Arizona silver belt., 1894-12-01
IMPLEMENTS or GAMING.
Curious Origin of Playing Cards,
 Dice and Dorninoes.
India and China the Source of These Pe- cullar PIaythIngs Some of the Games Played by the
 Mongolians.

knuclSle bones. of sheep9 Yet such is the fact. If you do not believe it., ask Stewart Culin, ethnologist, attached to the University of Pennsylvania, who, according to the Washington Star, has made the study of games, from the scientific point of view, his speciality. The so-called knuckle bones are famii- far enough, being used to this day by children in various parts of the world. They are the ankle bones of the sheep, and are four-sided. It seems odd to find that dice in Arabic are called by name which means ankle bones. No body knows how long they were first employed for playing games. One day it occurred to somebody that Q cube was better adapted "a the purpose. That must have happened in very an- cient times for the Romans of old had dice which were just like our own, even to the arrangement of the mum bers on the faces--L e., the six opposite the one, the five opposite the two, and the four opposite the three.
 lt will be observed that the sum of any two opposite numbers is always seven. This may have something to do with the fact that seven used to be regarded as a magical number. Of the respect accorded to 1t there is evidence in many passages of the Bible The most ancient cubieal die known dates back to GOO B. C.--that is, twenty-five hundred years ago. It was found at Naucratus, a Greek colony in Egypt. The earliest dice were made in pairs, righ; aud left, like lSnHclile bones, one of which was always from the right leg and the other from the left leg of the animal Two dice were usually employed, because they were two knuckle bones. Mir Culin says that dice probably originated in India From that country they were carried to China, whence they have been dis. tributed all over the world. The Chi. nese are great gamestcrs; they invent ed 9 modification of the dice, which is called the domino. Put two dice faces side by side and you have the domino Dominoes are said to have been devised in the year li2O of the Chris. tian era by a Chinese emperor for the amusement of his wives. it is nore likely, however, that they merely ob- tained the imperial approval at that date.
 There are twenty-one possible throws with two dice, 50 twentY-one dOminoes may be regarded as natural donliuoas However the Chinese have doubled up some of the numbers 50 as to make a full set for playing thirtY-two in all. All over eastefh Asia the customary outfit of doininoes is thirty-tHo. Our doninocs, obtained by way of Europe are only tweuty-eight and are modified by the introduction of blanks. The domino game of Europe and America is the match game, IL is played in China but is an uniInportant one among the many Chinese games of dominoes. The Chinese domino sames are all of them dice games elaborated Dominoes are also used in China, like dice, for iofs tune telling, That system of diyina tion has an extensive literature of its own. The Chinese dominoes all have astrological names.
 In Chino cosmicai names are given to the numbers on the aice. Six is thc throw of heaven, ace is the throw of earth four is the throw of man, while one and three are chosen to represent the harmony that mites heaven, earth and man. The throw of double five is called the plum flower five and six is the tigers head" four and six is 'red-head teu,7 one and six is long legged seyen." and one and five is red mallet six These terms remind one of those given by negroes 10 vatiuus throws at the game of craps On Chinese dice the one" aad four are always red, while the dots on the other faces are black Mir Culin cannot as sign any reason for this with certainty There is Q legend to the effect that on one occasion an emperor of the Ming dynasty was almost defeated in a game by his queen. The only possibility for him to win was that the dice should turn ap tours" They did so, and he was so gratifed that from that time forth the ofours" on all dice were marked in red.
 Take an ordinary domino of bone or wood. enlarge it make t of paper, and it becomes playing card. Mr Culin's study of the subject has led him to the conclusion that this is the way in which the playing card was originally evolved The evolution began with the knuckle bone, which became q cubical die; the latter was transformed into a domino, and the domino, in its turn, was metamorphosed into 9 card A domino with two lives on it repre- sents the 'tenspot" of the pack. The origin of "king," queen and 'Jack' is unknown. Possibly a little light may be thrown upon the mystery by the fact that the four sides of the knuclxle bone are called in Arabic the 'shah," ''vizier," peasant and slave" The same names are given to the numbers on the cubical die, the six being the "shah." One of the games played with dominoes in China is apparently the prototype of whist. Nobody knows when dominoes and cards were introduced into Europe. We, in America, get aliour games from Europe; we invent no games. Poker IS an old English game modified, Mir. Crlin says that there are no new games; those brought out from year to year are merely notifications of old ones. Games are originated in primi- tive stages of social development.
 One would naturally suppose that the spinning die, called the 'teetotem, :" must be derived from the same orig inal source as the cubical die. Appar- ently such is not the case. Mir. Culin has traced the teetotem to Corea, where it seems to have had its begin ming.
 It Was the Cat.
 In Trieste an Englishman, Prof. Jones, recently suffered a severe loss throuph a strange TniShap. He was