FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



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cred, or as looking to them as representing 

 their clans or secret religious orders. " Ob- 

 servers of Moki ceremonies have seen large 

 wooden tablets in their kivas or ceremonial 

 chambers painted with a green ground, or- 

 namented with the rain prayer and some one 

 of the countless Moki gods, and have re- 

 marked that the little bird in the clouds sug- 

 gests the thunder bird of the plains Indians." 

 Bourke remarked upon the constant appear- 

 ance of feathers, chiefly those of the eagle 

 and turkey. The Indians will not part, for 

 any amount of money, with the wands of 

 eagle feathers used for fanning living ser- 

 pents at their snake dance, for fear of offend- 

 ing their bird deity. Sacrificial plumes of 

 eagle down, attached to little sticks, are 

 buried in the corners of the field at the 

 opening of spring. The feathers of the par- 

 rot, brought up from Mexico, are treasured 

 in the Pueblos, and will always be found, 

 according to Bourke, " carefully preserved in 

 peculiar wooden boxes, generally cylindrical 

 in shape, made expressly for the purpose. 

 With them is invariably associated the soft 

 white down of the eagle. The Mokis have 

 an especial veneration for the two species of 

 eagle, which are kept by them in cages, and 

 are fed largely on field mice and rabbits. 

 Captain Bourke alludes to eagle feathers as 

 common articles of commerce among these 

 people, to which they attach a determinate 

 value, and ascribes the high price placed 

 upon them by all the sedentary Indians of 

 Arizona and New Mexico to graver consid- 

 erations than mercantile. 



"Wild Indian Corn." The question 

 whether wild Indian corn is growing in Amer- 

 ica is raised in Garden and Forest by Robert 

 P. Harris, who assumes that such a corn 

 has been found in several regions of this 

 continent, naturally reproducing itself, and 

 that it has a character of growth that fits 

 it for long preservation in a dry climate, al- 

 though, if planted and cultivated for a few 

 years, all the characteristics of wildness 

 gradually disappear. " The cobs of wild 

 maize are thin and hard, covered with lines 

 of mushroom shaped elevations, each having 

 a wirelike pedicel growing from the top, at- 

 tached to a glume inclosing a small pointed 

 grain, or a flat grain smaller than any pop 

 corn. These kernel husks overlap each other 



toward the point of the ear, like the shingles 

 on the roof of a house. The imbrications 

 are largest and longest at the butt of the 

 ear, and gradually become less pronounced as 

 they advance in distinct rows to the point. 

 The individual glumes are from an inch to 

 two inches long, and are much longer than 

 this where the grains are not fertilized, par- 

 ticularly if the entire ear is of this character, 

 as is proved by a specimen in my collection. 

 Over these imbrications is the outside husk 

 as we have it in all cultivated corns." Mr. 

 Harris further says that Indian corn in 

 its wild state has been found in Arizona, 

 southern Texas, the valley of Mexico, and 

 Central America. He has known Rocky 

 Mountain corn a long period of time ; it has 

 very small ears. One of the professors of 

 the University of Mexico has been experi- 

 menting with the wild corn of the valley, 

 and has the engraving of a plant that grew 

 to be about five feet high. Wild corn has 

 also been grown by the Landreths, near 

 Philadelphia, to whom it was sent from Ari- 

 zona. Some found by Dr. Williams, of 

 Houston, Texas, is a white flint of large 

 size ; but fifteen stalks produced only four 

 ears, which grew on two of the stalks. The 

 plant is a very vigorous grower, but it is not 

 productive, and eight stalks grown in Texas 

 did not bear a single ear. It may be doubted 

 whether the evidence is as yet sufficient or 

 is clear enough to establish that these speci- 

 mens are really wild corn and not corn that 

 has escaped from cultivation the more so, 

 because Indian corn with glumes to each 

 kernel is not rare. 



Dr. Yersln and Plagne Tirns. Nature, of 

 February 18th, brings an interesting account 

 of Dr. Yersin's discovery of the plague virus 

 and its antitoxine, during the epidemic at 

 Hong Kong in the spring of 1894. His at- 

 tention being attracted to the extraordinary 

 number of dead rats lying about in the 

 squalid Chinese quarters of the city, he 

 examined them, and discovered immense 

 numbers of a short bacillus, that could be 

 easily stained and cultivated in the usual 

 manner. He found the same bacilli in dif- 

 ferent organs of plague patients. Noticing 

 quantities of dead flies in the room where he 

 carried on his post-mortem examinations, he 

 investigated this symptom, and established 



