50 



NATURE 



\May 20, 1875 



elaborate carvings of the human face have betn found in 

 Western New York, figures of which are given in the 

 Thirteenth Annual Report of Regents of New York 

 State University. These may or may not be of identical 

 origin with the western mound specimens. The specimen 

 here figured is, I believe, the only one ever found in New 

 Jersey. It is a hard sandstone pebble, such as are 

 common to the bed of the Delaware River, above tide 

 •water. It measures six inches in length by a fraction 

 over four inches in greatest breadth. It is concavo- 

 convex, the concavity being shallow and artificial. The 

 carving of the front or convex side is very rude, but shows 

 distinctly that it has been done with stotie tools only. The 

 eyes are simply conical counter-sunk holes, rudely ridged, 

 and just such depressions as the stone drills, so common 

 among the surface reUcs of this neighbourhood, would 

 produce. In the collection of stone implements from 

 Central New Jersey, at the Peabody Academy of Salem, 

 Mass., are several drills sufficiently large to bore as wide 

 and deep depressions as the " eyes " of this mask. The 

 nose is very flat and angular j the mouth merely a shallow 

 groove. The ears are broken, but appear to have been 

 formed with more care than any other of the features. 

 The chin is slightly projecting. 



The interest attaching to this specimen is, I think, 

 twofold, and worthy of a moment's consideration. It 

 is interesting from the fact of being found in New 

 Jersey, a point much further east than the mound- 

 builders have been supposed to reach, and there is 

 no reason to suppose that the specimen was ever brought 

 by white men from the west, and lost here. The cir- 

 cumstances connected with its discovery render such 

 a supposition untenable. Its interest, otherwise, is in 

 the fact (as I suppose it) of its being a true relic of the 

 mound-builders. The mystery of this people has cer- 

 tainly yet to be solved, if, indeed, it ever can be, and the 

 relationship they bore to the " Indian " determined. In 

 the prosecution of my investigations into the " stone-age " 

 history of the New Jersey Indians, I was continually 

 struck with the great resemblance of the stone-imple- 

 ments found in New Jersey to those found in the 

 western mounds. The specimens figured by Messrs. 

 Squier and Davis, in the first vol. of Smithsonian Contri- 

 butions, 1847, were all, or nearly so, duplicated by speci- 

 mens I gathered in New Jersey ; and up to the time of the 

 completion of my second paper on the Stone Age of New 



Jersey (now in press), I needed but " animal pipes " and 

 stone masks, such as the above, to make the duplication 

 of the mound-rehcs complete. The occurrence of this 

 specimen brings it to the one form of pipes, and that such 

 have occurred in New Jersey is highly probable ; but 

 not having gathered such a specimen, myself, I assume 

 that none have yet been found. It must be borne in 

 mind, however, that as there are no mounds in New 

 Jersey, animal pipes, if found here, must occur as surface 

 relics, or in graves ; which latter were, as a rule, very 

 shallow. As New Jersey has been settled for about two 

 centuries, it is probable that such animal pipes would be 

 gathered up, when found, and soon again lost or de- 

 stroyed, when ordinary " relics " would be overlooked. 

 In this way, such animal pipes would have all dis- 

 appeared, perhaps a century ago, when their value as 

 archaeological specimens was unknown. This, too, might 

 account for the great rarity of such specimens as the 

 mask here described. Chas. C. Abbott 



Trenton, New Jersey, U.S.A., April 22 



FERTILISA TION OF FLO WERS B V INSECTS* 



X. 



Lilium Martagon. 



CSPRENGEL was the first to turn his attention to 

 • the structure of the beautiful flowers of this plant ; t 

 but he did not succeed either in observing insects visiting 

 them or in explaining the contrivances by which they are 

 cross-fertilised when visited by suitable insects. Since 

 Sprengel's time nobody had, as far as I know, studied the 

 manner of fertilisation of Lilmm Martagon. It was, 

 therefore, with great pleasure that, in Thuringia, I exa- 

 mined the structure of its flowers, and watched them in 

 their natural habitat. The results of my observation were 

 as follows. 



Along the middle of each sepal and petal, beginning at 

 its base and continuing throughout a length of 10-15 mm., 



Fig. 63.— Flower of Lilhtm Martagon in its natural position and 

 natural size. 



is a furrow, which secretes honey, and whose margins 

 converge and are bordered with reddish knobbed hairs, 

 so close as to cover the open side of the furrow, and to 

 convert it into a channel {h, Figs. 63, 64). The basal opening 

 of this channel {fi, Fig. 64) being closed by the base of a 

 filament, the only way by which the honey is attainable 

 is the small opening at the end of the channel {e, Fig. 64). 

 This opening, as well as the channel itself, is very narrow, 

 its diameter only a little exceeding i mm. No other in- 

 sects except Lepidoptera are provided with sucking instru- 

 ments sufficiently long and slender to be able to reach the 

 honey concealed in these long and narrow channels ; and 

 from the flowers being turned downwards and the sta- 

 mens projecting and slightly bending upwards, it is 

 evident that Lepidoptera, when sucking this honey, 

 cannot avoid dusting their under-side with pollen, and 

 effecting cross-fertilisation as often as they fly to another 



* Continued from vol. xi. p. 171. 



t C. Sprengel, " Das entdeckte Geheimniss," &c., pp. 187-189 



