vino (wine) occurs with some frequency in their treatises, but it has generally, and I think correctly, been regarded as referring to the fermented beverage pulque. Mescal is distilled in all parts of Mexico, in the rudest hamlets, in the most secluded mountains, but always in the manner above described. A finer liquor called tequila is made by distilling the fermented sap of the maguey. It would be natural to assume that among the first things the natives learned from the Spaniards after the conquest of Mexico was the manufacture of intoxicants. The Mexican peon has a natural taste and skill in such preparations, and uses not only the mescal and the maguey, but the Spanish bayonet and the yucca as well. He also makes from the tuna or Indian fig (the fruit of the nopal cactus), a kind of hard cider, called colonche, which is quite intoxicating. I repeat that the failure of the Spanish writers to mention certain things is no great argument against their existence, and I cannot make this more clear than by saying that they have all ignored the employment by the aborigines of the trident and throwing-stick, which I found in daily use among the Tarascoes of Lake Patzcuaro. Prof. Otis T. Mason informs me that the specimen of the latter which I was fortunate enough to procure is identical with the atlatl which figures in the codices or Aztec picture-writings. THE ANCIENT GRAVES OF THE VAZIMBA, the aboriginal inhabitants of the interior of Madagascar, are found scattered over the central province. These are shapeless heaps of stone, generally overshadowed by a Fàno tree, a species of acacia, which has a semi-sacred character, its seeds being used in divination. Could these graves, like the ancient English barrows, be opened, doubtless much light would be thrown on the rather difficult question of the affinities of these Vazimba; but to meddle with any tomb, much more one of these ancient ones, is one of the most heinous offences among the Malagasy. A considerable number of upright stones, termed Vatolàhy (lit. "male stones"), huge undressed blocks of granite, are also found on the hills and downs. These are memorials of former chieftains or of battles of the old times. -Sibree in Proc. Royal Geog. Soc., p. 746, Nov., 1892. MAKANGA CUSTOMS.-Mr. D. J. Rankin, in the November number of the Scottish Geographic Magazine, speaks of his arrival on the Revugwe at Kamsiki, in the Loangwa-Zambesi basin, Africa, as an occasion of great public rejoicing and festivity by the natives. "Several miles from the town I was met and escorted in by the chief's state band, consisting of flutes, drums, and native musical instruments, my near approach to the kraal being heralded by an incessant firing of muskets, tootling of flutes, banging of drums, and deafening shouts and cries from a crowd of two or three thousand people. Being led into the stockade by the chief, we were regaled in the courtyard by a number of amusements, lasting for several hours, which included conjuring, dancing, singing, and feats by strong men—the latter being similar to the feats performed in our own country fairs. In one of them a heavy wooden mortar used for pounding corn and rice, weighing about one hundred pounds, is placed on the stomach of a man, who is supported on two stools, and any one in the audience is invited to pound the rice or flour put in the mortar. A small wooden figure of a man is carefully placed on a mat by the performers, this figure being a kind of fetich to protect them from injury during their dangerous performance. These people come from the hill tribes, and their fetich created a great deal of amusement and ridicule amongst the higher-class Makanga sitting round." WOMEN OF THE TROBRIAND ISLANDS.-The quarters of the principal chief of the Trobriand islands, British New Guinea, include seventeen houses, each occupied by a separate wife. At a little distance is the humbler establishment of the second chief, with the more modest allowance of five wives. Many of these ladies were old and far from prepossessing, but it seems that either from innate courtesy or some more prudential reason the Papuan always treats his older wives with more consideration than the younger. The people are all clothed, the women in fact possessing two petticoats, the one undyed, the second, used for dancing and other formal occasions, dyed and worn over the other; and they made a point of never coming into the governor's presence without this. Trotter in Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc., p. 791, Nov., 1892. THE RURAL SCHOOL PROBLEM. BY JAMES H. BLODGETT. The changing relations between city and country, or urban and rural, population in the last fifty years have attracted general attention in Europe and America. Something like a law may be recognized in the experience of the United States, where the farming land is not yet all in the hands of individual owners. Omitting special influences like mining and timber-cutting, liable to be temporary, and some others liable to be more permanent, in limited districts, like fruit-raising and market gardening or the location of railroad stations, there is likely to be an increase in population of a newly settled agricultural town or county till owners occupy the land, by which time the population is likely to be at a maximum; then begins a decline. Immigration ceases, the children of the earlier settlers growing up leave home to try their fortunes on newer lands or in denser communities, and a little later those prosperously growing old in farm-work betake themselves to villages and towns for a more leisurely life. This might be illustrated all the way from Maine and from the Carolinas to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The city overwhelms us by aggregation of force and massiveness of concentration; but there is most hope for the physical life of a new-born babe in rural surroundings, not in the stifling pressure of lofty buildings that allows none but the wealthy to own homes. The best promise for a wholesome future to youth is in communities sufficiently compact to afford ready use of the modern post-office, railroad, and telegraph, and to furnish inspiring numbers for mutual effort without losing the beneficent influences of the farm, or at least of the garden and the orchard. The family plans for preserving food from a superabundant harvest for a time of need, the selection and reservation of seed, the planting and cultivation, the care of animals, are part of the influences teaching the child and molding his character with a deeper power than any formal lessons. No school-room exercises with children accustomed only to brick walls and paved streets can do for them in certain important elements of character and knowledge what is done for the country child by his surrounding conditions, even with the drawbacks of unrest and discontent with which so many endure rural life. Opposite social conditions influence the organization and duration of schools in city and country. In the city one motive to lengthen the duration of school attendance is to provide a place of responsible supervision for children who cannot be kept busy under the eyes of their parents. In the open country the children can aid in raising or harvesting products under parental supervision. The city, either directly or by the power of credit, commands greater pecuniary resources than sparsely settled districts, and at any time of the year it can furnish the numbers necessary to organize schools. The rural occupations urgently press in special portions of the year, emphasizing the poverty of numbers which often makes it difficult to maintain a school. The conditions vary as we go from State to State, and as we go from county to county of the same State. The report of the board of education of Massachusetts for 1890 gives three tests of the relative educational work of its fourteen counties, and the State census of 1885 shows the apparent rank in freedom from crime: MASSACHUSETTS. Rank of Counties in Public Education, 1890; in Freedom from 34567890 Bristol Middlesex.. Barnstable.. Plymouth Barnstable.. Hampshire. Dukes.. Plymouth Bristol... Essex S Hampden.. Middlesex.. Nantucket. Plymouth.. Barnstable. Franklin. Hampshire. Norfolk Franklin. Worcester.. Norfolk. Plymouth Hampshire Hampshire. Norfolk. Franklin. Suffolk. Worcester. Hampden Essex.. Berkshire... Hampden. Berkshire... Bristol II 12 Franklin Suffolk. Bristol Dukes.. Berkshire. 13 Berkshire.. Dukes. 14 Hampden Hampden Suffolk, Nantucket.. Nantucket.. Nantucket.. Nantucket.. Plymouth. By amount of money appropriated per child between 5 and 15 years of age, Suffolk county stands first, Berkshire thirteenth. By per cent. of taxable property thus appropriated, Berkshire is first and Suffolk is twelfth. By ratio of average attendance to the school census, Barnstable, which was fourth by the first test and third by the second, becomes first; Suffolk is eighth and Berkshire tenth. By combining all the tests, Barnstable leads the State. Massachusetts is so uniformly earnest in popular education that the extremely dissimilar tangible results in her towns and counties are especially suggestive in estimating the effect of numbers and wealth on school organization throughout the nation. Nantucket, last by every named test, nevertheless maintains good schools. It is an island with a small population, mostly nativeborn, but diminishing for the last forty years with a dying industry. Level Barnstable, which is Cape Cod, has been nearly stationary in population for sixty years, while the rural population of hilly Berkshire has been dwindling for a like period. Suffolk has increased in population and wealth through vigor absorbed from Nantucket and Cape Cod and Berkshire and other rural homes, native and foreign. Our metropolitan cities would soon perish if the tide of country blood did not restore their waste. Let it be noted that Barnstable, a stationary, rural county-not Suffolk, with its populous Bostonmakes the best record. In this immediate connection we may compare the moral conditions as indicated by the record of convicts in the State census of 1885, in which Dukes and Nantucket had no convicts; Barnstable, one convict to 5,969 population; Hampshire, one to 2,424; Franklin, one to 1,628; Worcester, one to 1,516; Norfolk, one to 1,502; Hampden, one to 1,342; Bristol, one to 972; Berkshire, one to 901; Essex, one to 879; Middlesex, one to 391; Suffolk, one to 319; Plymouth, one to 291. At the other side of the continent the record of counties of nearly equal areas emphasizes the material power of density of population and resources. By money raised per child of legal school age, four such counties in California rank (1890): Napa, Sierra, Alameda, Contra Costa. By per cent. on taxable property they rank: Sierra, Contra Costa, Napa, Alameda. By ratio of average attendance to the school census ΙΟ |