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THE AMEULCAX Mi'SEUM JOURNAL 



gagement with the United States troops at 

 the Catholic Mission near the present site of 

 the Indian agency. The pictures represent 

 the Sun Dance of foify years ago. The 

 green circle in the center of each is the 

 windbreak of fresh cottonwood boughs 

 within which the ceremonies of the Sun 

 Dance were performed. In one of the circles 

 figures are seen performing the famous tor- 

 ture feature of the dance, in which devotees 

 were suspended by cords passing through 

 loops cut in their skin. Another phase of this 

 torture is shown in the second picture, where 

 one of the Indians is seen outside the circle 

 dragging four buffalo skulls by cords run 

 through loops cut in the skin of his back. 

 The ceremony requires that he continue to 

 drag these until the skin is torn loose. In 

 the center of this painting, suspended from 

 the Sun Dance pole, are figures of a man 

 and a buffalo, drawn quite out of proportion 

 as is often the case in Indian art. The camp 

 of the assembled people is indicated by the 

 surrounding tipis, the typical tribal decora- 

 tions of which are well shown. These paint- 

 ings were collected by Dr. J. R.Walker, whose 

 account of "The Sun Dance and Other Cere- 

 monies of the Oglala Division of the Teton 

 Dakota" has just been issued as Volume 

 XVI, Part II, of the Anthropological Papers 

 of the American Museum of Natural History. 



It is interesting to compare with familiar 

 West Indian fishes a small exchange collec- 

 tion recently received from the Museu Na- 

 cional at Rio de Janeiro. A queen trigger 

 fish (Balistes vetula) which is in this col- 

 lection has a bearing on the general distri- 

 bution of fishes by ocean currents. It 

 belongs to a group of small-mouthed, 

 leathery-skinned fishes. Sluggish by na- 

 ture, they often drift, especially when 

 young, great distances in ocean currents. 

 The queen trigger fish is one of the most 

 gaudily colored of the trigger fishes, common 

 in the West Indies, abundant about Ber- 

 muda, where it is known as "queen turbot," 

 and also found in the South Atlantic and 

 Indian oceans. No similar species occurs on 

 the west coast of America although many 

 tropical fishes are represented on both Atlan- 

 tic and Pacific coasts, evidence of a former 

 sea connection. In 1913, Mr. Robert C. 

 Murphy brought back a queen trigger fish 

 (apparently of a different race from those 

 found in the West Indies) from South Trini- 

 dad Islet, six or seven hundred sea miles 



east of Brazil. This aroused an interest in 

 the variation of the species over its great 

 range. The queen trigger fish was first de- 

 scribed from Ascension Island; and in 1916 

 Mr. Murphy obtained an Ascension Island 

 specimen through the courtesy of Major 

 n. N. Benett, then commandant at the 

 island. The one from Rio gives us another 

 link in the chain of evidence bearing on the 

 pr(jhk'm of its distribution. 



Mr. Karl P. Schmidt, research assistant 

 in the department of herpetology in the 

 American Museum, was called to active ser- 

 vice in the United States Army in early 

 March. 



In the New York Botanical Garden's sys- 

 tem for entertainment of visitors, parties are 

 met at the door of the museum building by 

 an instructor at three o 'clock on every week- 

 day afternoon and are escorted over various 

 parts of the Garden. Beginning Monday, 

 the routes differ each day as follows: Hem- 

 lock Porest, Mansion, and Herbaceous Gar- 

 den; Pinetum; Fruticetum and North 

 Meadows; Deciduous Arboretum, Public 

 Conservatories, Range 2, Nurseries, and 

 Proj^agating Houses; Public Conservatories, 

 Range 1 ; Museums. 



April 3 was the birthday of Mr. John 

 Burroughs, author and naturalist. This 

 day, on which eighty-one years ago there 

 was given to the world a child with ideal- 

 istic, dreaming, nature-loving tendencies, 

 may become an important one in the social 

 history of the United States by its trans- 

 fusion each year of something of these same 

 qualities into the youth of the country. 

 Already the date has been adopted as an 

 annual "Bird Day" by several states of 

 the Union and we can foresee that the move- 

 ment is likely to continue. This is not only 

 because of the effect of many years' use of 

 his books for supplementary reading in the 

 schools, or because of the good work of 

 Houghton Mifflin Company, in publishing 

 Nature Notes, a small magazine for the use 

 of "Burroughs Nature Club" members 

 throughout America, but especially because 

 of the genuineness and charm of the nature 

 presented in Mr. Burroughs' writings — 

 owing to his own profound interest. His 

 opening sentence in The Summit of the 

 Years is, "The longer I live the more my 

 mind dwells on the beauty and wonder of 

 the world." 



