the color and quality, and the ornamented cloths are held as fancy articles, without having a fixed price. Of the colored goods, a dark-gray material is commonly worn by the Witchweri wizards; a dark-red is fashionable among well-to-do people; and a tan colored ground with stripes and figures in black, called mtone, was formerly worn only in royal families, and is still much affected by the nobles in Unyoro and Ruhama, while it has been to a considerable extent supplanted in Uganda by goods from Zanzibar. It can not be bought in the market, but any one who wishes to get a pattern of it must go to one of the great chiefs and give him ample satisfaction in return-presents. The other goods may be bought at their price in cows or cowries. The skins of cattle, goats, sheep and antelopes are also worn in parts of Africa, while the skins of leopards, monkeys, and cats are worn only by privileged persons of royal or noble families.
Private Encouragement of Research.—The fact that the recent proceedings of the Royal Institution acknowledge the gift of £100 by Mr. Warren De La Rue and 50 by Sir Frederick Bramwell to the fund for the promotion of experimental research supports the view that matters of this kind might be trusted to prosper as well under the encouragement of private interest and enterprise as when quartered upon the Government for subsidy. Liberal gifts are seldom wanting to anything that proves worthy of them; and in the former case research will be supported in proportion as it is industriously prosecuted and is of value; while under the Government plan, although enough show of work may be made to draw the pensions, it is by no means sure that so much pains will be taken to make the genuineness and value of the work demonstrable.
Eskimos in Ancient New Jersey.—Mr. A. S. Packard, who has been investigating the history of the Labrador Eskimos, has come to the conclusion that those people formerly had a more or less permanent foothold on the northern shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. If this was so, it seems not improbable that they may have made, in very early times, expeditions farther south, to Nova Scotia and New England. This thought leads the author to Dr. Abbott's theory, that the Eskimos inhabited the coast of New Jersey during the river terrace epoch, which he was at first disposed to reject. Examination, however, has led him to look with more favor upon it, and to think it not improbable that, long after the close of the glacial period, or after the ice had disappeared, and during the terrace epoch, when the reindeer and walrus lived as far south as New Jersey, the Eskimos, being perhaps the remnants of the palæolithic people of Europe, extended as far as a region defined by the edge of the great moraine; and, as the climate assumed its present features, moved northward. This view presented itself while he was collecting the material for his notes, and was confirmed by Mr. Tylor's remarks at the British Association.
The King Country and the Maories.—The "King Country" is a district of about ten thousand square miles in extent in the northern Island of New Zealand, to which the mass of the wild native population of the country have retired so as to be out of the way of the whites, and over which they claim and exercise exclusive jurisdiction to the extent of having, till very recently, held it tapu against white men. Mr. J. H. Kerry Nicholls, who lately succeeded in making a running exploration of it, describes it as one of the best-watered parts of the island, with many beauties, and offering many natural advantages for European settlement. In the west it has an extensive coast-line, and a capacious harbor. Dense forests cover a large part of its southern area, and extend northward to the mountains. Westward of this division is a considerable area of open country, while there are vast open tablelands near the snow-clad mountains in the south, and other extensive open plains west of the great Lake Taupo and north of Titiraupenga. The King Country possesses all the rock formations in which gold, coal, iron, and other minerals are found, while its extensive forests are rich in timber of the most varied and valuable kind. Geysers and thermal springs, possessing wonderful medicinal properties, are found in the vicinity of its many extinct craters; and, while it possesses one of the largest active
