Fans of very similar shape are in use among the South Sea Islanders and the inhabitants of the Essequibo district. They are often used as bellows when a fire has to be raised, but their primary object is to be employed as fans.
Next we come to those fans which are made of flattened sticks, which move on a pivot. This is, indeed, the ordinary form of the fan at the present day, the sticks being sometimes wide enough to constitute the entire fan, but mostly being connected with a sort of lining made with silk, paper, or feathers. Such fans as these can be moved on their pivots, so as to occupy a comparatively small space; and the same can be said of the modern fender-guards, which can be folded up when the room is unoccupied, and which form an effectual protection against the danger of ladies’ dresses coming in contact with the fire.
Examples of such a screen, and two fans, are given on the right hand of the accompanying illustration.
On the left hand is shown one of the natural objects from which the fans, &c., might well have derived their origin. It is one of the antennæ—or horns, as they are popularly called—of the common Cockchafer. The end of this antenna is composed of a number of flat plates, which work on a pivot exactly like the sticks of a fan, and, like those sticks, can be folded into a wonderfully small compass, or opened out into a fan-like shape.
Burial.
Last scene of all.
I do not think that it matters very much to one who has “shuffled off this mortal coil” what becomes of the coil in which he had been imprisoned. Whether the abandoned body be buried in the earth, or sunk in the sea, or devoured by wild beasts, or consumed by fire, signifies nothing to him, though it may signify much to his surviving friends.
As a rule, the animals, of whatever kind they may be, contrive to dispose of their mortal remains in some mysterious manner, so that not a vestige of them is to be found. Take, for example, the domestic cat, and see how few bodies are found of cats which have died natural deaths.
For instance, there was my own cat “Pret,” who lost his life from the bites of rats. He was blind, and so lamed that he could scarcely crawl. Yet, on the day of his death, he three times escaped from his comfortable bed in front of the fire, dragged himself through a hedge, down a steep bank, across a road, up another bank, through a crevice in a park fence, and curled himself up to die under a blackberry-bush.