156 NATURAL SCIENCE (September 
forthcoming, and it is greatly to be hoped that attention may be 
directed to this custom wherever it occurs, as the procedure observed 
amongst races in a low condition of culture may help to throw 
further light upon the archaeological aspect of the question. 
SPEAR-THROWERS FROM NEW GUINEA 
Mr T. Jennines (Proc. Linn. Soc, N.S.W., 1896, p. 793) has 
recently described in detail and figured two Papuan spear-throwers 
of bambu from New Guinea. These instruments have only com- 
paratively recently been recognised as occurring in New Guinea, 
though numbers have now been received in the various European 
museums. The type is interesting for its form, which differs from 
that of the well-known hook-ended spear-throwers of Australia, and 
resembles rather that of the socket-ended examples from the Caro- 
line and Pelew Islands, figured by Dr von Luschan. The addition 
of a wooden flange as a rest for the spear is peculiar to New 
Guinea, and the carving on these rests is often elaborate, and is varied 
individually, no two, probably, being quite similar. The original 
design in nearly all cases has apparently been some animal form 
grotesquely treated. The two examples described by Mr Jennings 
differ somewhat in detail from those figured by Dr von Luschan in 
his more elaborate paper on the subject, published in the Bastian 
Festschrift. Mr Jennings adds a few remarks upon the peculiar 
geographical distribution of these implements, but his account does 
not aim at being a complete one, and the distribution is pretty well 
known. 
CYCADS 
In our last number (p. 85) we referred to some recent work by a 
Japanese investigator which gave additional interest to an ancient 
and always interesting group of plants. The Cyeads are the oldest 
family of seed-plants. They had reached and passed their maxi- 
mum (in Triassic and Jurassic ages) before the appearance of the 
angiospermous type which is dominant at the present day. Their 
habit, a simple, short stem with a crown of leaves, recalls the 
tree-fern much more than our dicotyledonous forest-tree with its 
widely branching axis and small deciduous leaves. And the dis- 
covery, of which we gave a short account last month, was only an 
additional evidence of the fact, recognised now for more than 
thirty years, that Cycads, if not a connecting link, are at any rate 
representatives of a type of plant-life occupying a place in the 
scale of evolution between ferns and those seed-plants in which 
the ovules are packed away in a closed ovary-chamber. Their 
occurrence to-day is what we should expect in a disappearing but 
