Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/154

142  of the people above the Yellala Falls on the Congo, Tuckey says fowls, eggs, manioc, and fruits, "seem all to belong to the women, the men never disposing of them without first consulting their waves, to whom the beads are given."

Thus there are many things at variance with the theory which sets out by assuming that "the infancy of society" is exhibited in the patriarchal group. As was implied in the chapters on the "Primitive Relations of the Sexes," on "Promiscuity," on "Polyandry," the earliest social groups were without domestic organization as they were without political organization. Instead of patriarchal cluster, at once family and rudimentary state, there was at first an aggregate of males and females without settled arrangements, and having no relations save those established by force and changed when the stronger willed.



HE owls are rapacious birds, and in company with all the true birds of prey belong to the great order Raptores. The order branches into two large groups, known respectively as the diurnal and the nocturnal birds of prey. To the Diurnes belong the vultures, hawks, and eagles; to the Nocturnes belong the owls.

If Mrs. Malaprop cannot see why the owl is a "rapturous bird," she can admit its claim to openness of countenance. Once seen, the owl can never be mistaken; its flat, pussy face, and large, brassy cat-eyes, set square in front of the head, are so unbirdlike. It was a London holiday; a shop-woman and her daughter stood before the cage of Nocturnal Raptores at the "Zoo." Said the elder, "See these heagles!" to which the younger replied, "Them isn't heagles, they're 'awks." "If you please," interposed a servant standing near, "them isn't heagles nor 'awks, they're howls. My maister's son once kept one."

The owls are found nearly the whole world over. The books mention about two hundred species, as species are yet understood, and queer specimens are they every one. As a rule, how trim, spruce, compact, and graceful are the falcons, the typical birds of prey! How fluffy, squatty, and dowdyish is the typical owl! Whether it means little or much, it is thus with the Diurnal and the Nocturnal Lepidoptera. As the elder naturalist said: "If any analogy is allowable between different tribes of animals, the owls might be said to resemble moths" (the night-fliers)," and to differ from the diurnal birds of prey as these do from the butterflies" (the day-fliers). These birds 