626 EXHIBIT AT THE COTTON STATES EXPOSITION. 



complete history of cards and chess, beginning with the primitive forms 

 originally used for divination, down to the games of the present day. 



Especial interest attaches to the fact that the clue to the origin of 

 both chess and cards was found by Mr. Culin, with the aid given by 

 Mr. Cushing, among the aboriginal people of America. The pack of 

 cards is shown to have originally consisted of a bundle of arrows, 

 marked with the signs of the world quarters. The shaftments, or 

 feathered part of these arrows, bearing cosmical marks, were first used 

 in fortune telling, and from their use our card games arose. 



In America the Indian did not get beyond the use of carved and 

 painted staves. The American case shows arrows of the McCloud 

 Elver Indians, of California, marked with colored ribbons, by which 

 they were distinguished. Side by side with them are the gambling 

 sticks of the Haides, of Vancouver Island, similarly marked with rings 

 of color and used like cards in their gambling even at the present day. 

 In the adjoining case, devoted to Eastern Asia, the practice arrows of 

 Korea are shown, and with them the derived playing cards here made 

 of oiled paper, yet bearing both on their backs and faces devices copied 

 from the cut feathers of the arrows. With them are Chinese cards with 

 the same emblems surviving as markers or indexes at the ends. These 

 cards are "double-headers," as indeed were the gambling sticks, carry- 

 ing back the idea of our common playing cards with double heads and 

 index marks to the most remote antiquity. The Japanese cards, in the 

 same case, bear emblems derived in part from the same source, while 

 the circular cards, called Gunify, of which a beautiful pack is shown, 

 are painted in colors to correspond with the world quarters. A single 

 pack of the national cards of each of the principal countries in the 

 world follow, comprising, in Europe, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, 

 Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, England, and Russia. The card series 

 closes with the pack with pictures of the Chicago Exposition and the 

 cards with pictures of the Confederate flag, made in England for sale 

 in the South during the war. 



The chess series begins, like that of cards, with the divinatory games 

 of primitive people, in which our game originated. America is here 

 again conspicuous, and, with the objects representing the first steps in 

 the evolution of the game, are shown other common things, such as 

 visiting cards and the folding fan, which Mr. Culin traces, with chess, 

 to the marked arrow of primitive culture. The historical chess, series 

 comprises boards and men from India, Burmah, the Malay Peninsula, 

 the Maldive Islands, Korea, China, and Japan. 



The specimens are all arranged as in actual play. 



DEPARTMENT OF ARTS AND INDUSTRIES. 



In Alcove K Avas shown also a small case containing a collection of 

 ancient glass from excavations in the vicinity of Tyre and Sidon, 

 remarkable not only for its beauty of form but on account of the 

 entirely iridescent coloring which it has acquired through having been 

 buried in the soil for twenty centuries or more. 



Adjoining this was a case of carved ivories from Japan. The native 

 sculptors have shown, with great minuteness and accuracy, the cos- 

 tume, tools, and methods of work of a large number of the native 

 mechanics before the introduction of any European implements — the 

 carpenter, the mason, the armor maker, the lantern maker, the umbrella 

 maker, the cooper, etc. 



