a traveler 

 or a correspondent had made observations on the field, a hopeless la- 

 cuna would be in our way. Much remains to be done exactly at this 

 point, and future investigators must turn their attention to this subject 

 especially. 



In this investigation much depends upon the age at which the child 

 is placed in the cradle, the manner of bandaging and of suspending. 

 Also there are a thousand old saws, superstitious, times and seasons, 

 formularies, rites and customs hovering around the first year of every 

 child's life in savagery that one should know, in order to comprehend 

 many things attached to the cradle and its uses. Indeed, no one but 

 an Indian mother could narrate the whole story in detail. Awaiting 

 information from these sources, we shall describe as faithfully as pos- 

 sible the material now stored in the National Museum. 



The method pursued in this description is that adopted in the series 

 already begun in the report of 1884. The design is to apply the rules 

 and methods of natural history to the inventions of mankind. We fol- 

 low up the natural history of each human want or craviug or occupa- 

 tion separately with a view to combining them into a comparative psy- 

 chology as revealed in things. 



Again, Bastian's study of "great areas" finds a beautiful illustration 

 at this point in the fact that the cradle-board or frame is the child of 

 geography and of meteorology. In the frozen North the Eskimo mother 

 carries her infant in the hood of her parka whenever it is necessary to 

 take it abroad. If she used a board or frame the child would perish 

 with the cold. Indeed, the settled condition of the Eskimo does away 

 with the necessity of such a device. 



