Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, September 1899: Vol. LV, May to October, 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, September 1899: Vol. LV, May to October, 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Miss Kingsley defines one of the fundamental doctrines of African
fetich as being that the connection of a certain spirit with a certain
mass of matter, a material object, is not permanent. "The African will
point out to you a lightning-stricken tree and tell you that its
spirit has been killed; he will tell you when the cooking pot has gone
to bits that it has lost its spirit; if his weapon fails, it is
because some one has stolen or made sick its spirit by means of
witchcraft. In every action of his daily life he shows you how he
lives with a great, powerful spirit world around him. You will see
him, before starting out to hunt or fight, rubbing medicine into his
weapons to strengthen the spirit within them, talking the while,
telling them what care he has taken of them, reminding them of the
gifts he has given them, though those gifts were hard to give, and
begging them in the hour of his dire necessity not to fail him. You
will see him bending over the face of a river, talking to its spirit
with proper incantations, asking it when it meets a man who is an
enemy of his to upset his canoe or drown him, or asking it to carry
down with it some curse to the village below which has angered him,
and in a thousand other ways he shows you what he believes if you
will watch him patiently. It is a very important point in the study of
pure fetich to gain a clear conception of this arrangement of things
in grades. As far as I have gone I think I may say fourteen classes of
spirits exist in fetich. Dr. Nassau, of Gaboon, thinks that the
spirits affecting human affairs can be classified completely into six
classes."
At a recent meeting of the Institute of Mining Engineers (England),
reported by Industries and Iron, Mr. J. A. Longden, who delivered the
opening address, discussed the problem presented by the rapid
exhaustion of the English coal fields. During the last twenty-five
years, he said, the output of coal had increased from 120,000,000 to
200,000,000 tons, the ratio of increase being two and a half per cent
per annum. Assuming that the increase for the next twenty-five years
will only be one and a half per cent, the coal output in 1925 would
reach 280,000,000 tons. At such an increasing annual output the
commercially workable coal would be practically used up. Mr. Longden
suggested the propriety of putting an export duty of sixpence per ton
on all coal exported, and finally said: The evidence before them all
pointed to one thing--namely, that in fifty years they would
practically be dependent on the United States of America for cheap
coal, iron, and steel, and when this came about "we or our sons will
find out that an alliance with the United States for coaling our navy
was imperative." In conclusion, he insisted upon the necessity of
taking measures to avoid waste in the coal industry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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