own house playing cards—a horrible crime for the Calvinist conscience which was lying ready to revenge itself!

5 On the 28th of October, Ansel Bourne started for the village of Westerly, and was noticed by some neighbors to be walking fast, as though feeling quite well. He was conscious of no unusual feelings till the thought came vividly into his mind that he ought to go to meeting (i. e., to church). Mentally he enquired, "Where?" The inner voice replied, "To the Christian' chapel." To this idea his spirit rose in bitter opposition, and he said within himself, "I would rather be struck deaf and dumb forever than to go there." A few minutes after he felt giddy, and sat down on a stone by the wayside to rest. He saw an old man in the distance approaching him with a wagon, and immediately after felt as though some powerful hand drew down something over his head and face and finally over his whole body, depriving him of his sight, his hearing and his speech, and leaving him perfectly helpless. Yet, he declares, he had as perfect a power of thought as at any time in his life, and the awful choice he had made (that he would rather be deaf and dumb forever than go to the Christian chapel) came with awful significance before him. His whole mind was full of agonizing horror and dread of the God he thought he had so irretrievably offended. He was conscious of being taken up in the wagon; of being carried into a house and placed in a chair, and then of being put in bed.

Dr. Thurston, who was summoned immediately, says that on reaching his patient's bedside he "found him perfectly insensible. the pupils of his eyes quite insensible of light, widely dilated and not. contracting on the application of sudden and vivid light." The patient himself, however, constantly maintained that he was entirely conscious. "About him," he says, "all was as silent as though there were neither a God, nor life, nor motion in the whole, wide universe. The silence was as though the soul had been cast into a deep, bottomless and shoreless sepulchre, where dismal silence was to reign eternally." He fully acknowledged the justice of God and spurned from his soul the thought of insulting God by asking mercy for such a sinner.

Powerful counter-irritants were applied, and by Friday consciousness was partially restored for external things. He felt the posts of his bedstead and the window near, and was satisfied he was in his own house; he felt movements on the bed and recognized the caresses of his little children; then, about 26 hours after the attack, his power of sight suddenly returned. He saw his wife and a neighbor, and made signs that

5 From an account written under the direction of Ansel Bourne.

he wanted pen and paper. An internal voice asked "if he were willing to forgive those he had injured?" and he immediately answered in the affirmative. He expressed in writing a wish to see the minister of the "Christian" church and another neighbor with whom he had been on bad terms. Both came and treated the sufferer with kindness and sympathy; and then when he was reconciled with his brother men, he felt emboldened to approach God and offered up "unutterable prayer."

A prayer-meeting was held in Ansel Bourne's house, and he wrote. saying he was determined thenceforth to be on the Lord's side. On November 11th, just two weeks from the time of his seizure, he was carried to the Christian chapel, and though unable to speak or hear, he endeavored to signify his altered feelings to the congregation by standing and holding up his hands. He also wrote a very touching message to be delivered for him by the minister. He was requested by the minister, after his second visit to the chapel, to stand up in the pulpit, and here suddenly his hearing returned-in his own words, "Every manner of sound that comes from the living things of nature broke upon his ears' his tongue was unloosed instantly, and he exclaimed, in the hearing of the whole congregation, "Glory to God and the Lamb forever!" It is needless to say that this scene, and the moving exhortation from the convert which followed, caused the deepest emotion in the congregation.

From that day onward, until the 17th of January, 1887, Ansel Bourne's faculties were unimpaired. But two weeks after the restoration of his speech and hearing in chapel, he had a "vision" which commanded him to "Settle your worldly business and go to work for me." This vision came back several times in the same night, and the result of all these experiences was that Ansel Bourne became an " evangelist," and for more than thirty years went about preaching, attending at revivals and performing strenuously all the offices of an unattached minister. At the wish of his second wife, whom he married in 1882, he gave up his itinerant preaching; and he thinks the distress of mind, caused by leaving what he considered the path of duty, may have led to the strange mental experiences which I have already described.-ALICE BODINGTON.

(To be Continued.)

A Match-Striking Bluejay.-The note in the November, 1895, NATURALIST, concerning the striking of matches by one of the monkeys (Cebus) has just fallen under my notice.

It

may interest the readers of the NATURALIST to know that a neighbor of mine once had a little bluejay (Cyanocitta cristata (Linn.)) which

had acquired the same habit, but confined exclusively to the so-called "parlor" or "popping" matches. I never knew how he acquired the habit-perhaps accidentally, by striking them with the beak or beating them against some hard substance as he did much of his food.

When given a match he always hopped to a chair-round and struck it almost directly downward, fulminate "end on," and if it did not explode at once his blows were repeated rapidly until it ignited. He would then drop it, spring away and watch it wonderingly while it burned. All matches about the house had to be kept from him. He knew them by their odor, and would tear open packages to get them out. On one occasion his mistress came in and found him with a box from which he had ignited nearly three dozen.

-JAMES NEWTON BASKETT.

Mexico, Mo.

ANTHROPOLOGY.'

Professor Holmes Studies of Aboriginal Archictecture in Yucatan.-Professor W. H. Holmes in his recent visit to the Islands on the east coast of Yucatan, the sites of Chichen Itza, Izamal and Uxmal and certain shell heaps, near Progreso (See Archeological Studies among the ancient cities of Mexico, by W. H. Holmes. Field Columbian Museum Publication 8. Chicago 1895) has presented us with a valuable and characteristically clear summary of the important architectural features of the Peninsular ruins.

Eschewing archaeological investigation in such directions as those of implements, pottery, metals, art, food, burial, etc., he fixes our attention upon the stones used in building, the manner of dressing and laying them and the purpose of completed structures. The details of this subject casually referred to by Charnay and Waldeck and in the unindexed pages of Stephens, are summed up to together with certain original observations and arranged in order, until we see the relationship, in purpose that characterizes the ruined structures in the region. No demonstration has yet been made as to the kind of tools used in carving the limestone of the facades and Professor Holmes like all previous travellers, leaves the question unanswered. Neither does he refer to Mr. McGuires' theory that the work was done with round hammerstones. But a block fortunately found at Chichen Itza, pecked on 1 This department is edited by H. C. Mercer, University of Pennsylvania.

the surface with a pointed instrument and lined off for edge dressing with a flat edged tool, is shown as an interesting illustration (Fig. 1) of

Fig. 1. Fragment of Stone from Chichen Itza, supposed to have been hewn by the ancient masons of Yucatan, the tools used are unknown, but we see the peckings of a pointed implement on the dressed side, and the long cuts of an edged tool along the upper margin.

the effect on stone of the kind of tool we are hunting for. Until we find the implement, however, we may believe on early Spanish authority, that hard copper was used, or imagine adzes and chisels of stone as we please, while we recognize with Professor Holmes the importance of ransacking the sites of quarries, where the innumerable blocks (20,000 carved on the facade of the "Governors House", at Uxmal alone) were procured. Happily chosen general observations give a clearness to the whole presentation, and the delightful yet confused and complex impression of the ruins left upon the mind by the accounts of travelers becomes simple in the colder light of Professor Holmes systematic observations. The reader continually thanks him as he would thank the compiler of an index to a work of many volumes. Such characteristic general features as the ignorance of a master principle of mason craft like joint binding, the feeble grasp of the

2 Captain Theobert Maler informed me in Ticul in 1895, that he had seen several such quarries.

Fig. 4. Miniature portal of a small temple on the Island of Cozumel, a little entrance only 4 feet 6 inches high, to a diminutive building not over 20 feet square by 10 to 12 high resting on a terrace about 5 feet high, of the two round columns supporting the stone lintels, one is carved to represent a kneeling human figure. From a photograph by Mr. E. H. Thompson.