132 
NATURE 
[Dec. 8, 1881 
spheric pressure was under 28’o00 inches, the lowest being 
27°865 inches at the Butt of Lewis, at which low point 
the barometer stood from 4.30 to 7 a.m. of the 27th. 
PHOTOGRAPH OF COMET B, 1881 
HOTOGRAPHY has already proved of great service | 
to astronomy, and its value in reproducing with un- 
failing accuracy and permanently preserving an observa- 
tion is evident. It is long since the art has been utilised 
in the observation of eclipses; with De La Rue’s 
Facsimile of a photograph of the Great Comet B 1881, taken at the Ops 
Meudon, July 1, 1881. 
photographs of the moon we are all familiar, while those 
of sun-spots have recently attained a rare degree of fer- 
fection. 
fully applied to comets by Dr. Janssen at the Meucon 
Observatory, Paris. The woodcut we give to-day of 
Comet B is from our French contemporary Za Nature, 
and has been revised by Dr. Janssen himself, so that it | 
may be accepted as a faithful reproduction of his ,hoto- 
graph. Dr. Janssen also gives some interesting details as 
B12 6" 4 
And now at last photography has been success- | 
| 
to the circumstances under which the photograph of the 
comet was taken. It was obtained on July 1, 1881, at oh. 
37m. under the following conditions :—The operators 
| used a telescope of half a metre aperture and 160m. focal 
length. The plates of gelatino-bromide of silver, extra 
sensitive, were manipulated and developed in darkness, 
The time of exposure was thirty minutes. Arrangements 
were made to counteract the proper movement of the 
comet in addition to the diurnal movement. The 
impression of the tail extends to more than 24 degrees; 
and the head of the comet assumed very great dimensions; 
but the details of the tail show that the move- 
ment of the instrument has kept pace with 
that of the object. The rectilineal rays are 
a revelation of the photograph, which more- 
over shows some very small stars not seen in 
any celestial atlas, 
ON ARTIFICIAL DEFORMATION OF 
THE HUMAN SKULL IN THE 
MALAY ARCHIPELAGO 
70], R. CROCKER mentioned, in the Pro- 
ceedings of the Royal Geographical 
Society of London in the beginning of this 
year, that the Milanows, a coast tribe in 
North-West Borneo, between Bruni and 
Tandjong Agri, Sarawak, flatten their heads 
by means of pressure in infancy, but not to 
the extent of disfigurement, a custom, Mr. 
Crocker adds, which is peculiar to this 
tribe, and occurs nowhere else in the Archi- 
pelago. 
This last statement induces me to show 
that, on the contrary, the custom is spread 
through the whole vast area from Sumatra to 
Timoriaut, and north to the Philippines; I 
even believe that it is not going too far to 
say that almost no large island within this 
region can be found, where the custom of 
artificial deformation of the skull is not, or 
has not been in use. Having treated of the 
geographical distribution of the custom all 
over the globe in a paper “ Ueber kiinstlich- 
deformirte Schadel von Borneo und Mindanao 
im kénigl. anthropologischen Museum zu 
Dresden, nebst Bemerkungen uber die Ver- 
breitung der Sitte der kiinstlichen Schadel- 
Deformation,” I shall restrict myself here to 
the Malay Archipelago. 
To begin with Borneo: I procured last 
year a skull from Sarawak, over which a 
basket of ratan was so closely twisted, that it 
could but with difficulty be freed. When 
taken out I immediately perceived that it 
must have been artificially deformed ; the 
whole occiput was flattened in a way which 
could not have been due to other causes. 
This skull (Fig. 1) must have hung a long 
time in the basket over a fireplace, for it was 
blackened and dusty all over, The direc- 
tion of the pressure in youth had been, 
besides perpendicularly from behind, from 
the right side and below, for the right basal portion is 
totally distorted. 
Wishing to know scmethirg fositive as to the custem 
in Borneo, I wrote to the well-known naturalist and col- 
lector, Mr. Everett, who is now living in Papan, North 
Borneo, and who sojourned a long time in Sarawak 
befcre. Mr. Everett had the kindness to answer, in 
| a letter dated August 25, 18f0: ‘‘With regard to the 
| custom of flattening the skull, I have heard that it is 
ervatory of 
