Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/82

72, but in each class the variations from the same locality are placed side by side, and the geographical distribution of the various arts is shown by distribution maps. Special finds serving to illustrate the correlation of the arts or of forms have been kept together. The collection was begun in the year 1851, and has accumulated gradually." Only a few of the series displayed can be mentioned—the gun, from the matchlock up to the present (this is the series, the working out of which by Colonel Lane Fox led to the founding of the museum); origin of geometrical patterns; development of forms and ornament in pottery; from the parry-stick to the shield; dress development; fire-making devices; etc. The museum has grown to large proportions, and Mr. Balfour, the able curator, is now overhauling and rearranging the whole. Prof. Edward B. Tylor, who reads courses of lectures upon the History of Culture to Oxford students each year, has exerted a vast influence upon anthropology, not only in Great Britain and America, but also throughout Europe. His great works, Early History of Mankind and Primitive Culture, and his remarkable little Anthropology, have been to many workers their first inspiration.

At Cambridge anthropological work is more recent than at Oxford, but it is now on a good basis and must prosper under Baron Anatole von Hügel. The collections are in part prehistoric, in part ethnographic. There is a very good local series of prehistorics, some of the latest additions coming from excavations in the immediate neighborhood of Cambridge almost on the very grounds of the university. The chief ethnographic treasures are the collections from Fiji, gathered by Baron von Hügel himself, which are unequaled.

"We have aimed in this brief sketch to show where work in our subject is done in Europe, to mention a few of the workers, and to point out something of their methods and plans.

Canadian Government is trying experiments on an extensive scale in the cultivation of trees. At the Central Farm, near Ottawa, the seeds of Rocky Mountain and European conifers have been liberally sown; and in 1891 one hundred and seventy-five thousand seedlings were transplanted from the beds, to be distributed later on to branch farms and private experimenters, who are to send in careful reports of progress. The Government also distributed one hundred thousand forest-tree seedlings among one thousand applicants in the Northwest, with instructions for planting and subsequent treatment. Twenty-five gardens along the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway have been supplied from the experimental farms. Speaking of the need of the application of forestry in the old provinces, Mr. J. C. Chapais mentions whole regions as known to him which were cleared by settlers who had to desert the land soon afterward because it was worth nothing. Such districts, he adds, would have been so many inexhaustible wood-reserves for future generations, but are to-day useless.