SKETCH OF WERNER VON SIEMENS. 831 



said to taste very sweet. A yellow lichen furnishes a coloring- 

 matter, and the root of a certain fern (Asplenium or Aspidium) 

 yields a "black dye. The leaves of the syringa (PMJadelphus lew- 

 isii) were formerly used as a soap in washing clothing. The fiber 

 plants are an Asclepias or milkweed, and the common nettle of 

 the country. 



The sweat-houses of all the Northwestern Indians are very 

 much alike. They consist of a dome-shaped framework, formed 

 by bending willow sticks over one another, covered with blankets 

 or skins or earth, and a pile of hot stones in the center, or a hole 

 in which hot stones are thrown. The Indian takes his place in 

 the booth, and water is thrown upon the stones. The bathers sit 

 in a suffocating temperature till they have had enough of it, and 

 then rush out and plunge into the water, which they take care to 

 have always near. 



SKETCH OF WERNER VON SIEMENS. 



WITH Werner Siemens, says a German biographer, died a 

 prince of science, a pathbreaker in the region of electro- 

 technics, a man whose activity extended far beyond his own 

 narrow district, bearing fruit in other branches of human 

 achievement; one of the greatest industrial characters, not of 

 Germany only, but of the whole world ; an industrial character, 

 however, to whom gain was never an object in itself, but who 

 rather found in it the incentive to new scientific studies. 



Erxst Werxer Siemens was born at Lenthe, Hanover, De- 

 cember 13, 1816, and died in Berlin, December 6, 1892. He came of 

 a family very rich in offspring — while he was the eldest son among 

 ten children. His father, Christian Ferdinand Siemens, was a 

 tenant farmer and forester, who had qualified himself for his 

 profession by studying at the school at Ilfeld and the University 

 of Gottingen. He afterward went to learn practical agriculture 

 with Councilor Deichmann at Poggenhagen, where he married 

 the councilor's daughter, Eleanora Deichmann, preparatory to 

 settling upon his estate at Lenthe. 



The English think they have a kind of birthright claim upon 

 Werner Siemens, because, at the time of his birth, the King of 

 England was Elector of Hanover. The connection is not entirely 

 nattering to them, for the elder Siemens fared hardly at the 

 hands of King George. He was arrested and fined for detaining 

 some royal deer which had trespassed upon his premises while 

 awaiting the answer of the gamekeeper to his inquiry as to the 

 disposition he should make of them. To escape such unpleasant 

 incidents the elder Siemens removed, in 1823, to Menzendorf in 



