Every enlightened worker in metals must feel interested in thus beholding an ancient red man in the actual use of the blowpipe, to say nothing of the illustration the figure affords of the state of the arts in ante-Columbian epochs, and of ancient life in this part of the world. The use of the blowpipe has been inferred from metalline remains discovered in sepulchral tumuli of the Mississippi valley. In Caleb Atwater's _Antiquities of the West_, (Columbus, 1833, pages 92-3,) mention is made of sixty copper beads, found in one of the mounds at Grave Creek, near Wheeling. "They were made of a coarse wire, which appeared to have been hammered out, not drawn, and were cut off at unequal lengths; _they were soldered together_ in an awkward manner, the centres of some of them uniting with the edges of others; they were incrusted with verdigris, but the inside of them was pure copper; which fact shows that the ancient inhabitants were not wholly unacquainted with the use of metals." As it is admitted that _brass_ was not known to the mound-builders, an analysis of the alloy that constituted the brazen solder here alluded to would be a positive addition to the little knowledge we have gleaned of these early native workers and of their arts. No matter how far man is separated from his fellows, either on the earth's surface or by time, the general uniformity of his nature is stamped on all his normal devices. Primitive inventions are universally similar. Under agreeing circumstances and conditions, the same means are hit upon to produce the same ends. Kindred trains of thought, of resources and results, characterize the origin and early progress of the arts every where. They begin in the same wants, and suggest the same ideas, which are carried out in substantially the same ways. Still, when a primitive people is found shut from communion with others--isolated from the rest of the world and deriving no suggestions from it--some shades of difference, more or less strongly defined, often mark means they discover, in common with others, and this whether occupiers of small islands or of widespread continents. But after all, this is only what may be called a variety of _expression_, the same general idea being differently brought out, just as in speech the same thoughts are displayed in various idioms. All arts and all machines are but dialects of one language--reasonings and conclusions in tangible forms and figures--a universal speech, understood by all men. Of the diverse exhibitions of a primitive and common suggestion, a more interesting example cannot well be adduced than the processes for the fabrication of thread, which have been disclosed on this half of the globe. They appear so different from others, and so remarkable, if not unique, that it may safely be said, if the first spinsters were foreigners, their mode of spinning was indigenous, however difficult, if not impossible, it may be to reconcile one suggestion with the other.