diarrhea in pensioners' applications, and that the aggregate of various spellings was 1,690! Is there any phonetic system which could bring about a uniform spelling of that word ? The reformers tell us that apl spells apple, and I am not here to deny it. I only say, it is not spelled that way in any dictionary of past or present English, nor in any writer of English, ancient or modern, nor in any newspaper, nor in any counting-house, school, college, shop, store, or family in America or England. Why should it be? Will the learned president of the Philological Association write to his grocer to send him a peck of the best apls he has got? Why will he not? Because he has a word-picture in his brain of that fruit, spelled apple-a good, round, mouth-filling word, so expressive of the good, round, mouth-filling fruit, that it is inseparably associated with it in the mind of every inhabitant of the land. Yet, because a few philologists have undertaken to reform our spelling, we are to turn our backs upon established usage, unlearn the word-pictures of our whole lives, and learn every puzzle (spelled puzl) which we are asked to recommend in the interest of "economy." Such economy is of most questionable benefit. It degrades our magnificent heritage of speech, the noblest and most expressive language in the world, by destroying or defacing the fair forms, "familiar in our mouths as household words." It rudely tears out the soul and significance of multitudes of our finest expressions of speech, and flings us a barren husk instead. One speaker answered my colleague, who spoke of the enormity of translating Psyche into Si-ke: "How many people know anything more than the sound of Psyche?" I will answer-there are millions. It has been read for centuries in literature, and gazed on with delight in all the grand art galleries of Europe, open freely to all the world. The form of the word has been stereotyped in the brain, not alone of the Greeks who gave it birth, but of all nations in Europe and America, to whom it suggests the immortal story of the soul. But, we are told, we should have no sentiment about this matter of language-no æsthetic sense-but only hard, upright, downright logic and common sense. I wish there were some logic in this new-fangled vocabulary; but you cannot find it, even with a microscope. There is no time to point out its manifold contradictions, of which a few were named; analyze it, and judge for your selves. But as to this suggestion of æsthetics as foreign to the subject we are debating-of the expression of our language-is there anything under heaven more full of the æsthetic sense, more saturated with sentiment, than language? Out of it are builded the most powerful and the most delicate creations of the reason and the imagination of man. It is the vehicle of the subtlest and profoundest thought, the most refined expression, the most beautiful poetry, and the sublimest eloquence. Its rich and infinite suggestiveness, its wealth of imagery, its exuberance of ideas, its exhaustless inspiration, its influence upon human feeling, are bounded only by the limitations of the tongue to which it belongs. Of all the living languages, I am happy to believe the English to be the paragon. Even the learned speaker himself, when he eulogized our English speech as destined to be the international language, appealed to the aesthetic sense of his hearers, and struck a chord of sentiment which vibrated in every breast. If you tell me that we must not confound the orthography of language with language itself, I answer that millions of works of human genius and centuries of use have given overpowering weight to the expression of our language as now established. The wordpictures that give expression to all literature are inseparably associated in our minds with the thought which makes the soul of every sentence. Fancy our great poets reprinted in phonetics, with our fine old English speech cropped and butchered and denuded of all unsounded letters, and to most readers the charm which once they knew would be gone forever. One remark which raised a responsive smile, mingled with some applause, was that we should one day look upon our present words, with their redundant letters, as on a dog with a kettle tied to his tail; and we were told that the spelling reform must make slow progress, since all that could now be done was to cut off the dog's tail by inches. There is a beast-fable in early mythology which relates, that once upon a time certain wiseacres of economical bent among the animals summoned a convention, to consider the great question of the abolition of tails. After much argument, it being contended that tails were useless appendages, destructive to all uniformity, and troublesome to keep in order, it was solemnly resolved that all tails should thenceforth be dispensed with. So the shapely tail of the horse was docked till he could no longer keep off the flies, the dog lost his expressive, wagging organ of interest and at tachment, the kitten parted with its waving testimonial of regard, the squirrel laid down his beautiful but useless appendage, the peacock was shorn of its splendid iridescent fan, and all the beasts and birds appeared in a tailless uniform. But very soon they found that a great mistake had been committed. When all were reduced to a uniform level of ugliness, they began to regret the things of beauty and of use so hastily parted with. A new convention was called, and, by a unanimous vote, the lost tails were restored, and the whole race of animals was happy once again. This fable teaches that the radical lopping off of fancied superfluities is not always permanent reform. BOOK NOTICE. Hindu Literature; or the Ancient Books of India. By Elizabeth A. Reed. Chicago, 1891. S. C. Griggs & Co. One has only to look at a collection of works on the Oriental religions to become thoroughly discouraged from attempting to read them. If he has not one hundred years at his disposal he had better not attempt to master the whole subject. In a volume of four hundred pages Mrs. Reed has undertaken to give a brief synopsis of the great Indian Epics in a popular and attractive form, and her volume will be read with great interest. DEATH OF JOHN G. OWENS.-Mr. J. G. Owens, of Lewisburg, Pa., recently died of yellow fever in Honduras, where he was exploring the ancient ruins and making archeological collections for the Columbian Exposition. Mr. Owens held for two years the Hemenway Fellowship at Harvard University. THE BRINTON LECTURES.-Five lectures on anthropology were delivered by Dr. J. G. Brinton at the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, in February and March. The special subjects were: "The Bonds of Social Life," "The Growth of the Arts," "The Progress of Religions," "Language and Literature," and "Folk Lore, or the Past in the Present." TIME-KEEPING BY LIGHT AND FIRE. BY WALTER HOUGH. The wonderful progress in the minification of time and in the whole science of metrology has called increasing attention to the methods of primitive peoples and to the survivals among the civilized. There will soon be a sufficient body of observations to illustrate the early stages of the faculty of estimation and the devices which have grown out of the aggregates of experience. An almost unnoticed fact in the history of time-keeping is the use of fire and light for measuring and checking time. The first employment of time-checks based upon the steady consumption of combustible substances by fire is to mark off short periods, rather than to keep a continuous record of time. This is in accord with the appreciation of the value of time in the unrefined states of culture. The observation of the heavenly bodies in a rough way, or the progress of a shadow in grass, or later the march of the shadow upon the dial, all growing out of planetary motion, seem often to have given place to the wasting of fire and the flowing of sand or The aid of fire becomes of value when it is desired to record the passage of a night, when the burning of a homogeneous, tinderlike branch, or a torch might give a fair estimate of the loss of time when the heavenly bodies were hidden. water. one. Most of the Pacific Islanders burn torches of the oily nuts of the "candle-nut tree," Aleurites triloba, by skewering a number of the kernels on a long palm-leaf midrib and lighting the upper The kernels are of nearly uniform size, and burn with a clear bluish flame, consuming in about ten minutes to a fungus, which, when the nut below is ignited, must be removed by some one in attendance. The Marquesans tie bits of tapa at intervals along the torch, and thus have invented a clock. In China there are many examples of a similar measurement of time. The prescribed time during which the royal procession at the coronation of the emperor must move through the distance between the palace and the temple is regulated by a functionary 1 who burns a "joss stick" (the traditional incense) of a certain fixed length. At present in China gong heung, or time incense, consisting of five sticks made of pressed wood dust, long and short, according to the season, is burnt during the night, which is divided into five watches. A bundle of these sticks from Canton, presented by Stewart Culin, is in the U. S. National Museum; they are about one-quarter of an inch in diameter and 16 inches long. "Professor Mason referred to a simple time-check used by Chinese physicians. It was a joss-stick broken so as to have several angles. The doctor set fire to one end and instructed his patient to take his first dose when the fire reached the first angle, another when it reached the second, and so on." In Western China, along the Yellow river, "the water is raised by immense wheels, generally fifty to sixty feet in diameter; they belong to villages and in a few cases to individuals, who, for a small consideration, sell the water to the peasants. The price is calculated by the quantity which flows from the wheel while a given length of joss-stick burns.' Chinese messengers who have but a short period to sleep, awake themselves by putting a lighted bit of joss-stick between the toes. This acts as an alarm and stimulus at the proper moment. In Korea, the regulation and recording of time is intrusted to certain petty officials, who tell the time by what is called the "dew clock," and which is probably a clepsydra. The night up to twelve o'clock is divided into five parts, giung, and these into five smaller, jium, which are announced by a drum and gong. At twelve o'clock the record ceases and the gates are opened. The palace clock is an oiled paper lantern, inclosing and screening from the wind a rope of hemp soaked in niter, called "fire rope," hwa-sung, which burns steadily. Each hour is divided into four parts by cords tied to the rope, and the latter is kept burning continuously. Time is announced by a lantern having transparent slides marked with the different giung, placed before the king's window. An officer takes charge of this clock, and the perpetuation of the custom seems due more to deference for tradition than for any practical purpose. It is probably of some value as a check upon the "dew clock." Koreans also reckon time by the number of pipes smoked. 2 The American Anthropologist, 1, January, 1888, p. 49. The Thus, |