568 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



from time to time inserting the end of the 

 slender finger into the worm-holes as a sur- 

 geon would a probe. At length he came to 

 a part of the branch which evidently gave 

 out an interesting sound, for he began to 

 tear it with his strong teeth. He rapidly 

 stripped off the bark, cut into the wood, 

 and exposed the nest of a grub, which he 

 daintily picked out of its bed with the 

 slender tapping finger and conveyed the 

 luscious morsel to his mouth." The aye- 

 aye is nocturnal, and seldom lets itself be 

 seen in the daytime. 



Montezuma's Head-dress. A study was 

 recently published by Mrs. Zelia Nuttall of 

 a rare object in the Imperial Ambras Col- 

 lection at Vienna which has been variously 

 described as a Mex can head-dress, a gar- 

 ment intended to be worn about the waist 

 as an apron, and a standard. Whatever it 

 may have been, it was supposed to have be- 

 longed to some person attached to the 

 court of Montezuma. The author decides 

 that it was a head-dress. As it is now 

 mounted, on a backing of black velvet, it 

 presents a gorgeous appearance. The long, 

 loose fringe of quetzal-feathers exhibits 

 slight evidence of decay, while the other 

 parts have been carefully restored. The 

 fan-shaped base of the feather-piece is com- 

 posed of harmoniously disposed concentric 

 bands of delicate feather-work studded with 

 thin beaten gold plates of different shapes. 

 The details of the structure and attachment 

 of these plates confirm what the early Span- 

 iards said about the admirable nicety of 

 Mexican industrial art. The loose fringe 

 was composed of about five hundred of the 

 long tail-feathers, of which each male quet- 

 zal bird has but two. Next to it the most 

 striking feature of the specimen is the 

 broad turquoise-blue band of feathers on 

 which a design was executed with small 

 gold pieces, originally fourteen hundred in 

 number, disposed, overlapping one another 

 like fish-scales, so as to form a flexible rec- 

 tilinear pattern suggesting a series of small 

 towers. The blue of this band was edged 

 with a band of scarlet feathers, so disposed 

 that their inner sides, curling outward, 

 formed a projecting ruffled border. Above 

 this were fringes of the small wing-feathers 

 of the quetzal and of the tail-feathers of the 



cuckoo, whose white tips formed a sharply 

 defined broad line studded with small gold 

 disks. The whole was skillfully worked 

 upon a suitable backing, and secured by a 

 kind of kite-frame. " Manufactured with 

 the utmost care," says Mrs. Nuttall, "of 

 materials most highly esteemed by the 

 Mexicans, uniting the attribute and em- 

 blematic color of Huitzilopochotli, fashioned 

 in a shape exclusively used by the hero- 

 god's living representatives, the high priest 

 and the war chief, this head-dress could 

 have been appropriately owned and dis- 

 posed of by Montezuma alone at the time of 

 the conquest, from which period it assuredly 

 dates." It was probably one of the gifts 

 sent to the Emperor Charles V by Cortes in 

 1519. 



Influenza and the Weather. A study 

 of the relations of weather and influenza, so 

 far as they may be illustrated by the regis- 

 trar-general's reports for London from 1875 

 to 1890, has been published by Sir Arthur 

 Mitchell and Dr. Buchan. The recurrence 

 of a strongly marked winter maximum and 

 an equally marked summer minimum through 

 the whole forty-five years, with a small sec- 

 ondary maximum running from the middle 

 of March to the middle of April, indicate 

 that the rate of deaths from influenza is in- 

 verse to the temperature. The curve show- 

 ing their distribution is congruent with that 

 for diseases of the breathing organs, with 

 the addition of a slight rise in the spring. 

 But although the epidemics occurred mostly 

 during the cold season, they were not con- 

 nected with any exceptionally cold weather 

 at that season, but rather with exceptionally 

 warm weather, which manifested itself gen- 

 erally both before and during the epidemic. 

 In no case was any exceptionally cold 

 weather, intercalated in the period of the 

 epidemic, accompanied with an increase of 

 deaths from influenza, or even with an ar- 

 resting of the downward course of the curve 

 of mortality, if the cold occurred at the time 

 the epidemic was on the wane. Other dis- 

 eases which appear to have prevailed most 

 extensively during epidemics of influenza are 

 diseases of the breathing organs, phthisis, 

 diseases of the circulatory system, rheuma- 

 tism, and diseases of the nervous system. 

 The diseases which yielded a mortality un- 



