FOOTNOTES:
[227] "On a vu des femmes très savantes, comme en fût des guerrières, mais il n'y en eut jamais d'inventrices." Dictionnaire Philosophique, sub voce Femmes. Condorcet, in commenting on this statement, remarks that "if men capable of invention were alone to have a place in the world, there would be many a vacant one, even in the academies."
[228] That marvelous structure known as the Taj Mahal—India's noblest tribute to the grace and goodness of Indian womanhood—is sometimes said to be a monument to the memory of Nur Mahal. This is not the case. This matchless gem of architecture—
" ... The proud passion of an emperor's love
Wrought into living stone, which gleams and soars
With body of beauty shrining soul and thought."
is a monument to Nur Mahal's niece and successor as empress, Mumtaz-Mahal—The Crown of the Palace—who, like her aunt, was a woman of rare beauty and talent and endeared herself to her people by her splendid qualities of mind and heart.
[229] The inventor of canals as well as of bridges over rivers and causeways over morasses was, according to Greek historians, the famous Assyrian queen, Semiramis, the builder of Babylon with its wonderful hanging gardens.
[230] Among the works which treat of the subject-matter of the foregoing pages the reader may consult with profit, Woman's Share in Primitive Culture, by O. T. Mason, London, 1895; Man and Woman, the introductory chapter, by Havelock Ellis, London, 1898; and Histoire Nouvelle des Arts et des Sciences, by A. Renaud, Paris, 1878.
[231] Cf. Women Inventors to whom patents have been granted by the United States Government, Compiled under the Direction of the Commissioner of Patents, Washington, 1888. See also subsequent reports of the Patent Office.
[232] To one woman, Mary E. Poupard, of London, England, were granted in a single year no less than three patents for horse-shoes—two of the patents being for sectional and segmental horse-shoes.