1 12 



NATURE 



[March 24, 192 1 



joint on the death of a relative seems to have 

 been peculiar to Goodenough. It was first noted 

 by M. H. Morcton, R.M., in his report, Appen- 

 dix N to the "Annual Report on British New 

 Guinea," 1897-98. He describes which joints are 

 cut off for special relatives, and adds : " They do 

 not, as a rule, disjoint the fing-ers of the right 

 hand, but, on the occasion of a man distinguishing- 

 himself in fighting, the Hrst joint of the third 



finger of the 

 right hand is 

 lopped off. 

 This custom is 



adults shrank from the pain this mutilation 

 caused, so little children were made the vic- 

 tims. . . . Men seldom lose more than two or 

 three finger-joints [never of the thumb or of the 

 right-hand little finger] , but it is not at all unusual 

 for a woman to have all the fingers (not the 

 thumbs) of one or even of both hands maimed," 

 but only the terminal phalanges are removed. 

 One lore-learned native said that "all the dead 

 go to Wafolo [an uninhabited district on the north- 

 west side of Fergusson Island] except those with 

 unchopped fingers ; these are killed and eaten by 

 some dogs that bar their path." 



Fig. I.— a Kabuna youth. Mud Hay, 

 Goodenoujih Island. From •• The 

 Northern D'Entrecasteaiix." 



Fir,. 



• Fishing with traps and hauling; up a square fish-net, lata, Mud Bay, Goodenough 

 Island. From "The Northern D'Entrecasteaux." 



falling into disuse. ... I do not know 

 that the custom of disjointing is practised in a 

 single other district. ... I have noticed many 

 natives with mutilated left hands." Our authors 

 do not refer to Moreton's statement, nor do they 

 confirm or deny any association between the par- 

 ticular joint and a definite relationship. They 

 describe the method, and sav that "in Mud Bav 



Mr. Ballantyne's long and intimate knowledge 

 of the natives gives especial authority to the esti- 

 mate of the psychology of the natives and of their 

 magico-religious beliefs and customs, and it is in 

 this section that the partnership of a missionary 

 and a trained ethnologist is particularly valuable. 

 Thirty-seven excellent photographs add to the 

 interest of this instructive book. A. C, H. 



Obituary. 



Prof. A. G. Nathokst. 

 A LFRED GABRIEL NATHORST, who for 

 *■ the greater part of his life was Director 

 of the Palseobotanicai Museum of the Swedish 

 Academy, died at Stockholm on January 20 

 at seventy years of age. In many respects 

 Nathorst was a remarkable man ; precluded 

 by deafness from the ordinary means of 

 communicating with his fellows, he had an 

 almost uncanny power of divining the point of a 

 remark before it was fully expressed in writing 

 on the tablet which he always carried with him : 

 a keen sense of humour, a boyish love of the 

 ridiculous, and a lovable personality made him a 

 delightful companion. Some chance word or in- 

 cident would lead him to quote verbatim passages 

 from Dickens, especially "The Pickwick Papers," 

 Kipling, or other favourite author ; he wrote and 

 spoke English and German with apparent ease, 

 NO. 2682, VOL. lO'^] 



and some of his papers are written in French. 

 In him, as in comparatively few men, were com- 

 bined the naturalist's love of the open air and the 

 lust of travel with the patience of the laboratory 

 student. 



Nathorst paid his first visit to England in 1872, 

 when he met Sir Charles Lyell, whose "Principles 

 of Geology," as he stated in acknowledging the 

 award of the Lyell medal from the Geological 

 Society in 1904, first attracted him to the study 

 of geology. In 1870 he went to Spitsbergen, 

 where he became familiar with recent Arctic 

 plants, and on his return he investigated fresh- 

 water Pleistocene beds in Denmark, Germany, 

 Switzerland, and England, utilising his knowledge 

 of existing species in tracing the distribution of 

 Arctic plants in Europe during the Glacial period. 

 .A series of travel-notes published in 1880 contains 

 many valuable opinions on fossil plants from Meso- 



