Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/588

572 ; and in this respect it is almost identical with that particular process which is known as tapestry-making; but tapestries are finished for display on one side only. They are made upon vertical threads, when they are high-warp or haute lisse, or upon horizontal threads, when they are low-warp or basse lisse, tapestries. But the results of both methods are virtually identical, so that it is almost impossible to detect any peculiarity which shall distinguish one from the other. The earlier hangings appear to have been of lighter material than that of the special fabric; and they were ornamented by weaving, embroidery, or painting. The special process was applied in early times to making small ornamental trimmings for costume. Its application to works on a much larger scale appears to date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, although it had probably been already employed in old Asiatic civilizations for carpets. The number of colors of the earlier tapestries was restricted, but, after the tapestry-making craft was established, a more generous scheme of colors was employed. This has developed in such a way that it is a boast now at the Gobelins factory that they have upward of fourteen thousand four hundred tons of colors in dyes for threads.

Our Arid Regions and the Rainfall.—The soils of the arid regions of the United States, according to the paper read by Prof. J. R. Dodge at the meeting of the American Association, are generally fertile to excess. The only amelioration they require is that which is secured by the application of water. That may be obtained from natural precipitation; by irrigation from supplies at present available or from storage reservoirs and catch-basins to be erected to hold the surplus of rains; by pumping from the underground channels of streams; or by means of artesian wells. After all available water has been obtained by these means and expedients, there is still a large part of the superficial area that must remain unirrigated. Some say that this part constitutes four fifths or five sixths of the whole, but those who have an intimate knowledge of the practical work of irrigation insist that it is not more than one tenth or one eighth of the area. Still, the remainder is not quite a desert. There are what are called agricultural rain-belts which, with from fifteen to eighteen inches of water, sometimes twenty inches per annum, are found to produce good crops of corn up to an elevation of three thousand or four thousand feet, and wheat, oats, potatoes, alfalfa, and many grasses up to six thousand or seven thousand feet, by adaptation of methods of cultivation to suit the best utilization of available moisture. The question of increasing rainfall gains an affirmative answer from practical cultivators, while the records of the rain-gauge fail to make such a response. There is an increase, if not in actual rain, certainly in available moisture; for the water which formerly flowed away with as much facility as from the back of a duck, is nearly all retained by cultivated lands. If the irrigation is general and continued for years, there is a change of climate, with more moisture in the atmosphere, dews at night frequent where they were formerly unknown, and general enhancement of the agricultural value of the air.

The Beauty of Childhood.—A recent discovery of classical sculptures has recalled attention to the fact that the ancients had, so far as appears from their works, no appreciation of the beauty of childhood. In the present instance, in which the figures relate to death scenes and include family pictures, while the mature characters are represented with the best skill which the artist could command, the children—at the age fullest of beauty for a modern eye—are executed with archaic clumsiness. Miss Harrison has pointed out, in her lectures on Greek sculpture, that representations of infancy are characteristic of the decaying art of Alexandria; the best period of art affords no specimen of such a choice of subject. "The artists whose work has afforded models for all time have not left a single specimen of that beauty which modern eyes most admire, the beauty of childhood." And in Grecian and Roman literature there is none of that happy picturing, that dwelling with delight upon the beauties of childhood that seem to have entered into the very essence of modern natures. To the Romans, "infancy was only a journey toward manhood; the sooner it was over the better." In the reference to childhood which is most truly