November 17, 1923] 



NA TURE 



739 



Research Items. 



n 



The " Shrunken Heads " of the Jibaros. — In 

 Blood Revenge, War and Victory Feasts of the 

 Jibaro Indians of Eastern Ecuador," by Rafael 

 Karsten, which has been issued as Bulletin 79 of the 

 Bureau of American Ethnology, a section deals with 

 the methods of preparation of, and beliefs attaching 

 to, the shrunken heads which form the war trophies 

 of these tribes. Much attention was attracted to 

 this subject by Sir John Bland-Sutton's lecture 

 before the Royal Society of Medicine in November 

 last (see the Lancet, November 11, 1922, p. 995 .' 

 Brit. Med. J., November 11, 1922, p. 932). These 

 heads, which have been made familiar by a number 

 of specimens in our museums, are usually about the 

 size of an orange, the skin, with the hair attached, 

 having been stripped from the skull by an incision 

 at the back. Three strands of twisted red-painted 

 cotton hang from the lips, and the whole head is 

 dyed with charcoal. The hair, which is held to be 

 the seat of the soul, is the most essential part of the 

 trophy. The head is regarded as charged with 

 supernatural power, and is never that of an enemy 

 belonging to the same tribe as that of the slayer, 

 •with whom blood relationship might be claimed, as 

 the process of reduction is a deadly insult to the 

 whole tribe. Each stage of the process has its 

 appropriate ritual. The reduction is begun by the 

 use of three stones heated in a fire, this being obviously 

 ceremonial, as the actual reduction is afterwards 

 effected by the use of hot sand introduced through 

 the opening of the neck. Heads of certain animals 

 such as the sloth and the jaguar, are prepared by the 

 same method and with identical ceremonial, because 

 at one time all animals were men who fought among 

 themselves and took one another's heads as trophies. 



Polynesian Types. — In vol. xxii., No. 2, of the 

 bumal of the Polynesian Society, Dr. Louis R. 

 ullivan discusses some of the anthropometric data 

 obtained in the Pacific by the Bayard Dorainick 

 Expedition of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum 

 of Honolulu and the American Museum of Natural 

 History. From material collected in Samoa, Tonga, 

 the Marquesas, and Hawaii, Dr. Sullivan has isolated 

 two types which he calls tentatively Polynesian and 

 Indonesian. The characteristics of the Polynesian 

 type are light-brown skin colour, wavy hair, medium 

 development of beard and body hair, lips of average 

 thickness, moderately long head (cephaUc index 

 77-78), high face, high but broad nose, and tall 

 stature : of the Indonesian type, medium to dark- 

 ])rown skin, wavy hair, scant beard and body hair, 

 thick lips, short heads (cephalic index 81-82), stature 

 shorter than the Polynesian, very low broad face 

 and very low broad nose. This hitherto unsuspected 

 Indonesian element, Dr. Sullivan thinks, explains 

 the often-expressed opinion that the Polynesian and 

 Indonesian are closely related types. When the 

 Indonesian traits are removed, the Polynesian 

 ippears to be strikingly Caucasoid, and the available 

 i.ita seem to indicate a type intermediate between 

 ( aucasian and Mongol. On the other hand, the 

 Indonesian type seems to be a somewhat doubtful 

 Mongoloid diverging toward the Negrito. This type 

 IS most important as an element of the population 

 in Tonga and the North- Western Marquesas. In 

 addition, there is a Melanesian element in the south 

 and west of Polyne.sia — in Tonga, New Zealand, 

 I lid Easter Island ; but Dr. Sullivan is of the opinion 

 liat Melanesian influence has been slightly ex- 

 aggerated. The group exhibiting a high degree of 

 l)rachycephaly (cranial index frequently 90 and 

 'ver), occurring notably in Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, 



NO. 2820, VOL. 112] 



and to a lesser degree in the Marquesas, to which 

 Prof. Elliot Smith has referred as Proto-Armenoid, 

 he regards as Polynesian with an artificially deformed 

 head. 



The Unknowable. — It is rather curious to reflect 

 on the completely different aspect which Spencer's 

 theory assumes to us to-day, by reason of the change 

 which has come over our mathematical and physical 

 conceptions. Spencer thought of positive science as 

 a realm of clear and transparent hght surrounded 

 by a murky realm of metaphysical darkness, and he 

 expressed this firmly-held conviction by describing 

 the outer darkness as the unknowable. To mathe- 

 maticians and physicists to-day it is, on the contrary, 

 these outer limits, this beyond of the world of sense- 

 perception, of which they feel most confident that 

 they possess sure and precise knowledge. The 

 electron theory and the principle of relativity, which 

 concern fundamental concepts, seem to us more 

 secure scientifically than the sense-perceived objects 

 of practical life. It is these which have sunk back 

 into the mystery of the unknowable. This is not, 

 however, the lineof Mr. Santayana's thought expressed 

 in his Herbert Spencer lecture, "The Unknowable," 

 delivered at Oxford on October 24 and now published 

 (Clarendon Press) . For him Spencer's unknowable is 

 a doctrine of substance, and he thinks that when the 

 self-contradictoriness of Spencer's statement is cor- 

 rected it can be brought into line as a sound Spinozistic 

 conception. " Calling substance unknowable," he 

 says, " is like calling a drum inaudible, for the 

 shrewd reason that what you hear is the sound and 

 not the drum. It is a play on words, and little 

 better than a pun." 



Metabolism in Diabetes. — A vast mass of data 

 relating to the metabolism of diabetics has been 

 accumulated since 1908 by Dr. E. P. Joslin, of Boston, 

 working in association with Dr. F. G. Benedict, of the 

 Nutrition Laboratory, and these are analysed and 

 discussed in Publication 323 of the Carnegie Institution 

 of Washington. In all, 113 patients have been 

 examined in greater and less detail, partly in the 

 period when the prevalent treatment was overfeeding 

 with a low carbohydrate and high protein-fat diet, 

 and partly since the introduction of fasting and under- 

 nutrition as the general regime in 1914. The figures 

 provide a great quantity of accurate measurements 

 which will be examined with profit by those interested 

 in the subjects. 



Effect of Manganese on Plant Growth. — 

 Certain elements that occur only in very small 

 amounts in plant tissues would appear to play some 

 definite part in the economy of the plant. J. S. 

 McHargue {Journ. Agric. Reseairch, xxiv. pp. 781-794) 

 has investigated the effect of manganese sulphate 

 on the growth of plants in water cultures with 

 specially purified nutrient salts, and his results 

 indicate that at least for the plants tested, a very 

 small quantity of manganese is essential to produce 

 normal growth. Such plants as radish, soy bean, 

 cow-pea, field pea, and maize do not contain sufficient 

 manganese for growth to maturity, though some have 

 sufficient to maintain a normal development for the 

 first few weeks. In the latter case experiments 

 carried on for too short a time fail to reveal the 

 essential nature of manganese. The lack of manganese 

 affects the production of dry matter and brings about 

 an etiolated condition of the young leaves and buds, 

 suggesting that the element has a function in photo- 

 synthesis and in chlorophyll formation. Experi- 

 ments carried on in soil showed that manganese 



