Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/611

Rh The other day Dr. Bolton found an intelligent, skilled workman in the metropolis, who used the magic mirror (the Urim and Thummim of the ancient Jews) for the purposes of divination. The seer made use of the Urim to guide his daily life, and to consult with the spirits of many distinguished persons from whom he received communications. Dr. Bolton found also a fruitful field of inquiry in the counting-out rhymes of children. Another member of the New York branch who has contributed to our slender stock of knowledge concerning the Pawnee and Blackfeet Indians is Mr. George Bird Grinnell. He is at home with these "prairie people," as they are called. He has lived, slept, camped, hunted, and "swapped stories" with them. His collection of Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales showed what other travelers had missed. Mr. Grinnell is by adoption a member of the Blackfeet tribe, and his book of Blackfoot Lodge Tales tells the life of a Blackfoot brave from infancy to his departure at death to the Sandhills—the happy hunting ground of the tribe. Among other members of the New York branch we may mention the work of Mrs. Harriett Maxwell Converse, who is by adoption a member of the Seneca tribe, and Mr. De Cost Smith, who has written and sketched cleverly the ceremonies of the Onondagas.

The Chicago Folk-lore Society is an independent organization, not a branch of the American Folk-lore Society. This society was organized in December, 1891. The membership of the society numbers now about eighty persons, with about twenty