FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



57 1 



chief, who used them for the adornment of 

 his house, and is said to have prized them as 

 trophies of war. They are decorated in the 

 frontal region by engraved designs, and the 

 parts are attached to one another by very 

 skillfully adjusted cords. The ornamenta- 

 tion and the bindings are the subject of 

 a special comment by William H. Holmes. 

 Importance is attached by natives of New 

 Guinea to the preservation of the skulls of 

 friends as mementoes and of foes as trophies, 

 and of both categories on account of the 

 virtue — the best qualities of the individuals 

 whose skulls they are — which they are sup- 

 posed to impart in some mysterious way to 

 their possessor. Hence special care is taken 

 to have them preserved in detail, and that no 

 part be lost. In the present specimens the 

 jaws were secured by fastenings at right and 

 left and in front. The teeth were carefully 

 tied in, and when lost were replaced by arti- 

 ficial teeth. A cord was fastened around the 

 back molar on one side, and carried along, 

 inclosing each tooth in turn, in a loop, so as 

 to make a very effective fastening when the 

 cord was tightly drawn and attached to the 

 back molar on the other side. The lower 

 jaw was very firmly fastened to the skull by 

 closely wrapped cords tightened by binding 

 the strands around the middle portion. In 

 some cases these fastenings are very elabo- 

 rate and neat ; in others, imperfect and slov- 

 enly. All the skulls in the collection are 

 decorated with designs engraved on the 

 frontal bone, and in some cases the figures 

 run back. The execution of the work is not 

 of a very high order, but is rather irregular 

 and scratchy. Nearly all embody easily dis- 

 tinguished animal forms, and the more for- 

 mal or nearly geometric ones are probably 

 .animal derivatives or representations of 

 land, water, or natural phonomena. They 

 are possibly totemic or mythological. 



Galax and its Affinities. — One of the 



most interesting plants of the Southern 

 mountain region is the galax (Galax 

 aphylla), which grows in the highlands 

 more or less abundantly from Virginia 

 southward. The slopes of Grandfather 

 Mountain, North Carolina, are carpeted with 

 it for many square miles of almost uninter- 

 rupted extent. Besides being an attractive 

 plant at home, its thick, leathery, rounded 



cordate leaves, deep green or crimson or 

 mixed, according to the season, make it 

 much in demand for decoration, and tons of 

 it in the aggregate are shipped, from places 

 where it grows abundantly, for that purpose. 

 Its affiliations with certain other Alpine 

 and arctic plants are described in a care- 

 fully studied paper on the Order Diapen- 

 sisceae, published by Margaret Farsman 

 Boynton in the Journal of the National 

 Science Club, Washington. Liunasus found 

 in Lapland a creeping evergreen herb, mat- 

 ting the surface with its stiff, spatulate 

 leaves, and described it in 1737 as Diapensia 

 lapponica. Then galax was discovered by 

 Gronovius and given a place by Linnaeus — 

 because of its stamens rather than of its 

 natural affinities — along with Diapensia. Mi- 

 chaux, in the last decade of the eighteenth 

 century, found Pyxidavthera barbulata, re- 

 sembling diapensia, in the pine barrens of 

 New Jersey and North Carolina. More re- 

 cently other species of diapensia and Ber- 

 neuxia have been found among the Hima- 

 layas, and Schizocodon of several species in 

 Japan. One of the most remarkable dis- 

 coveries in the list was that by Michaux in 

 the mountains of North Carolina of a plant 

 which was afterward called Shortia galaci- 

 folia, from the resemblance of its leaves to 

 those of galax. This plant in a living state 

 was then lost, and when Gray and Torrey 

 looked for it in 1831 in vain, only one pre- 

 served specimen of it was known to be ex- 

 tant and that in fruit ; and it was not till 

 1877 that it was collected, rediscovered, in 

 fact, in flower, as Gray has said, " by an 

 herbalist almost absolutely ignorant of bot- 

 any, who was only informed of his good for- 

 tune on sending to a botanist one of the two 

 specimens collected by him." The Shortia, 

 so far as is known, grows only in a very nar- 

 row district, and those who know the place 

 are careful not to direct the public to it. 

 Specimens have been collected by a few 

 nurserymen, who cultivate it and have it for 

 sale. The plants of this list are variously 

 classified as among one another by botanists, 

 but are regarded as belonging to a common 

 group. " The real story of their develop- 

 ment," says the author of the paper, " can be 

 gathered only in hints from their present 

 distribution, for unfortunately they have 

 neither gallery of ancestral portraits nor re- 



