SWORD, Feb. 28.
Sir William Bragg, one of the lecturers on scientific knowledge delivered to children at the Royal Institution, London, has publish-fed his discourses under the tile "Old Trades and New Knowledge." In it he has scinating article on the evolu-jon of weapons. The cult of the sword is a very ancient and lespread institution. It is on record that missionaries were often asked, in early days in China, why they wore two buttons on the back of their coats where there were no button holes to which the fastening {might be attached.
The usual answer was that in Europe, in the age of chivalry, every gentle~ man wore a sword. The buttons were used to support the sword belt and, though the custom was obsolete, these vestigial ornaments had not been discarded.
At the first glance, the survival lof those picturesque but useless Jornaments might suggest that there was some truth in the argument sometimes advanced by our Chinese friends, in these columns that we are a more pugnacious race than the people amongst whom we have our dwelling. But we may retort that the Chinese are in an equally awkward position for the pronoun "I," in Chinese we, is a pictograph of a man grasping la spear. Had it represented 2 man holding a pen, the pot might ave called the kettle black, but, in the circumstances, we are both in the same predicament.
The sword has always been the most honoured of all weapons; it was part of the insignia of a gentleman and the code which followed in the days when due! ling was in fashion was the most: punctilious of all rules of etiquette. Those who have read Stevenson's "Kidnapped" will remember Alan Breck's song of the sword. It expresses the wild
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.