66 



NATURE 



[November 19, 1891 



ductory statement, in which he sets forth briefly the objects of 

 the Record. It will, he says, be of a strictly practical character, 

 and will not interfere with any educational journal now in cir- 

 culation. It will " give the latest information, not only with 

 respect to what is being done in this Kingdom, but also in 

 regard to such educational work on the Continent and in Ame- 

 rica as may be of service to those who are engaged in carrying 

 out schemes of technical instruction." The Record may become 

 a journal of great value, and we trust there will be a cordial 

 response to Lord Hartington's appeal to the members of the 

 County Councils, their organizing secretaries, and others inter- 

 ested in the work, to supply the Committee with early and 

 regular information as to what is being done in their several 

 centres. The present number contains, besides Lord Harting- 

 ton's statement, County Council schemes and reports relating 

 to Oxfordshire, Surrey, Bedfordshire, Lancashire, Birmingham, 

 and Aberdeen ; details regarding Scholarship schemes in the 

 West Riding and Somerset ; notes on the work of the counties 

 and county boroughs ; miscellanea ; and reviews. 



There are not many remains of the ancient Mexican feather- 

 work which excited the surprise of the Spanish conquerors of 

 the New World. The most famous surviving specimen is the 

 standard, described by Hochstetter, which is now in the Vienna 

 Ethnographical Museum. Another specimen has lately been 

 discovered by Mrs. Zelia Nuttall in the Schloss Ambras, near 

 Innsbruck. It is mentioned in an inventory, drawn up in 1596, 

 of the treasures of the castle. This very valuable relic is the 

 decorative part of a round shield made of interlaced reeds, and 

 consists of feather-mosaics representing a monster, the contours 

 of which are fastened by strips of gold. Formerly the shield 

 was adorned with costly quetzal feathers, only small fragments 

 of which survive. Globus, which has an interesting note on the 

 subject, speaks of similar old Mexican shields in the Stuttgar 

 Museum, and refers to a statement of StoU to the effect that 

 beautiful feather-ornaments are still made by the Indians of 

 Guatemala. 



In the Report of the U.S. National Museum for 1884, Prof. 

 O. T. Mason published a short paper on the throwing-siicks of 

 the Eskimo. The use of a like device for the throwing of spears 

 and harpoons was formerly well known in Mexico ; and I'rof. 

 Mason has written to Science to say that he lately received from 

 Lake Patzcuaro, in Mexico, "a modern altall, well worn and 

 old-looking, accompanied with a gig for killing ducks." The 

 apparatus, which was bought from the hunter by Captain J. G 

 Bourke, U.S.A., has been placed in the National Museum. 

 The thrower is 2 feet 3 inches long, and has two finger-holes, 

 projecting, one from the right, one from the left side. The gig 

 consists of three iron barbs, exactly like the Eskimo trident for 

 water-fowl. "The problem now is," says Prof. Mason, "to 

 connect Alaska with Patzcuaro. " 



A PAMPHLET on "The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas," by Mr. R. 

 G. Haliburton, has been published by Mr. David Nutt. Along 

 with it are printed portions of the paper on the subject read by 

 Mr. Haliburton before the recent Oriental Congress. His views 

 are accepted by Sir J. Drummond-Hay, who represented Great 

 Britain in Morocco for over forty years, and by Mr. Hunnot, 

 our Consul at Saffi. There is, of course, no inherent improb- 

 ability in the statement that there are tribes of dwarfs to the 

 south of Mount Atlas. Such tribes are known to exist else- 

 where in Africa, and they may exist in the regions where Mr. 

 Haliburton thinks he has discovered them. The question is 

 one of evidence. Even if dwarfs have many settlements there, 

 it does not follow that there is any solid foundation for Mr. 

 Haliburton's theories as to the part their race has played in 

 the evolution of mythology. Still the suggestion is an interest- 

 ing one. 



NO. II 5 I, VOL. 45] 



In the report on " Oysters and Oyster-Fisheries of Queens- 

 land," to which we referred last week, Mr. SaviJle-Kent presents 

 quite an idyllic picture of the circumstances of those who devote 

 themselves in Queensland to the culture of " bank oysters " — 

 that is, oysters which spread over extensive level banks that are 

 more or less uncovered at low water. He says that " probably 

 in no other country in the world is so healthy, congenial, and 

 unlaborious a means of earning a substantial competency open 

 to, and turned to practical account by, all c'asses as that of 

 bank oyster culture in the Queensland oyster-producing districts 

 of Moreton or Wide Bays. With a nominal rental payable for 

 the ground cultivated and occupied for a homestead, a climate 

 that permits of dispensing with all but the most necessary form 

 of raiment, and fish procurable in such abundance as to sub- 

 stantially minimize the butcher's bill, no more perfect terrestrial 

 Elysium is probably at the disposal of small capitalists having 

 sufficient means for the supply of their most immediate neces- 

 sities during that first year or two that must elapse before their 

 oyster-crops have increased to a remunerative extent." 



Mr. Charles Chilton contributes to the new number of the 

 Records of the Australian Museum (vol. i. No. 8) an ex- 

 cellent paper on a new and peculiar freshwater "Isopod'' 

 from Mount Kosciusko. Towards the end of 1889, Mr. 

 Chilton received from the trustees of the Australian Museum, 

 Sydney, a small collection of Australian Crustacea, containing, 

 among others, some terrestrial and fresh-water species collected 

 by Mr. R. Helms while on an expedition to Mount Kosciusko 

 on behalf of the Museum. Among these Mr. Chilton at once saw 

 that one was quite different from any of the terrestrial and fresh- 

 water Crustacea previously described from Australia, and that it 

 belonged to a genus Phreatoicus established by himself in 1882, 

 for a peculiar blind subterranean Isopod found in wells in Can- 

 terbury, New Zealand. This genus was of special interest, both 

 because of the situation in which the original species was found, 

 and because it combined characters belonging to several different 

 families, and was also, to some extent, intermediate between the 

 Isopoda and the Amphipoda. The discovery of a species belong- 

 ing to the same genus in such a widely remote situation as Mount 

 Kosciusko, and living under such different conditions, was there- 

 fore of peculiar interest ; and Mr. Chilton thinks ihat it will 

 probably have an important bearing on the difficult question of 

 the origin of the blind subterranean forms. In the paper in the 

 Records he does not enter upon this question, but he hopes to 

 do so on a future occasion, when describing more fully the sub- 

 terranean forms from New Zealand. 



Messrs. Macmillan and Co. have issued the fifth edition, 

 revised, of Part IV. of Prof. M. Foster's "Text-book of 

 Physiology." This completes the work, with the exception of 

 the appendix, which differs so widely in character from the rest 

 of the book that it seemed desirable to issue it separately. It 

 will be published very shortly. 



Some time ago the Department of Agriculture in New South 

 Wales included in its list of economic plants suitable for cultiva- 

 tion in the north-eastern portion of the colony the " Avocado" or 

 " Alligator pear " {Persea gratissima, Gsertn.). Several inquiries 

 about it having since been made, Mr. F.Turner provides an account 

 of the plant, with an illustration, in the August number of the 

 Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales. Unless it is grown 

 in very sheltered situations, the climate of Sydney is too cold for 

 its successful cultivation as a commercial crop ; but Mr. Turner 

 thinks that on the northern rivers of New South Wales it should 

 bear fruit as prolifically as it does in Southern Queensland. 

 Some years ago, in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, a fine Alligator 

 pear-tree bore annual crops of very fine fruit, and it may do so 

 still. When Sir W. W. Cairns was Governor of Queensland, 

 he often asked Mr. Turner for son e of the fruit when it was in 



