NOTES AND COMMENT 133 



by the Little Colorado, Colorado, and San Juan rivers, and extending 

 well into New Mexico, is nearly as large as South Carohna, and is one 

 of the least visited and least known areas in the United States. To 

 historians and anthropologists this countr}^ has long been of great 

 interest because of its unique Indian villages, which have persisted in 

 a few favored locaHties for many centuries. Until very recently the 

 natural history of the central and northwestern part of the Navajo 

 country was almost unknown. Professor Gregory's paper comprises 

 a brief description of the types of vegetation and a map showing the 

 distribution of pine, piiion and juniper forests. 



The Thirtieth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 

 contains a paper which is of interest in connection with a region adja- 

 cent to the Navajo Country. This is Mrs. Matilda Coxe Stevenson's 

 Ethnobotany of the Zuni Indians, a paper which will take a very high 

 place among studies of this kind. Mrs. Stevenson began to work 

 among the Zunis as early as 1879, when their ceremonials and medical 

 practise had not been modified by the interference of the white man. 

 A remarkable advance had been made by the medicine men in utilizing 

 the plants available to them in treating specific symptoms. Thej^ 

 were accustomed to narcotizing their patients before an operation, 

 and were possessed of effectual disinfectants for wounds, as well as 

 cathartics, emetics, remedies for the bites of snakes and ants, and other 

 important specifics. The use of the various food plants is also de- 

 scribed, showing that the introduction of corn several centuries ago 

 replaced a diet of the raw or cooked seeds of Atriplex poiveUii, Cheiio- 

 podium leptophyllum, Artemisia wrightii, and the grass Eriocoma cuspi- 

 data. The Zuiiis state that "when we depended entirely on the small 

 seeds of plants for our foods, our flesh was not firm and good as it is 

 now." Descriptions are also given of the use of various plants as 

 sources of material for spinning thread, weaving baskets, dyeing pot- 

 tery, and elaborating the toilets of persons engaged in ceremonial 

 observances. 



Among recently issued lists of local floras may be mentioned A 

 Catalogue of the Flora of Isle Royale, Lake Superior, by William S. 

 Cooper; The Flowering Plants, Ferns and Fern Allies growing without 

 cultivation in Lambton County, Ontario, by C. K. Dodge; and A Cata- 

 logue of the Plants of Jasper County, Missouri, by Ernest J. Palmer. 

 The first two were published in the Sixteenth Report of the Michigan 



