The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 14, 1902, Page 3

THE SUNDAY CALL (reatest Skeletop of a Pri oot RETr Stropgest, Fiercest URIED away gravel in the earth and that have been accumu- T uncounted years, fore all the ages has that man been as cending, the great skeleton of a primeval bear has been for a long, student assistant in the Univers- of Cal bear the huge cave our e cave amed the famous, was the place by scientists to have | carnivorous mame North Amer- t g8 , giant of reaches of nine feet. This measured at est of all known s sometimes as much as 1600 a cave bear may ore. been known to carry oft pounds. Guess what the ms of the great arctother- ay have been. of its wonderful remains has Furlong left the university went north to make explorations only ort time ago. After two weeks of dig- in the limestone caves that lie near the United States fisheries station on the er, he returned to Berkeley some bones and a report that made circles open their eves. He went into consultation with Profes- sor John Merriam, who is head of the pa- leontological work. The result was the rcement of a great discovery. An erium simum had been found long was immediately sent back to go on with his digging and the rest of the gigantic skeleton was shipped by him to e university. The parts of it are now lying in the paleontological labora- tory, waiting to be set up. At present they ere meaningless bits of earth-en- cased bone so far as the casual observer can see, except that theé skuli is in good sghape. Bcattered3imb bones look worth- less enough to the popular eye. But the scientists are fairly worshiping before them, for they see limitless storles of the unknown days lying there in the little trays of the laboratory. Merriam hgs gone north to join Fur- long, end it’is hoped that the cave has given up only the beginning of its treas- ures. Relics of-primeval man hold out glowing possibllities; already there have been found some bones cracked In a way that does not look accidental, but as if s human hand had cracked them to get out the marrow, and one piece of ilime- stone that seems to have been chipped into the form of an implement. The remains of only two specimens of the arctotherium have ever been found. The only rel}c of the simum was the skull which Jamé¥ Richardson found in 1879 in another of the group of limestone caves County. Richardson dug geveral inches of cave earth and agmite and brought out a skull that was turned over to Professor E. D. Cope, in Shasta who investigated the discovery and re- ed practically =il ~that has been known up to now of the cave bear. But that skull is now alto- gether eclipsed by Furlong’'s find, which is 50 nearly the entire skele- ton of the beast that with a very meval B @eological Department, Bas Made Oné of the Most - Important Discoveries of S¢ience- little the skeleton of the great mammal will restoration soon stand before vs in clearly defined shape and make us realize more clearly what a giant inhabi- ted our wilds in the days when the hard- stores were quar®ies daid@ as well an trousseau. Merriam s that the Me- Cloud caves W rank with the most famous in all Europe. Everything looks rosy colored to the patient students. The tooth of a giant sloth has been found already in addition to the bear relics, and there is every evidence that there is more to come. It was Furlong’s good fortune to choose the cavern where the bear skeleton lay. The cavern is about eighty feet long by thirty wide and its floor is curiously formed of regular layers of gravel and cave earth. The formation of the cav- ern is causing some guessing. Some think that it was formed by streams of long ago which hollowed it into the present shape; others claim that percolating wat- er alone has carried away the limestone and formed the thing. But it has existed for a long time, and has been a retreat for wild beasts of many kinds, as is shown by the remains already found—bones of fish, birds, the rabbit, the beaver, elk, deer and the early horse. These were all found in the soft goil of the cave, and there, too, appeared the tiny limestone implement and the cracked bones which mean so much to those who are exploring. Furlong did a lot of patient digging be- fore he was rewarded for his labor. He had penetrated five feet before he found the first sign of the bear's’ bones. Some further digging through the hard reddish clay and the skeleton came to light. How long it may have been lying there no one dares guess as yet. Cope esti- mates that the arctotherium reached our continent at a comparatively late date, but earlier than the true genus ursus. What the student of paleontology calls a “comparatively late date” means much further back than our family trees are recorded or than we should even be par- ticularly proud to-. record them, for it certainly goes back to the time when forks and fingers were distinguished. The dimensions of this skull are greater than those of the early one found by Richardson in the carbonifer- ous limestone. The early one showed a beast about equal in size to a gzizzly, al; though the proportions are different. This has the same odd proportions and more of them. It is a pug-nosed bear. In this respect it differs absolutely from any other spe- cles of bear existing. Its jaw is short, broad, powerful. It had a face that must have suggested a bulldog, if there were any bulldogs then to suggest. Its nearest relative, so far as science has yet been able to discover, is the arctotherium bonoerense, the great bear of South America, that dwelt in the pam- pas of the south at some forgotten time. The remains of some of these bears was found in Buenos Ayres in the pampas formation. Some time during the early Plelstocene era, or the late Pliocene, there was a migration from South to North Amer- ica. Some of the mammalia of the south irnvaded our continent. The north had been covered by an ice sheet, which shut off any migration from Asia, but left lthe coast clear for southern visitors to ~ UP-TO-DATE FIRMS THAT MANUFACTURE WEIRD IDOLS FOR THE HEATHENS N the capital of the Sujtan of Muscat there is established a firm of traders he only one of its kind—whose chief business is dealing in idols. These stramge “gods” are made of ivory, brass, wood, iron and cork.. The firm has agents ttered throughout East Africa, from the Natal coast right away to Dela- goa; but it is in the north of this par- ticular territory where fetishism is most popular, and it is there that the Zangue- bar firm transacts the greater part of its god dealing business. It has also a branch in the Senegam- ia part of Africa, which embraces Coo- massie, Abomey, Benin, Loango, Congo, Angcla and Benguela, places where the natives, mostly savages, carry on exten- sively the worshiping of stick and stones for gods. Now, various sorts of savages have va- rious kinds of gods, and chiefly their idols are crude images, fashioned by crude hands. But a spirit of modern en- terprise has developed even in the sav- age breast, and the custom of the savage, making his own fetish, or god, which pas been observed from time Immemorial, is now giving place to the newer methods of buying idols in the cheapest market; hence the reason for the Zanguebar idol dealing firm coming into existence. They are ready to supply to the sav- age tribes gods great and small, loving or warlike, ¥hade of paper, wood or ivory, or the most precious metal, on terms which pay them and please their dusky customers. And no credit is given and no risk is run in worthless checks or base coin, for the bill is paid in the local ter- ritorial currency—namely, in yams, ba- nanas, rice, palms, maize, dourra, nuts and beans; or in gold metal, palm oll, ivory, gums and cowries, or in cattle or slaves. This merchandise is converted into money in the capitals. Some of the idols are dreams of first- class workmanship, for the Zangueba- rians have imported workmen from va- rious parts of the world, whose whole la- bors are expended on the monsters upon which the poor savages look with eyes of tenderness and veneration. Ivory and certain kinds of wooden gods are prin- cipally made on African territory—those of the cheaper kinds—but the more pre- tentious and expensive gods are made in France, Germany and Great Britain, in factories the existence of which no- body on this side of the world has hardly ever dreamed. In the heart of Birmingham is the Brit- ish factory;,there is another at Nimes, in France, and one at Griez, in Germany. The orders are sent direct to these establishments from Zanguebar, so that there is need for no surprise if their exist- ence is unknown. The business is unique, since it has no_competitors and nobody traveling about Europe for orders. The very best of the idols come from the factory in Birmingham, since it is situated in the world's center for hard- ware and nickel stuff, and where gold and silver articles are made every week by the thousand, and where the greater bulk of the world's metallic production is con- reach us. It was then that the great cave bear came. Along with the arctotheri- um’s remains in South America were found those of the glant sloth, The two glants evidently hobnobbed, for in the McCloud cave has been found the sioth’s tooth, and it 1s supposed that the bear and the ‘sloth ‘were two of the forelgn emigrants that arrived in North America at the same period. ) So it follows that the departed who lles in state now in the laboratory trays at the University of California dates back to some time around the Pampean epoch of South America, which period will do very well for the beginning of a pedl- gree. North America has known practi- cally nothing heretofore of its ancestral SEee” tribes of the § e tribes of the Senegambian distric of Africa believe that every mlsfortun: proceeds from and can only be averted by their_gods, so that in order to pro- pitiate them ‘the poor, misguided souls have their fetishes or idols made in rich metals; that is the general practice. A chief will readily pay 500 barrels of palm oil /$130 a ton) for the native fetish, which may consist of a gold-cased monster in the shape of a fiendish head with light eyes, or a serpent with three heads fixed to a long pole of ivory. The Solomon Islands tribes do not usual- 1y erect their idols in the open; they ai placed inside the houses and are mon- strosities of the more sober sort than those of most of the trites. The gods are fishes, snakes and birds. The natives are good - customers of the god merchants, who received from them for an orna- mental fetish fish, the outlines of which are foreign to the naturalist, perhaps two or three crocodiles, each being worth about $125, while for a carved ivory bird, which resembled more a dog than a bird, diamonds and gold nuggets to the value head are tremendously wide, the head short in proportion. The forehead Is full and rounded. The canine teeth are im- mense, far greater than those of any bear known. The lmbs are heavy as well as long. TheSe are the distinctive qualities that appeal to the popular eye. The technical eye sces many other points that are meaningless to most of us. It counts the three incisive foramina and compares them with those of other bears that have but two. It observes that the muzzle descends obliquely downward from the very convex frontal region. It 2 . motes the canines compressed at the base. But all these things are less picturesque to the aver- age mind than the fact that Eustace Furlong bhad to be let down by means of ropes swung over a for- ty-five oot hole in which lay a wealth of types of bears. They~ have béen found to a large extent In the Neocenes of Europe and India, but all the knowledge of our own lles an unread ‘book. X The distinctive mark that makes the North and South American bears alike is the short muzzle. The palate and fore- of $1250 settled the bill of King Benjar- missin_of Molucca. The European-made gods cost any sum from $250 to $5000. In the valley of the Mombas there is in every village ‘what is called a sacred house, which contains, among grewsome objects, many priceless treasures, though fearfully ugly things in the way of idols. The natives call them “M'lungu,” and they consist of human heads fastened on a pole, with preclous stones and gold and silver bars or plates ingeniously inserted in the face, figures of lions and alligators of the most outrageous description, but nevertheless made of gold and smothered in precious stones, and knuckle-bones of various animals incased in glittering frames composed of diamonds. Most of these fetishes are made to or- der Birmingham, which city has sent thousands of idols to the ‘‘poor benighted heathens” of the Dark Continent. There are hundreds of gods worshiped by savages, there being at least one for every conceivable happening known to humanity, and they range in size from one inch to a hundred feet in height. The treasures of the past. At the bottom of this hole or cleft lies the wonderful cave. The tooth which was found is that of the megatherium or great ground sloth. It belongs to the Quaternary age. It was in loose soll as was the bear skeleton, strangest god of all is “Kisuka,” who is the terror and the love at the same time of the Gaboon tlacks. He looks like an ordinary scarecrow, judging by the quan- tity of feathers and old rags with which the bodv is dressed up. As a matter of fact, however, the great god, which stands some nine feet high, is made—prin- cipally at Nimes, in France—out of solid cobbles of gold, and though the carving takes hideous lines, yet it is so beauti- fully done to warrant the bill coming to, as a rule, $5260. The traders are paid with ivory—enormdus tusks weighing from 100 to 200 pounds, and fetching in the wholesale market from $250 to $350. Of course, the business comes to the trader in a very roundabout way. Some of the chiefs get to hear of the middle- man—the trader's traveler—being in the district. This astute individual has al- ready seen the witch doctor—the creature who rules the tribe, so to speak—and has prevailea upon him to provide the tribe with a brand new god. “‘Business on equitable terms” is done. The savage holds a ‘“‘palaver,’ ‘which he declares the “gods’ want propitiatin; ear kuer Found Eustace Furlong, Student Assistant 1n the University of Qalifornia’s § Buried ip a # Limestong Cave Near Mt. Shasta which was great good fortuns, for the relics ¢an be taken out easily and with- out danger of breaking them. The arctotherium is in such good eon- dition that the very claws are present as well as the toes. Shoulder blade and atlas were found and most of the verte- brae. Some of the ribs are lacking as yet. The bear s more llke the black and white cousin rarely found in Thibet than any other bear we have knowledge of as living at present. It also has some qual- ities in common with the brown bear of Siberia. But as to the color of the arctotherium’s fur, science can make no guess at all. So the public is at liberty to Imagine 1% whatever shade of brown or of black er of white that it chooses. Even the cave bear of the East is very different from this beast, so that we must do a great deal of imagining in order to picture to ourselves the big cave animal that was an early Californian—earlier than the pioneers or the Spanish before them or the Indians before them in turm. He was a genuine pioneer, this arcto- therium, so enterprising a one that he puts to shame the forty-niners, who be- lieve that they own California. So the finding of him has been worth the forty- five feet of dangerous rope-swinging, worth the long and tedious explorations of twenty-five other caves in the same Shasta reglon, explorations which ylelded Dothing worth finding. The primeval bear trouble he has cost. has pald for the In Berlin there died wealthy man named Pfeiffer, who _bad many relatives, but lived the recently & life of a hermit. All who tried to do him favors he regard- \ ed as legacy hunters. After his death his will was opened and to it was appended & codicil, which, be said, was not to be read until after the funeral. This will read as fol- lows: “Every member of my family who does not at- tend my funeral ( will recelve $300.” ‘When the fun- eral took place there was only one mourner, l, an slderly 12dy, who was & very % distant relative, The codicil was read that evening, and it provided that the entire estats, which remained after the$300 had been pald to each relative who did not attend the funeral should be divided among those who had pald the last honors to the deceased. Thus this one distant relative, who showed that she had some affection for old Pfeiffer, received several thousand dollars and the other relatives only re- celved $300 each. The latter are naturally disappointed and intend to contest the validity of the will and this, ot course, takes the form of & new god. Another way Is to steal quietly into the sacred grove of a native village and set up an idol unobserved. When the natives See it they are paralyzed and wonder how it got there. Their first act is to fall down and worship it. The trader comes along, makes explanations, and leaves the village enriched with precious stones, metals, shells or slaves. Either of the gods “Siahmantin” or *“Sasubonsum” is made of ivory and both stand six feet high. They are the most hideous looking creatures one could pos- sibly .magine, the former having five great eyes bulging forward and four lips, with horns projecting from the side of the head, while the latter is a bull's head, with six eyes as round as saucers and a capacious mouth. These two are the most malignant of all the gods of the poor savages, and the latter spend half their lives In propitiating them. In ivo: they cost about apiece. which amount is paid in ostrich feathers, gums, hides and the other forms of local cur~ rency already mentioned