302 



NATURE 



[January 26, 189; 



and insert big and heavy wooden cylindrical plugs, which almost 

 sever the lobes from the ears. The plugs are sometimes as big 

 as two inches in length with a diameter of an inch and a half, 

 and as much as two ounces in weight. These heavy plugs pull 

 down the lobes of the ears as far as the shoulders, and give the 

 7 wearers a, hideous look. 



Mr. F. J, Bliss contributes to the new " Quarterly State- 

 ment " of the Palestine Exploration Fund a most interesting 

 report on the excavations at Tell-el-Hesy during the spring 

 season of 1892. Speaking of the now famous tablet discovered 

 in the course of these excavations, he says : — *' On Monday, 

 May 14, ten days before we closed the work, I was in my tent 

 at noon with Ibrahim Effendi, when my foreman Yusif came in 

 with a small coffee-coloured stone in his hand. It seemed to be 

 curiously notched on both sides and three edges, but was so filled 

 in with earth that it was not till I carefully brushed it clean that 

 the precious cuneiform letters were apparent. Then I thought 

 of a day, more than a year before, when I sat in Petrie's tent 

 at the pyramid of Meydiim, with Prof, Sayce. He told me that 

 I was to find cuneiform tablets in the Tell-el-Hesy, which as yet 

 I had never seen ; and gazing across the green valley of the 

 slow, brown Nile, and across the yellow desert beyond, he 

 seemed to pierce to the core, with the eye of faith, the far away 

 Amorite mound. As for me, I saw no tablets, but I seemed to 

 be seeing one who saw them ! " Mr. Bliss also notes that the 

 discovery was a triumphant vindication of Mr. Flinders Petrie's 

 chronology — established, not by even a single dated object, but 

 by pottery, mostly plain and unpainted. it is announced in the 

 •' Quarterly Statement" that the excavations at Tell-el-Hesy are 

 now being vigorously carried on by Mr. Bliss, who has recovered 

 from his serious illness. 



It seems that in Yucatan and Central America, as in Egypt 

 and other countries, ancient monuments are held in small re- 

 spect by certain classes of travellers. According to Mr. M. H. 

 Saville, assistant in the Peabody Museum, who writes on the 

 subject in Science, enormous damage is being done to many of 

 the most interesting antiquities in these regions. The magnifi- 

 cent "House of the Governor" in Uxmal, described as pro- 

 bably the grandest building now standing in Yucatan, is almost 

 covered with names on the front and on the cemented walls in- 

 side. These names are painted in black, blue, and red, and 

 among them are the names of men widely known in the scien- 

 tific world. The " House of the Dwarfs" in the same city has 

 suffered in like manner, and many of the sculptures which have 

 fallen from the buildings in Uxmal have been wilfully broken. 

 In Copan, when the Peabody Museum Honduras Expedition 

 compared the condition of the "Idols" to-day with the photo- 

 graphs taken by Mr. A. P. Maudslay seven years ago, it was 

 found that during that time some of the very finest sculptures 

 had been disfigured by blows from machetes and other instru- 

 ments. The Stela given as a frontispiece in Stephens' "Inci- 

 dents of Travel in Central America," vol. i., has been much 

 marred by some one who has broken off several ornaments and 

 a beautiful medallion face from the northern side. One of the 

 faces and several noses have been broken off from the 

 sitting figures on the altar figured by Stephens in the same 

 volume, opposite page 142 ; and on some of the idols and altars 

 names have been carved. While excavating in one of the 

 chambers of the Main Structure, members of the Expedition 

 uncovered a beautiful hieroglyphic step, but before they had 

 time to secure a photograph of it, some visitor improved the 

 opportunity while no one was about to break off one of the 

 letters. In Quirigua a small statue, discovered by Mr. Mauds- 

 lay and removed by him to a small house near the rancho of 

 Quirigua, had the head and one of the arms broken from it 

 during the interval between two visits. This statue was of the 

 NO. 1213, VOL. 47] 



highest importance, as it very much resembled the celebrated 

 "Chaac-mol" now in the Mexican Museum, but discovered by 

 Le Plongeon at Chichen Itza. Much mischief is also done by 

 natives, who think nothing of tearing down ancient structures in 

 order to provide themselves with building materials. The 

 authorities of the Peabody Museum, to whom the care of the 

 antiquities of Honduras has been granted for a period of ten 

 years, deserve much credit for the efforts they make to cope 

 with the evil. They have caused a wall to be built round the 

 principal remains in Copan, and a keeper has been placed in 

 charge with strict orders to allow nothing to be destroyed or 

 carried away. 



What is the true Shamrock ? Most Irishmen are probably 

 of opinion that they can answer the question correctly, but un- 

 fortunately they do not all give the same reply. Mr. Nathaniel 

 Colgan, who has been investigating the subject, collected 

 thirteen specimens from the following eleven counties — Derry, 

 Antrim, Armagh, Mayo, Clare, Cork, Wexford, Wicklow, 

 Carlow, Queen's County, and Roscommon. Shamrocks were 

 thus secured from northern, southern, eastern, western, and 

 central Ireland, Mr. Colgan's correspondents in the .various 

 counties taking pains to have each sample selected by a native 

 of experience who professed to know the genuine plant. .A.11 

 the specimens iwere planted and carefully labelled with their 

 places of origin, and flowering within some two months later 

 gave the following results : eight of the specimens turned out 

 to be Trifolium minus of Smith, and the remaining five 

 Trifolitiin repens of Linnseus. Cork, Derry, Wicklow, Queen's 

 County, Clare, and Wexford declared for Trifolium minus ; 

 Mayo, Antrim, and Roscommon for Trifolitim repens ; and 

 Armagh and Carlow, each of which had sent two specimens, 

 were divided on the question, one district in each county giving 

 T. repens, while the other gave T. minus. These results are 

 set forth by Mr. Colgan in an interesting paper in the first 

 volume of the Irish Naturalist, to which we referred last week. 

 Elsewhere in the same volume Mr. R- L. Praeger suggests 

 that authentic specimens of shamrock should be obtained from 

 every county in Ireland, and he adds that he has no doubt Mr. 

 P'. W. Moore would gladly grow them at Glasnevin Gardens, if 

 Mr. Colgan did not care to undertake so large an order. Mr. 

 Praeger notes that in his own district. North Down, Trifolium 

 minus is always regarded as the true shamrock, but that a 

 luxuriant specimen, or one in flower, is generally discarded as 

 an impostor. 



The waters of the Great Salt Lake, Utah, are known to vary 

 in salinity at different times. Dr. Waller, of Columbia College, 

 gives the results of his recent determination of the dissolved 

 salts in the School of Mines Quarterly. A comparison of his 

 results with those obtained by Gale, Allen, Bassett, and others, 

 shows a constant change of salinity, and a closer examination 

 reveals a variation from place to place. This is due to local 

 differences in the amount of evaporation, and to the influx of 

 water, fresh or saline, in many cases from subterranean 

 springs which give no indication of their presence. For some 

 of the constituents the water is nearly at saturation point, and 

 differences of temperature are also apt to cause slight differences 

 of composition. The presence of lithium and bromine 

 strengthens Captain Bonneville's conclusions with regard to 

 the basin of the ancient lake called after his name, and now re- 

 presented by the Great Salt Lake and its lesser neighbours. 

 The benches of sand and gravel seen high up on the flanks of 

 the Wahsatch mountains and the Oquirrh range indicate the 

 eastern and western shores of the old lake, whose waters must 

 have covered an area equal to that of Lake Huron, or ten 

 times that of the Great Salt Lake. Successive lowerings of 

 level finally cut off its outlet to the north, by which it used to 

 flow into the Pacific Ocean. 



