The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1893-10-06

down to some Africans who have no word
for any number beyond hundred; where
man ends the trained animals in the great
plaisance show take up the links, and
Professor Gernier has sent from Africa to
the congress of sciences promise that by
the next worlds fair he will have the Ian
guage Of the apes reduced to writing and
| give us an outline of their civil constitu-
tions and forms of government.
Those who have read the new Genesis,
according to Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer
and Darwin will remember the statements
('interesting, but tough" as Huck Finn
said), that when the primordial ape had
assembled the family tree so high that he,
in measure, got rid of his tail he de-
scended to earth, organized the primitive
commonwealth, developed into an anthro-
poid and by natural selection and survival
of the fittest evolved the anthropomorphic
primordial types-the homunculus, the
prognathus, the troglodyte, the autoch-
thon and the tarregen. These were the
generations of primeval man, and terragen
was the father of the aborigine. Well,
we have them all here, alive or stuffed or
shown in rude carvings by the first men,
who were contemporary with them, and
| in the Transportation building we have
the history of their progress in that line.
And the order of the use made of animals
was evidently this: First, the dog and
then the OK, the Ass and the horse in sue
cession, with camels, llamas, buffaloes and
elephants in their native regions.
The visitor entering that building at the
north end comes first upon an all-wooden
Mexican cart with two of those long
horned oxen hitched, and the whole get-up
is so comically natural, so exactly like the
vehicle as I saw it in Mexico, that almost
expected to hear the shrill "Carambal
Viejo, cabron, carrambaP' as one hears it
in Mexico. In these carts one finds what
was undoubtedly the primitive form of the
wheel-that is q cross section cut out of n
tree, the toughest wood the barbari :,
could find of course. 1t was a great G.tv
for civilization when some man invented
way to hollow out the center of the
wheel and make it much lighter while re-
tanning it's strength; but when hub, spoke
and felloe were completed there was civil
ization, indeed.
In the same line is the bullock cart from
Siam, the rude country cart from Turkey,
the heavy wheels from Santa Domingo
and the specimens from Malacca, upper
India and South Africa. But all these
have hub and spokes, though of very rude
construction, which increases the wonder
that the solid wheel should still be in use
in Mexico. In brides, saddles and spurs
all these nations show far greater inn
provements, which may be due to the fact
that they used them long before they did
vehicles But the interesting fact is that
in water transportation they reached per-
lection, that is on small scale, almost at
the start. The light boats of the Malays,
the canoes of the South seas, the caiques,
the little Siamese skiffs and even the
kajak (they spell it in several other ways)
Of the Esquimaux are about as good fnr
their purposes as civilized men could
make.
United States Consul Merrill, of Jerusa-
lem, has sent a boat used on the sea Of
Gallilee which he maintains is of identi-
cally the same pattern as that used by the
apostolic fishermen of the year 81 and
Whereabouts. If so, Peter and Andrew
must have been very skillful boatmen, for
1 should hate to trust myself in it. He
has also sent a complete Jerusalem trans
portation exhibit, consisting of the leather
bottles for carrying OIL wine and water,
water jars to be carried on the head,
waterskins, small hand jugs of terra Gotta,
plaques and other covers for the vessels in
which food is carried, and variety Of
baskets and panniers as used by hucksters
The absence of ornament on these things
calls to my mind the alleged fact that
there has never been time when art
fourished in Palestine and raises the
question whether the prohibition so long
enforced among the Jews and tacitly ac-
cepted by their successors has wrought an
organic change in the people. I do not
just now remember the name of any great
Jewish painter or sculptor, though there
may be such.
Far more interesting are the palan-
quins, sedan chairs and other appliances
used where man is the carrier of man and
woman, and of all these the most interest
ing is the Madagascar palanquin used by
Madame French-Sheldon in her long jour
ney in Africa in 1901. During most Of the
time she went afoot, directing the course
Of the column, and only used this palan-
quin when sleep or rest became necessity.
It is at once light and strong and her four
stalwart carriers bore her along with ease
United States Consul Bannister, of st.
Paul de Loanda, has also sent q palanquin
used on the west coast and one of the
canoes Of the natives there. Other curl
osities in this line are the mandarin chair
from China, the jinricksha from Japan,
the pretty palanquin used by high caste
folks in India, the silla or chair in which
the sillero of the Andes carries travellers
over the mountains, and the many va
rieties of chairs, baskets and carriages.
As for the housings on camels, elephants,
donkeys and buffaloes, a mere list Of them
would stretch out to tedious length.
1t is far cry from palanquin to q
Pullman palace car, but the railway ex-
hibit in the great annex is worlds fair
in itself. The Transportation building
proper is only $50 feet long and 255 feet
wide, but the annex extends from it to the
west side of the grounds and covers nine
acres. In it are locomotives from every
firm of makers in the United States but
two, cars of every kind known in the busi-
ness with every kind of brake and buffer.