gives us a power that is rare in nature. 
We can tell whether things are hot or 
cold, rough or smooth, sharp or blunt, 
wet or dry, and gather many other items 
of interest which the other senses are 
incapable of compassing. 
A monkey can wind his tail about a 
nut and tell by the sense of touch 
whether it is worth his while to crack 
it. The elephant moves the tips of his 
trunk carefully over the surface of what 
he wishes to examine and gets knowl- 
edge he can depend upon. But it is 
the hand of man that shows the highest 
order of development of touch. By it 
blind men know their friends and read 
their books, bank clerks detect the 
qualities of the notes they handle, and 
a thousand deft acts in the arts are ac- 
complished. 
The true skin is covered with minute 
projections called papillae. They may 
be traced in the palm by the ridges of 
the scarf skin. They are arranged there 
in rows so that while the naked eye 
does not discern the projections indi- 
vidually the rows of them may be no- 
ticed on the surface of the scarf skin. 
Some of these papillse contain blood 
vessels and others corpuscles of touch. 
Some papillae are small and simple, 
others compound. In one square inch 
of the palm have been counted 8,100 
compound and 20,000 smaller papillae 
arranged in regular rows. There seem 
to be different end organs for different 
sensations. There are different spots 
which may be touched with a fine 
pointed pencil of copper which is quite 
hot and no feeling will result. Perhaps 
the same identical spots touched by the 
same point, after having been immersed 
in ice water, will give sensations of cold. 
Hot spots and cold spots may be found 
and marked upon the skin. There are 
more hot spots than cold ones. Either 
of these when disturbed electrically 
will give sensations of heat or cold 
when neither heat nor cold is applied. 
Ashe mentions an experiment which 
shows that the body is not equipped 
exactly alike on both sides, for when 
both hands are placed in hot water the 
heat seems greater to the left than to 
the right hand. Aristotle wrote of the 
peculiar feeling produced by placing 
the ends of the first and second fingers 
upon a small substance like a pea. 
With the fingers in their natural posi- 
tion you feel one small round body. 
Place the same fingers upon the same 
pea, but with one finger crossed over 
the other so as to touch the pea on the 
other side, and you distinctly feel two 
peas. Another of the freaks of touch 
may easily be tried by placing the 
palms together so that fingers and 
thumbs are against their fellows. Close 
the hands partly and open them again 
repeatedly and in a short time instead 
of each finger's feeling another finger 
there will seem to be an oiled pane of 
glass between the hands keeping the 
fingers about a quarter of an inch apart. 
The delusion subsides when you look 
at your hands. 
Leather was very early known in 
Egypt and Greece', and the thongs of 
manufactured hides were used by all na- 
tions for ropes, harness, and other in- 
struments. The renowned Gordian knot, 
330 B. C., was of leather thongs. A 
leather cannon was made in Edinburgh 
at the time of the American revolution. 
Although it was fired three times and 
found to answer, and other firearms 
were made of this material, it never be- 
came common. Had it not been for 
Mother Goose the leather gun might 
have dropped from the memory of man. 
Leather is made from the true skin 
and tannic acid. The processes of tan- 
ning have recently undergone such 
changes and improvements that it is out 
of the question to follow them briefly. 
The union of the white fibres of gelatin, 
gluten, and kindred substances with the 
tannic acid, forms insoluble compounds 
which have great resistance and 
strength. This acid is found in oak 
and hemlock bark, and also in that of 
many other trees such as willow, ash, 
larch, sumac, and terra japonica. Tea 
is one-fourth tannic acid. 
Deer skin makes the finer kinds of 
morocco, while sheep and goat skin 
make the grades that are used in book- 
binding. Seal skin makes a superior 
kind of enamelled leather for boots, 
bags, dressing-cases, and ornamental 
articles. Hog skin is so full of oil that 
it resists the tannic acid, yet saddles are 
made from it, and it has other uses. 
The French glove makers produce a 
140 
