Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/151

Rh shooting clay bullets, and used for catching birds. The women make bags of netting, and hammocks. They have superstitions about their food, among which is the prohibition of deer flesh to the women, who have to satisfy themselves with birds and small game; and of the eggs of the South American ostrich to the children. The Caduveos, Mbaryas, or Guaycuru, are a warlike and agricultural people, with fixed residences, and have the art of weaving, excel in pottery, and execute designs of wonderful beauty and variety. These qualities are regarded by the author as real results of a logical study of the harmony and æsthetic combination of lines and figures, and not of accidental combinations. Ornamental designs are painted on their skins with the juice of a plant producing a blue-black color, which penetrates the epidermis a little way, and lasts six or seven days. It is applied by women, with small sticks, to the end of which tufts of cotton wool are sometimes tied. The effect of the painting is often heightened by adding powdered charcoal to the juice. The people wear their hair short and well combed and greased; file their upper incisor teeth to a point; practice depilation; are very cleanly, bathing often; and wear decorous clothing and tasteful ornaments.

A Humorous Elephant.—In illustration of the sense of the humorous in elephants, Meredith Nugent, in Our Animal Friends, tells a story of an elephant in the Jardin des Plantes, in Paris, that was kept in the same inclosure with a large hippopotamus, for whose comfort and amusement a great stone basin had been constructed and filled with water." It was quite early in the morning—before the hour for admitting the public to the garden when I noticed the elephant walking around on the stone edge of the basin curiously watching the hippopotamus, which was completely under water. I felt quite sure that the elephant was up to some prank, and I was not mistaken, for just as soon as the ears of the hippopotamus came into view the elephant quickly seized one of them with his trunk and gave it a sudden pull. The enraged hippopotamus lifted his ponderous head clear out of the water and snorted and blew, but every time he rose to take breath the elephant would recommence his antics. Around and around the great quadruped would go, keeping a sharp lookout for the little ears of the hippopotamus, which he would instantly seize the moment they appeared. His evident delight in teasing his huge neighbor was very comical, and there is no doubt that he thoroughly enjoyed it. Again, one day the keeper placed some food for the hippopotamus in the corner of the inclosure, and at once the animal began to leave the water to get it; but the elephant slowly ambled over to the same corner and, arriving there first, placed his four feet over the favorite food in such a way that the hippopotamus could not get at it, gently swayed his trunk back and forth, and acted altogether as though he were there accidentally, until the garden was thrown open to the public, and he went forward to receive the daily contributions of bread, cake, pie, etc., which were always offered him by his hosts of admirers."

The Future of Wood Engraving.—Notwithstanding the apparently almost universal supplanting of the old methods of engraving by process illustration, Mr. W. Biscombe Gardner affirms that wood engraving was never more alive as a fine art or in a higher state of perfection than it is at the present period;" and it is still capable, in the hands of right, good, earnest workers, of being lifted to a much higher position." Process may hold the advantage for work that has to be done in a rush, and for that in which cheapness rather than quality is sought, but "wood engraving as a reproductive fine art never can be touched and never will be touched by any process yet invented." It is even "far and away" above any of the higher fine-art processes "in its marvelous versatility of technique, which enables the engraver to translate not only the value but the very individual touch of each artist from whose picture he may be engraving. All processes dependent upon photography are bound to go wrong in the rendering of values, since photography has not yet been brought to such a state of perfection as to master the difficulties of exact color translation. In fact, photography is utterly inadequate in the most simple wash drawings in black and white." While it is admitted that a