these hours one rude scheme was to reduce the capacity of the vessel from which the water flowed by coating it with wax in the winter time. The orifice remaining unchanged it emptied more quickly. The wax was gradually removed as the days lengthened. Of course, the same instrument could not serve for both day and night. Less clumsy means for regulating the flow, as by adjusting the size of the orifice, were afterwards invented. One of these involved the passage of the water through a hollow cone or funnel, in which was an interior cone capable of adjustment for each day in the year; another, invented by Ctesibius, left the water flow, and consequently the rise and fall of the float, constant, but included an automatic device by which the graduated scale over which the marker traveled was changed daily.

This difficulty in adapting the clepsydra to keep Roman time is precisely the same that the early Dutch navigators met with on their introduction of the clock into Japan, where the division of the day is into ten hours of varying length. The plan they adopted is a clumsy one, but of the same character as that of Ctesibius, since they did not attempt to alter the rate of the clock, but attached movable indications to the dial so that they might be changed with the season. One of these clocks is in the possession of the Bureau of Education, a gift from the Japanese Government after the Centennial Exposition of 1876.

But improvements in the clepsydra such as have been described, notwithstanding the ingenuity and mechanical skill they displayed, are of little consequence to us, since they were not towards the accomplishment of the final result but away from it. The actual steps towards the modern clock appear to be these: First, the employment of the ordinary rack and pinion device. If we are right in attributing the invention of gear-wheels to Archimedes, this application could not have been made earlier than the middle of the third century B. C. (287 to 212). It is attributed to Ctesibius, who, for many reasons, as I have said already, is placed a century later than this. A series of teeth, commonly called a rack, was attached to the side of the rod, which was supported by the float, and had heretofore served only as an index. Fixed on a horizontal shaft above the vessel was a small toothed wheel, with which the toothed rack engaged, and which was, therefore, caused to turn by the rise of the float. On this shaft was a pointer attached like the hour-hand of a clock and traveling over a similar dial. To make

this hand complete a circuit in 12 or 24 hours is, obviously, only a question of the proportion of parts. The next step forward dispensed with the rack and pinion and really was in the line of greater simplicity. In place of the toothed wheel a grooved, pully was used, over which passed a cord from the float, being kept tight by a weight at the other end. The hand remained on the wheel shaft as before, and with the gradual rise of the float, traversed the dial. We have reached the point where we may say "presto, change," and behold, a clock springs into view, for it is instantly apparent that with this structure it is no longer the water that advances the hand; water is not the motor now. The weight is the motor, and its fall is retarded by the float, which only permits its descent as fast as the rise of water in the vessel permits its own rise. We have an actual weight clock, with what we must be content to regard as a water escapement; it is far enough from our perfected timepiece, but in respect to its essential elements it differs in but one, and henceforth the problem of the clock is only that of escapements. But we need not expect it to be solved at once. It will be centuries before the actual problem will be recognized, so great is the obscurity with which the Roman time system has beclouded the subject.

A

Her

There is a long and mournful perspective before us. The golden age of Roman literature is here, but she has yet to see the greatest extent of her empire and the summit of her own magnificence. long line of Cæsars will come, base and noble alternating. decline will follow her glory; her palaces are to be plundered by barbarous northern invaders; her empire is to be shattered; out of her vast domain new peoples and nations and empires scarcely less mighty than her own are to spring, while she herself sinks to the paltry dimensions of a village. Her polished speech shall die from men's lips, but the rude dialects of her provinces, mingling with the uncouth tongues of illiterate Franks and Goths, shall develop into new languages, in time to become as perfect vehicles of thought as their original. New forms of government and of social order shall spring from her laws and institutions and philosophies; and from the hills of credulous and despised Judea is to burst a new religion, before whose bright beams the perpetual fires of Vesta shall pale and the whole train of Olympian gods vanish like the mist. But amongst these unconceived changes, and through the storins that shall sweep away and the cataclysms that shall engulf all the objects

of her pride and glory and reverence, there shall still endure what she cared least for-constant in all their inconstancy-the Roman hours.

The problem of improving the time-keeper is one with which cloistered scholars and mechanicians will not cease to contend, but the barrier that Rome has set up will continue to baffle their ingenuity; and when thirteen centuries shall have passed since Hipparchus in vain urged the advantages of the equinoctial system and Ctesibius strove to solve the riddle of Roman time by some practical mechanism, we shall still find Bernardo Monachus recording how the monks of Cluny perplexed their pious souls with the old, old question, and how the good sacristan must needs go out into the night to learn-from the stars-if it were time to call the brethren to prayer.

DISCUSSION.

The above paper, read before the Anthropological Society of Washington April 5, 1887, was discussed by Messrs. PIERCE, MASON, THOMPSON, BLISS, BLODGETT, MALLERY, and BABCOCK.

Prof. MASON referred to a simple time-check used by a Chinese physician. It was a joss-stick broken so as to have several angles. The doctor set fire to one end and instructed his patient to take his first dose when the fire reached the first angle, another when it reached the second, and so on.

Mr. A. H. THOMPSON spoke of a rude timepiece which he had seen among the Zuñis. It was a plate set in the wall of a hut opposite a hole in the other wall. When the sunlight coming through the hole fell upon the plate the Zuñis knew that it was time to plant

corn.

Mr. DORSEY referred to the divisions of time from sunrise to sunrise observed among certain Indians in Oregon. These Indians have about forty names for different parts of the day and night.

Mr. BLODGETT, referring to the speaker's doubt whether the Romans appreciated the difference in the length of the days at different seasons of the year, remarked that it is an old saying that time is measured by events. While small variations in the length of the day might not be detected, it is hardly conceivable that any people who had sufficient advancement to have occasion to pass over the same areas in different seasons should not observe that

such an act as going to a distance for fuel or for water could not be repeated so many times in the short days as in the long ones. Any action whose rate became somewhat habitual, as the movement of an army, the carriage of burdens, or the performance of agricultural tasks, would form a basis of comparison that would be forced on the attention of the actors. When beasts of burden were used their movements would emphasize the difference between the long and the short days. Even in our day time in Oriental countries is measured by the gait of the camel.

Col. MALLERY remarked that the marching of armies and the hauling of produce do not ordinarily take place in the winter

season.

Mr. BABCOCK said that hunting was pursued at all seasons. The Indians who lived here used to go over to the Patuxent river to hunt and fish at all times of the year. It is hardly conceivable that they did not observe how much longer they could travel before dark in summer than in winter.

CURIOUS VARIETY OF BLOOD REVENGE.-British Consul Plumacher reports the following type of vendetta among the Goajira Indians living on the extreme northwestern part of Venezuela. By the payment of the compensation of "tears and blood" any injury may be condoned--not the aggrieved one, but his relatives, especially those on the mother's side, demanding the blood money. If an Indian accidentally injure himself, his mother's family immediately demand of him the "payment of blood," on the theory that as his blood is also their own he has no right to shed it without compensation. The relatives of the father claim the payment of "tears," which is not so large. Even the friends who witnessed the accident are entitled to pay for their grief. The amount of payment depends on the injury. A trifling cut of the finger calls. for a little corn or something of equal value; a more serious grief is assuaged with a sheep or a cow. If the injured party is too poor he must beg from hut to hut, and no one will refuse to contribute. If an Indian borrows a horse from a friend and is thrown or injured the owner must pay, since the accident would not have happened if he had not lent the animal. If a man is injured by his own animal he himself must compensate his relatives. The seller of an article is responsible for the results of its misuse. If a person should be wounded or lose his life in attempting to kill another the latter must pay blood and tear money in the same manner as if he had been the aggressor. Should a child die in the absence of one of its parents the absent one may demand from the other payment for the tears supposed to be shed over the occurrence.-Jour. Soc. Arts, XXXV, 928.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTES ON THE HUMAN HAND.

BY FRANK BAKER, M. D.,

Professor of Anatomy, University of Georgetown, Washington, D. C.

A short time ago, while in the room where the corpse of a lovely young girl lay awaiting burial, I noticed that many of the passing visitors lifted the hand of the dead and applied it to some part of their own bodies-head, arm, face, breast. I was not sure what was meant by this and took occasion afterwards to ask one of those whom I had observed making this application, and was told that it was intended as a cure for various disorders. It appeared that this young girl had lived a notably pure and holy life, and that the touch of such a person was believed to be especially curative against tumors, warts, headache, and minor affections. My informant was, I was assured, immediately cured of a severe headache.

This led me to further inquiry and I found the custom to be widely spread. In two notable and quite recent instances, those of a Carmelite nun dying in Baltimore and a well-known Catholic priest who died in this city, many applications of the dead hand were made with reputed success. In both of these cases throngs of people pressed to obtain the coveted touch. Nor is the belief confined to those of the Roman Catholic faith; a female homoeopathic physician, formerly an army nurse, told me that once during her hospital service two soldier patients, suffering from malarial fever of a persistent type, came to her and asked permission to prepare for burial the next patient who might die. Upon inquiry it was found that they firmly believed that they could "break the chills" by an application of the dead hand, and it was for that reason that they sought this task. They were allowed to make the trial and were thereby speedily cured! Neither of these patients was a Catholic. In another case a white swelling was cured by a murderer's hand surreptitiously obtained. The moral quality of the individual to whom the member belonged seems to be a matter of importance. I was told, by a person who had knowledge of the facts, that, in the burial place for the paupers of this city, graves are not infrequently violated for the purpose of obtaining at hand or an arm, the cadaver being otherwise uninjured.