The knowledge of this game was probably common to the members of the Polynesian stock before they separated into different groups, as we find it in the Eastern Pacific in Mangaia, one of the Hervey Group, and again, so far south as New Zealand.

Dr. W. Wyatt Gill,' the illustrious missionary of the Hervey Group, informs us that "cat's cradle (ai) was a great delight to old and young. Teeth were called into play to help the fingers. One complication, in which the cord in the centre is twisted into a long slender stem, and therefore called the coco-nut tree,' I have never known a European to unravel."

Two early travellers give us the following accounts of the game as it is played in New Zealand:

"He whai or maui.-The cat's cradle' is a game very similar to our own, but the cord is made to assume many more forms, and these are said to be different scenes in their mythology, such as Hine-nui-te-po, Mother Night bringing forth her progeny, Maru and the gods, and Maui fishing up the land. Men, canoes, houses, etc., are also represented. Some state that Maui invented.

"In the game of Maui they are great proficients. This is a game like that called 'cat's cradle' in Europe, and consists of very complicated and perplexing puzzles with a cord tied together at the ends. It seems to be intimately connected with their ancient traditions, and in the different figures which the cord is made to assume, whilst held on both hands, the outlines of their different varieties of houses, canoes, or figures of men and women are imagined to be represented. Maui, the Adam of New Zealand, left this amusement to them as an inheritance." "

1 W. Wyatt Gill, Life in the Southern Isles, 1876, p. 65.

R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui; or, New Zealand and its Inhabitants, London, 1855, p. 172.

3 E. Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, vol. ii., London, 1843, p. 32.

Tregear' also mentions the representation of Tawhaki (lightning) ascending to heaven.

These statements are very interesting, and suggest that we have here to do with some symbolism that has in course of time become obscured. On the other hand, Maui may be merely a pastime, and the string figures or designs may be nothing more than casual illustrations of the mythology of the natives. There do not appear to be sufficient data at present to settle this point.

Dr. Codrington' says: "Cat's cradle, in Lepers' Island lelegaro, in Florida honggo, with many figures, is common throughout the [Melanesian] Islands."

The Motu children of Port Moresby, in the south-eastern peninsula of New Guinea, are as well versed in the intricacies of cat's cradle as are our own."

I remember once going into a native hut in an island in Torres Straits, and seeing a little black boy playing with a piece of string, the two ends of which were tied together, in much the same manner as our children play at cat's cradle. The first figure that he made with it was precisely the same as our cradle," but the subsequent ones were different. He was greatly surprised when I picked the string off his hands to make "the soldier's bed," which I then transformed into the candles," back into the reversed manger," and from that into " the diamonds, the diamonds," and so on. I found that a couple of natives did not play together as we do, "taking off" from each other, but that usually each played separately. They can make much more elaborate devices than ours, and the process is correspondingly elaborate, and feet and teeth are at times pressed into service. On

1 E. Tregear, "The Maoris of New Zealand," Journ. Anth. Inst., xix., 1889. p. 115. 2 The Melanesians, 1891, p. 341.

3 W. Y. Turner, "The Ethnology of the Motu," Journ. Anth. Inst.. vii., 1878, p. 483.

the other hand, although many are extremely complicated in manipulation, the final result may be simple. The following are some of the forms I saw the natives make: A mouth; a coco-nut palm; liana, or some forest rope-like climber; a fish; a crow; a dog; a crayfish, certain movements of the hands represented the motions of the living animal; a seasnake, which, when the hands were drawn apart, had an undulating movement, such as sea-snakes have in swimming through the water; one figure was intended for a canoe, without an outrigger, and another for one with an outrigger; one, by a stretch of the imagination, was said to indicate a family of one pickaninny (child), and yet another a family of two.'

Among the Australians, Eyre' remarks: "String puzzles are another species of amusement with them. In these a European would be surprised to see the ingenuity they display and the varied and singular figures which they produce. Our juvenile attempts in this way are very meagre and uninteresting compared to them."

Professor E. B. Tylor,' who has noted some of the references I have just given, says, it is evident that the Dyaks and Maories did not learn it from Europeans, and though cat's cradle is now known over all Western Europe we cannot find any record of it at all ancient in our part of the world. It is known in South-east Asia, and he thinks that the most plausible explanation seems to be that this is its centre of origin, whence it migrated westward into Europe, and eastward and southward through Polynesia and into Australia. It would be interesting if it could be estab

1 A. C. Haddon, "The Ethnography of the Western Tribe of Torres Straits," Journ. Anth. Inst., xix., 1890, p. 361.

2 Central Australia, ii., p. 229.

3 E. B. Tylor, "Remarks on the Geographical Distribution of Games," Fourn. Anth. Inst., ix., 1879, p. 26.

lished that this game has travelled in the manner suggested by the great Oxford anthropologist. The occurrence of a similar string game among the Eskimo requires explanation.

We know that all over the world, string, cords, and knots enter largely into magic, and there may be some forgotten or unrecorded connection between cat's cradle and a magical rite. The association of cat's cradle with mythology in New Zealand is also worth bearing in mind.

At present we cannot carry the investigation any further until more evidence is to hand. It does not appear to me improbable that some of these varieties of cat's cradle may have been independently invented.

KITES.

Although now fairly widely distributed in Europe and common enough in England, the kite is a comparatively recent plaything in Europe, having been introduced in the course of Oriental trade from the far East during the seventeenth century. Strutt, writing in 1801, says he does not find any reason to conclude that it existed here much more than a century back," and the first record he found was in a French and English dictionary, published by Miege, A.D. 1690, where among other significations cerf volant denoted a "kite."

Such being the case it is evident there cannot be much to learn from a study of kites in Europe, nor have we a great variety in forms. The old type with a crescentic upper margin is giving place to a diamond- or lozenge-shaped form. Occasionally one sees other shapes, but these are obviously importations, or imitations, of Chinese or Japanese kites.

1 J. Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, 1801, Book iv., p. 292.

From being a mere toy the kite has recently become a scientific instrument. Kites appear to have been first applied in meteorology by Alexander Wilson, of Glasgow, who, in 1749, raised thermometers attached to kites into the clouds.' Three years later, Franklin performed in Philadelphia his celebrated experiment of collecting the electricity of the thunder-cloud by means of a kite. Although kites have served a variety of purposes, their first systematic use in meteorology was probably in England, between 1883 and 1885, when E. D. Archibald made differential measurements of wind velocity by anemometers, raised by kites fifteen hundred feet (Nature, vol. xxxi.). In 1885, A. McAdie repeated Franklin's experiment on Blue Hill, using an elecSince then there has been a very notable development in scientific kite-flying in the United States; in Europe, attention has chiefly been directed to balloons, though the latter have many disadvantages as compared with the former. A kite-balloon is now being tried in the German army, but it is inferior to the simple kite for meteorological researches."

trometer.

"In Washington the Weather Bureau has, under the direction of Prof. Willis L. Moore, chief of the Bureau, been carrying on an extended investigation into the best kinds of kites for use in sending up meteorological instruments. Prof. C. F. Marvin has recently minutely described the kind of kite now in use by the Bureau. This kite is a modification of those used by Hargrave in Australia, and is not at all like the ordinary kite. Instead of being flat, and tapering at the lower end, as in the usual form,

2

Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, x., p. 284.

Sparks, Works of Benjamin Franklin, v., p. 295.

3 Lawrence Rotch, "On obtaining Meteorological Records in the Upper Air, by Means of Kites and Balloons," Proc. American Acad. Arts and Sci., xxxii., 1897; reprinted in Nature, lvi., 1897, p. 602.

4 Monthly Weather Rev., Nov. 1895