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Rh position that the mound-builders were acquainted with iron, or had intercourse with people who had iron; or that the mounds were erected after the builders came in contact with Europeans, or have been intruded upon since they were built. The discovery, during the past year, of masses of meteoric iron and several ornaments made of it in mounds in the Little Miami Valley has caused Professor F. W. Putnam to review the statements that have been made in relation to the subject. Examining the original statements from which these deductions have been drawn, he finds that the evidence does not show that steel or iron was found. Dr. Hildreth described as among the articles found at Marietta "three large circular bosses, or ornaments for a sword-belt, or a buckler," composed of copper, overlaid with a thick plate of silver. Dr. Atwater found at Circleville a piece of antler, in one end of which a hole had been bored, bound with a band of silver, which he called "the handle either of a small sword or large knife," and distinctly states that "no iron was found, but an oxide remained of similar shape and size." On the same page he speaks of "a plate of iron, which had become an oxide, but, before it was disturbed by the spade, resembled a plate of cast-iron." This oxide, Mr. Putnam says, in the absence of exact evidence, "could be readily accounted for by one familiar with the traces of oxidized copper, iron-colored clay, and traces of oxide of iron, which are often met with in mound explorations." Professor Putnam compares the 'bosses' described by Hildreth with similarly-shaped articles of copper found in mounds in Franklin, Tennessee, and in the Little Miami Valley, which were evidently ear-ornaments, and decides that they were of the same character. Dr. Hildreth also describes "a plate of silver, which appears to have been the upper part of a sword-scabbard; it is six inches in length and two in breadth, and weighs one ounce; it has no ornaments or figures, but has three longitudinal ridges" (there are actually five), "which probably correspond with edges, or ridges, of the sword." This is compared by Professor Putnam with a similar article of copper from Franklin, Tennessee, and another of meteoric iron from the Little Miami, which were evidently not sword-scabbards, though their precise use can only be conjectured. Thus, "not a shadow of a sword can be traced in this connection; the point of the supposed scabbard is a common copper bead; the upper part of the scabbard is an ornament of a particular pattern, of which three others almost identical in shape are known from other mounds; and the 'bosses' or supposed ornaments of a sword-belt are ear-rings." Dr. Hildreth states, however, that a piece of iron-ore was found in his mound, and Professor Putnam regards this statement as of great interest, "now that we know from the discoveries of the past year that the peculiar and malleable qualities of meteoric iron were known to the builders of the group of mounds in the Little Miami Valley." The ear-ornaments, he also observes, "exhibit a degree of skill in working the native metals of copper, silver, and iron, simply by hammering, which is conclusive evidence of the advance made by early American tribes in ornamental art."

Unscientific Science-Teaching.—Dr. W. B. Carpenter, in discussing a paper on "Science-Teaching in Elementary Schools," recently read before the London Society of Arts, said that "the facts and conclusions stated in the paper entirely accorded with his own experience; and he also agreed with what Dr. Gladstone had said on the importance of what might be called living knowledge of these subjects, in opposition to dead knowledge. For instance, the use of an air-pump had been referred to: nobody could teach a child the action of a pump or the use of a barometer without explaining the pressure of the air, but that was merely a form of words unless the child had the air exhausted from under his hand, and felt that a considerable force was necessary to withdraw it. From a long experience of examinations, he could entirely indorse what had been said of the cramming system of getting up subjects from books. He had examined in science for the Indian Civil Service, and had often found candidates giving the most excellent descriptions, entirely from memory, out of books, of objects which they did not even know by sight when put before them. That was not scientific knowledge at all, it was merely something committed to memory; the only use of which was that it exercised