Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/879

Rh twenty days, the pure sap is now but little used. The black lacquer is made by adding to crude or branch lacquer about five per cent of the tooth-dye used by women, a liquor formed by boiling iron filings in rice-vinegar, exposing to the sun, and stirring frequently for several days. In preparing all the lacquers it is an essential object to get rid of the water that exudes from the tree with the sap. This can not be effected without adding water, which is done in small quantities, three times a day, for two or three days. All the water then evaporates together. No lacquer will dry till this process has been gone through. If crude lacquer, which is originally of the color and consistency of cream, is exposed to the sun for a few days without adding water, it becomes black, or nearly so, thinner and translucent, but will not dry if applied to an article. If, now, water is mixed with it, it at once loses its black color and its transparency, becomes again of a creamy color, only slightly darker, and can be used after evaporation of the water, like any ordinary lacquer, and will dry. The greatest difficulty the lacquer-workers have to contend with is that of obtaining a clear, transparent varnish. What is called transparent varnish is really black to the eye, and has to be ground and polished after application before it will present a brilliant surface.

Superstitions about Stone Implements.—Richard Andrée, a German anthropologist, has remarked that, wherever prehistoric stone implements have been found, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, identical ideas, agreeing frequently in the minutest particulars, have been associated with them in the popular mind. It is really astonishing to find the negroes, the South American Indians, the Burmese, and the different European stocks entertaining the same superstitions respecting the origin and supposed wonderful properties of the stone axes. Such conceptions must be regarded as comparatively new, for they can only have originated after the implements had gone out of use, and the casual finding of them would be capable of exciting a mystified curiosity. They would naturally appear to the finders, who had no idea of their use, as something wonderful, perhaps having their origin in another world; and it would also be natural to attribute mysterious properties to them. The fall of meteoric stones would give a kind of a justification to such notions. People everywhere have thought the stone implements were the product of the lightning, or its bolts, and that the noise of thunder was caused by their striking the earth; and the belief is very common that the "thunder-axe," which is driven deep into the ground, will gradually rise to the surface again in the course of some definite period, as seven days, weeks, or years. The finder of one of these mysterious objects esteems it highly on account of the peculiar properties attributed to it, and transmits it to bis posterity. Such stones are regarded as amulets in Asia and Europe, and as fetiches on the Guinea coast. They are believed to preserve one against harm, to prevent sterility in women, to give protection against fire and lightning; treasures are sought with them, and most effective medical properties are attributed to them. They have been believed to have a kind of life, and to sweat on the approach of a storm. These superstitions have no footing among people who are still in the stone age and acquainted with the use of stone implements. Thus, no trace of them is found in the South Seas and Australia; although a foundation for them appears to be laid among the West Australians, in the shape of a belief that certain smooth, oval stones have fallen from the sky.

A Subterranean River in Austria.—One of the recent publications of the Austrian Tourists' Club contains a description of the "Recca Cave," which it is claimed must be ranked among the greatest natural curiosities of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The cave is situated near the middle of the Karst mountain-land, in the bare and sterile plateau that spreads out above Trieste, in a region rich with caves, and has been formed by the flow of the Recca River under the cretaceous hills. Similar river-excavations are common in the region, but that made by the Recca surpasses all the others in extent. Near the railroad-station of Vistrica-Ternovo, the Recca is a stream some fifteen or twenty paces broad and two or three feet deep. Thence it flows along the border of the chalk and tertiary formations in a