February 26, 1903] 



NA TURE 



393 



on this day ; again there are bird dances, which keep on 

 all through the night. Before daybreak on the following 

 morning, the climax of the whole ceremony is reached ; 

 in front of the fire which burns before several altars, the 

 Star priest twirls a sun symbol and is sprinkled with 

 sacred water from a medicine bowl by the priest who 

 represents the War-god ; later in the day, the bahos, or 

 prayer sticks, are deposited in various shrines around 

 the villages. The four subsequent days are spent in 

 rabbit hunting, and a big feast concludes the ritual. 



Dr. Dorsey and Mr. Voth have wisely published a 

 detailed account of what takes place, but their descrip- 

 tions would have been of greater value to students of 

 comparative religion if more explanation had been given 

 as to the significance of the various rites. It is obvious 

 that the details described are full of symbolism, the 

 meaning of some of which can be readily guessed, but 

 we do not want to make guesses, we need to be told 

 definitely what the natives themselves understand by 

 their rites. This memoir appears in vol. iii. of the 



Fig. 3.- 



-Katcina dancing on a sand picture in front of the candidates for 

 initiation into the Powatnu fraternity. 



Anthropological Series of the publications ot the Field 

 Columbian Museum of Chicago. 



Following this is a memoir, by Mr. H. R. Voth, on 

 the Oraibi Powamu ceremony. Mr. Voth has been for 

 many years a missionary to the Hopi, and so has had 

 exceptional facility for studying their customs, and it 

 will be evident he has not wasted his opportunities. One 

 of the items in the preliminary ceremony is a prayer and 

 ritual for the protection of plants and corn against 

 destructive sandstorms. Later the uninitiated boys and 

 girls have their hair cut. Characteristic features of the 

 Powamu ceremony are the making of coloured sand pic- 

 tures or mosaics and the dancing of masked men, 

 katcinas (Fig. 3). An important part of the ceremony 

 consists in the flogging of the boys and girls who are 

 being initiated into the Powamu fraternity ; each child 

 has a male and female sponsor, who for ever after are 

 called his or her "father" or "mother" ; they are never 

 relatives, nor can they be of the same clan as the actual 



NO. 1739, VOL. 67] 



father and mother of the child, but both must be of the 

 same clan. Before the whipping of the children, an 

 ancient migration saga is narrated. This careful study 

 of a ceremony that is doomed to disappear is illustrated 

 by a large number of well executed plates, which greatly 

 enhance the value of the paper. The extensive collec- 

 tions made by Mr. Voth are in the Field Columbian 

 Museum, and under his direction there have been 

 erected in the museum wonderful cases illustrating 

 Hopi altars and sand pictures, and life-sized models of 

 priests in the act of performing various ceremonies. " 



Those who wish to study the secular and religious life 

 of the Hopi Pueblo Indians must visit the museum in 

 Chicago, for there they will find very extensive collec- 

 tions well arranged and fully labelled. In all probability, 

 these will be accessible to future students when, in the 

 not far distant time, sacred objects and picturesque 

 ritual will have passed away and become forgotten in 

 their native pueblos. A. C. H. 



THE FATA MORGANA OF THE STRAITS OF 

 MESSINA. 



JUST as the Brocken is noted for its "spectre," so the 

 Straits of Messina have long been known as pre- 

 senting, under certain exceptional atmospheric conditions, 

 a fine display of the appearances known as Fata Mor- 

 gana. On his appointment in 1899 to the chair of physics 

 at the Technical College of Reggio, Dr. Vittorio E. 

 Boccara undertook a historical and critical study of the 

 phenomena, and the results of his investigation are 

 published in the Memorie of the Italian Spectroscopists' 

 Society, xxxi., 10. 



Among the ancients, the name of Aristotle is men- 

 tioned, but his references to the Fata Morgana are 

 doubtful. Cornelius Agrippa spoke of reflections in the 

 air of mountains, . animals and other objects ; Homer, 

 Apollonius Polycletus, Damascius and Pliny also alluded 

 to apparitions in the air, but their descriptions are not 

 precise. Allusions to the Fata Morgana are also con- 

 tained in the historical writings of Tommaso Fazzello 

 (1550), Giuseppe Carnevale (1591) and Marc' Antonio 

 Politi (1617), but the first attempt at a description of 

 the phenomena was given by Father Angelucci in a 

 letter published in 1671 by Athanas Kircher, in which he 

 described the appearances seen on the morning of 

 Assumption Day (August 15), 1634. These effects 

 Kircher attributed to reflection by crystals in the air, and 

 stated that he had been able to reproduce them artificially 

 before a large audience. 



In 1773, Father Antonio Minasi published a "disser- 

 tation on the phenomenon commonly called Fata 

 Morgana," in which he distinguished hree different 

 forms, namely, marine morgana, atiria. morgana and 

 iridescent morgana. Minasi illustrated his descriptions 

 by a remarkably good drawing showing the three phases. 



In a treatise published at Naples in 1824, Captain 

 Pietro Ribaud described the marine morgana of July, 

 1S09, and gave a detailed account of the meteorological 

 conditions necessary for its formation. In addition to 

 calm, hot weather, we notice that Ribaud considered it 

 necessary that the vapours exhaled under the heat of the 

 sun from the heterogeneous substances, antimonious, 

 vitreous, oleaginous, saline and other, contained in quan- 

 tity in the shores and earths of Calabria and Sicily 

 should not be carried away by the wind. Also the most 

 favourable time for the morgana is about the turn of the 

 tide. 



The first to explain the morgana by refraction was 

 Prof. Salvatore Arcovito (1838), who, however, considered 

 the phenomenon similar to parhelia. Cacopardi never 

 saw the morgana himself, but followed the views of 

 Minasi and Kircher. Regaldi saw the phenomenon on 



