CURIOSITY HUNTERS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1518, 5 February 1886, Page 3

CURIOSITY HUNTERS.

A few weeks ago we referred incidentally to the amazing gullibility of curiosity collectors, and how the manufacture of " pre-historic" Indian relics is a thriving industry in America. A case in point has jusc come to light. An astute Philadelphian recently secured from a pauper burjing-ground a half-decayed skeleton, and placed it in a shallow excavation on the wasting bank of a creek where Indian relics were fre<]uon'lv found. He put beside it a steatite tobacco pipe of his own make, a steatite carving of an eagle's head, some beads, and a number of genuine arrow-heads and fragments of pottery. The earth immediately surrounding the interesting remains was blackened with powdered char coal. After the lapse of a lew months he announced to an enthusiastic collector that he knew the location of an Indian grave, and uffored to conduct him thither for fifty dollars, the money to be paid only in the event of the search proving successful. Of course the search did prove successful. And that pauper's cranium passed through several craniologists' hands, and was gravely pronounced as of quite unusual interest, being a marked dolichocephalic skull, whereas the Delaware ludiaus were brachycephalic!

Another story comes from France. A short time ago an old coffin was dug up by some of the men engaged in excavations in the Rue de Beam, Paris. Some ancient swords were found beside it, which are supposed to have belonged to Knights Templars. Suddenly antiquarian curiosities of this period became plentiful. Men went about the city selling articles, venerable looking enough, which they alleged to have been dug up in the Ruo de Beam. Manv were the delighted purchasers. Among the rest was a gentleman who bought a veay rusty helmet and stvord—unquestionthe property of some valiant Kaight Templar. These he despatched to be museum of his native town, in the centre of France. Unluckily for the donor, a lynx-eyed member of the Academy of Sciences happened to the in the town at the time, and to him the medueval relics were submitted. He discovered them ,to be articles of theatrical " property" dipped in a chemical solution to make them rusty! The enraged purchaser is said to have put the matter in the hands of the police.

We all know the story of the old lady who, on her lost umbrel'a being telegraphed for, patiently watched for its arrival ou the telegraph wres. That was long ago, soon after the introduction of the electric telegraph, and it was a lady. An even more amusing incident occurred quite recently,Jand the prepetrator of the joke was a telegraph operator himself. A merchant of Turin received a telegraph from Marseilles. Upon reading it be found to his great annoyance that it must have been delayed some 21 hours. lie called upon the telegraph clerk to account for the delay. Ttie honest man at once admitted that the despatch had indeed lain for a day and a night in his office. Why? Because it had come from Marseilles. Then he went on to explain, with the dignity born of the conscientious discharge of a serious and responsible duty, that, as cholera was raging there, he had felt himself bound, in compliance with the regulations of the Italian sanitary authorities, to disinfect the message by exposing it to the fumes of burning sulphur! Science, or at any rate Dr. Koch, has got the length of individualising the cholera germ, but we have not yet discovered how to transmit the celebrated " comma bacillus " along the telegraph wire. Perhaps when science has accomplished that feat, the old lady (if she be fitill alive) will find her umbrella.