_Arts and Sciences._—The less civilised a nation is, the ruder are its tools and contrivances; but these are often worked with curious skill in getting excellent results with the roughest means. Stone implements have now been so supplanted by iron that they are not easily found in actual use. If a chance of seeing them occurs, as, for instance, among some Californian tribe, who still chip out arrow-heads of obsidian, it is well to get a lesson in the curious and difficult art of stone-implement making. In general, tools and implements differing from those of the civilised world, even down to the pointed stick for root-digging and planting, are worth collecting, and to learn their use from a skilled hand often brings into view remarkable peculiarities. This is the case with many cudgel or boomerang-like weapons thrown at game, slings or spear-throwers for hurling darts to greater distances than they can be sent by hand, blow-tubes for killing birds, and even the bow-and-arrow, which in northern Asia and America shows the ancient Scythian or Tartar form, having to be bent inside out to string it. Though fire is now practically made almost everywhere with flint and steel or lucifers, in some districts, as South Africa or Polynesia, people still know the primitive method of fire-making by rubbing or drilling a pointed stick into another piece of wood. Europeans find difficulty in learning this old art, which requires some knack. As is well known to sportsmen, different districts have their special devices for netting, trapping and other ways of taking game and fish, some of which are well worth notice, such as spearing or shooting fish under water, artificial decoys, and the spring-traps set with bent boughs, which are supposed to have first suggested the idea of the bow. While the use of dogs in hunting is found in most parts of the world, there is the utmost variety of breeds and training. Agriculture in its lower stages is carried on by simple processes; but interesting questions arise as to the origin of its grain and fruits, and the alterations in them by transplanting into a new climate and by ages of cultivation. Thus in Chili there is found wild what botanists consider the original potato; but while maize was a staple of both Americas at the time of Columbus, its original form has no more been identified than that of wheat in the Old World. The cookery of all nations is in principle known to the civilised European; but there are special preparations to notice, such as bucaning or drying meat on a hurdle above a slow fire, broiling kebabs or morsels of meat on the skewer in the East, etc. Many peoples have something peculiar in the way of beverages, such as the chewed Polynesian _kava_, or the South American _maté_ sucked through a tube. Especially fermented liquors have great variety, such as the _kumiss_ from mares’ milk in Tartary, the _pombe_ or millet-beer of Africa, and the _kvass_ or rye-beer of Russia. The rudest