Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/589

Rh girth, which makes a ring of wood of only one eighth of an inch in thickness, adds to its bulk at the rate of rather more than one cubic foot of timber annually for every ten feet of the length of its stem; or, in other words, such a tree, if its stem be thirty feet in height, will, in thirty years, have increased in bulk by at least one hundred feet 01 solid timber. At the same time, during these thirty years, the young trees which are springing up will have become perfectly hardy, and capable of supporting the whole force of the summer heat and winter frost.

Marriage Customs of the Kacheen.—Mr. R. Gordon, who has been exploring among the sources of the Irrawaddy River, has given to the Royal Geographical Society some additional facts concerning the marriage customs of the Kacheen, the curious Burmese tribe who were described by Lieutenant Kreitler in the July number of "The Popular Science Monthly": "When a man and woman set up house, the man has to give to the parents of the woman cattle, pigs, gongs, muskets, das, slaves, clothes, spears, and money; and for his wife's use he has to give coral beads, tameings, jackets, broadcloths, etc., according to his circumstances. After the gifts the woman is brought to the man's house, and the man has to feast the bringers of the woman with rice, and curry, and spirits, and liquors. To the elders, also, he has to give blue waist-cloths, turbans, das, or spears, according to their degree. The man then shows the woman all the work to be done in the house, and bids her do the work. After having lived together for a long period, if the man dies, the woman can not marry any one; but the elder or younger brother has to set up house with her. If there be no brother, the deceased man's father (the woman's father-in-law) takes possession of her, and makes her his wife. If an elder brother dies, the younger brother takes over his wife. If the father dies, the son takes over his father's wives, and makes them his own, except his own mother. If a wife dies, the husband goes to her parents and asks for another wife, and they have to give him her elder or younger sister—a woman who is unmarried. If there be no sister to give, they have to give a female relative. Husbands and wives must not be at enmity with each other. Divorce is unknown as a custom. However bad husband or wife may be, they can not separate, unless, in the case of the husband, he gives double the amount of what he originally gave her, and, in the case of the wife, unless she gives quadruple the amount she originally received. If the man sets aside his wife and takes another, the head wife has the right to take possession of all the property of the younger wife, as well as to sell her. The young unmarried men and women, so long as they are not brothers and sisters, act as they please inside the apartments of the house." The Kacheen women wear waist-cloths dyed black and blue, five hands long and not very wide. The jackets are close-fitting, and over them they have a looser one set off with cowries. This is probably full dress. Round their waists they have perforated cowries on three or four hoops of rattan. From their knees down to their calves they wear hoops of rattan. Some women, the wives of the principal men, tattoo their legs from the knee to the ankle.

European Technical Schools.—Mr. Edward C. Robins has presented to the British Society of Arts the results of the inquiries he has made into the causes of the differences in the degree in which different countries have profited from technical education. The clew is not found in differences in primary education; but, when the provisions made in foreign colleges for higher education are examined, something will be found in them so superior to anything in England as to afford a lesson of value. The intellectual and social condition of the industrial population, he premises, and the character of the education it should receive to fit the national mind to cope with the national progress, can not be met by an extension of scholastic institutions, based on the requirements of the middle ages. Yet this is the principle which has dominated the universities, "and, until very lately, no concessions have been made to the reasonable demands of progressive civilization." Secondary and primary education are left in no better condition with reference to this point. The improvement in the technical education of