ANTHROPOLOGY. 
113 
made almost every where with flint and steel or lucifers,in some districts^ 
as South Africa or Polynesia, people still know the primitive method of 
fire-making by rubbing or drilling a pointed stick into another piece of 
wood. Europeans find difficulty in learning this old art, which requires 
some knack. As is well known to sportsmen, different districts have 
their special devices for netting, trapping and other ways of taking game 
and fish, some of which are well worth notice, such as spearing or shooting 
fish under water, artificial decoys, and the spring-traps set with bent 
boughs, which are supposed to have first suggested the idea of the bow. 
While the use of dogs in hunting is found in most parts of the world, 
there is the utmost variety of breeds and training. Agriculture in its 
lower stages is carried on by simple processes; but interesting questions 
arise as to the origin of its grain and fruits, and the alterations in 
them by transplanting into a new climate and by ages of cultivation. 
Thus in Chili there is found wild what botanists consider the original 
potato; but while maize was a staple of both Americas at the time of 
Colombus, its original form has no more been identified than that of 
wheat in the Old World. The cookery of all nations is in principle known 
to the civilised European; but there are special preparations to notice, 
such as bucaning or drying meat on a hurdle above a slow fire, broiling 
kibabs or morsels of meat on the skewer in the East, &c. Many peoples 
have something peculiar in the way of beverages, such as the chewed 
Polynesian kava , or the South American mate sucked through a tube. 
Especially fermented liquors have great variety, such as the kumiss from 
mare’s milk in Tartary, the pombe or millet-beer of Africa, and the kvass 
or rye-beer of Russia. The rudest pottery made by hand, not thrown 
on the wheel, is less and less often met with, but ornamentation trace¬ 
able to its being moulded on baskets is to be seen; and calabashes, joints 
of bamboo, and close-plaited baskets, are used for water-vessels, and even 
to boil in. Among the curious processes of metal-working, contrasting 
with those of modern Europe, though often showing skill of their own, 
may be mentioned the simple African smelting-forge by which iron-ore is 
reduced with charcoal in a hole in the ground, the draught being sup¬ 
plied by a pair of skins for bellows. In the far East a kind of air-pump 
is used, of which the barrels are hollowed logs. The Chinese art of 
patching cast-iron with melted metal surprises a European, and the 
Hindu manufacture of pative steel ( wootz ) is & remarkable process. JJp 
VOL. II. i 
