Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/150

140 require a dry, bracing atmosphere, and sea-breezes and frosts suit them; and in the morning after a snow-fall their tracks show where they have been scratching and playing in it all night. But after a deep fall they are soon in danger of starving. If there is a turnip-field near, they will scratch away the snow at the roots and soon destroy the crop; if not, or if the surface of the snow is frozen hard, they strip the bark from the trees and bushes. While all the harmless animals are obliged to spend the greater part of the day and night seeking food, their enemies profit exceedingly. The stoats and weasels find that they have only to prowl down the stream-side to catch any number of thrushes and soft-billed birds which crowd the banks where the water melts the snow, and little piles of feathers and a drop or two of red on the snow show where the fierce little beasts have murdered here a redwing and there a water wagtail, or even a water-hen. Water-shrews, water-rats, and otters all dislike frost and snow, more, perhaps, because the streams are frozen and food is more difficult to obtain along the banks, than from any inconvenience the snow causes them. Otters, even if the rivers do not freeze, have a difficulty in finding the fish, which in cold weather sink into the deepest pools, and in case of some species burrow in the mud. So they go down to the sea-coast for the cold weather, and, making their homes in the coast caves or old wooden jetties and wharves, live on the fish of the estuaries. Rats also often emigrate to the coast in snow-time and pick up a disreputable livelihood among the rubbish of the shore. Of all effects of weather, snow makes the greatest change in animal economy in the country-side, and weeks often pass before the old order is restored.

Where Women rule.—At the opening of a paper on the political domination of women in Eastern Asia, Dr. Macgowan refers to the condition of the aboriginal peoples whom the Chinese found on Yellow River on their arrival from Akkad. The Chinese then possessed the rudiments of civilization, of which the aboriginals were then destitute. That this irruption of the Chinese was anterior to the invention of cuneiform writing in Akkad was probable, because of their use of quipos or knotted cords in keeping records. These quipos, the author said, and not mere tradition, were the base of Chinese archaic annals, and from them the earliest form of Chinese written characters was evolved. Anterior to these quipos, judging from certain neighboring tribes, notched sticks were employed. As to the tribes which the Chinese found existing when they reached their future home, the philosopher of Universal Love, Motzu, enunciated views on the evolution of the state and family which are in accord with those of modern anthropologists. Men at first were in the lowest state of savagery; there was no golden age, as depicted by sages and political philosophers, until men felt a necessity of a remedy for the anarchy that prevailed. Some of the practices of self-deformation were remarkably curious—as, for instance, those of drinking through the nostrils, extracting front teeth and substituting dogs' teeth, head-flattening, etc.; the most striking was the attempt to raise a polydactylous race, by destroying all children who came into the world with the usual number of fingers and toes. The author described a number of instances of rule by Amazons, and observed that it is mostly among the aboriginal inhabitants that the chieftaincy of women obtains to this day. There is seldom an age of which one tribe or another does not afford examples; the more primitive the condition of these tribes the slighter is sexual differentiation as regards public governmental affairs. The fables and myths in Greece respecting Indo-Scythian Amazons arose chiefly from rumors respecting tribes of this kind.

The Yourouks.—The Yourouks of Asia Minor, according to a paper by Mr. 11. Theodore Bent in the British Association, are a fair race of nomads of Tartar origin, from the north of Persia. They wander on regular lines of pasturage, live in goat's-hair tents, occasionally showing a tendency to sedentary life, and build miserable hovels out of the ruins of the cities. The Yourouk has very little religion, and refuses to adopt the measures desired by the Turkish Government. The people have sacred trees hung with rags, say prayers over their dead, and practice circumcision, but do not carry out