more easy of reference to the reader, than when relegated 
to plates at the end of a memoir, 
Fashion in Deformity, as Illustrated in the Customs of 
Barbarous and Civilised Races. By William Henry 
Flower, LL.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.S., &c. With, Illustra- 
tions. 8vo, pp. 85. (London: Macmillan and Co.) 
Ir Prof, Flower by this little work has not rendered good 
service to medicine, and tended greatly to prevent the 
diseases due to the prevalence of absurd fashions, it is 
certainly not his fault. He discusses the curious fashion 
which has prevailed among all nations, of inflicting upon 
themselves serious pain and inconvenience, as well as 
rendering themselves abominably ugly. in their endea- 
vours to conform to a false standard of beauty. He begins 
with the epidermal appendages—nails, hair, teeth, and 
skin, proceeding to alterations in the bony skeleton. After 
discussing the modes of dressing the hair, the first figure 
he gives is that of the hand of a Chinese ascetic, in which 
the finger nails appear to be nearly a foot long, and twisted 
almost like the tendrils of a vine. The custom of tattoo- 
ing perhaps inflicts upon the votary of fashion more pain 
than almost any other. The process varies from making 
gashes with sharp stones, and rubbing wood-ashes into 
them, to pricking delicate patterns into the skin by pieces 
of shell cut into a number of fine points, or by a bundle 
of sharp needles, and then rubbing colouring-matter into 
the punctures. The custom of wearing rings and plugs 
in the lips, nose, and ears is sometimes carried to a most 
exaggerated extent, one man, in an island near New 
Guinea, having such hoies in his ears, that the lobes were 
converted into great pendants of skin, through which he 
could easily pass his arms. Such deformities of fashion, 
although most disagreeable to our ideas, are of much less 
importance than those which affect the bony skeleton. 
The author gives a full description of the various modes 
of altering the shape of the head adopted by various 
tribes, and of deforming the foot amongst the Chinese. 
dut from savage tribes, Mr. Flower passes on to deformity 
in fashion amongst ourselves. He shows, by drawings of 
deformed English feet, and of the modern Parisian shoe, 
that, much as we may ridicule the Chinese, we are very 
little better than they. In one particular, indeed, we may 
be said to be very much worse than either Chinese or 
savages ; for, while they deform the foot, we deform that 
part of the body which contains our vital organs. How 
far removed from nature is the form imparted to the 
figure by fashion, is seen by comparing the figures of the 
Venus of Milo, and of a lady dressed in the fashion of 
1880. 
We fear that no amount of warning regarding the pain, 
suffering, and danger to life which such fashions entail, 
will ever prevent them from being followed ; but it is 
possible that when fashionable people come to see that 
their absurdities reduce them to the same level of taste as 
a Botocudo Indian or Bongo Negro, they may be induced 
to seek after a higher standard, which shall at once be 
beautiful, and true to nature. 
Cameos from the Silver-Land ; or, The Experiences of a 
Young Naturalist in the Argentine Republic. By E. 
W. White. Intwo Volumes. Vol. 1. (London: John 
Van Voorst, 1881.) 
THIS is the first volume of an interesting 
would appear to give a true and vivid sketch of the great 
Argentine Republic as it is at the present day. The great 
Republic seems, by the test of the London Exchange, to 
be well hofding its own, but the notions current in Eng- 
land about it are often absurd in the extreme. Mr. White 
has in this volume given us a very good guide-book to 
the province, detailing the chief peculiarities of its cli- 
mate, giving an account of its various races, of the state 
of the education of the people in the province, and of its 
natural resources. Buenos Ayres is described in a very 
work which 
NATURE 
spoken of in glowing terms. The first few chapters are 
devoted to the experiences of our young naturalist in the 
large cities. When he left these for trips to Cordoba and 
such like distant places his experiences as a naturalist 
began, and we follow such wanderings with real pleasure. 
At one time he journeyed to Cosquin to hunt the Condor; 
again to Mendoza for the Guanaco; but wherever he 
went he was sure to observe and record some interesting 
incident about the flowers and birds and insects that he 
met with. 
Select Extra Tropical Plants Readily Eligible for In- 
dustrial Culture or Naturalisation, with some Indica- 
tions of their Native Countries and some of their Uses. 
By Ferdinand, Baron von Mueller, K.C.M.G., M.D., 
F.R.S. New South Wales Edition, enlarged. (Syd- 
ney: Government Printers, 1881.) 
It would be difficult to convey an accurate idea of the 
large amount of information which the author has brought 
together within the compass of the 400 pages forming 
this volume, an edition of which was some years ago- 
published by the Victoria Acclimatisation Society, and 
also not long since in Calcutta by the Central Government 
of India. While the present edition does not put in a claim 
for completeness, either as a specific index or as a series ~ 
of notes on the respective technologic applicability of the 
plants enumerated, still, we have here brought together 
an immense assemblage of useful plants arranged in alpha- 
betical order, but with a systematic index and also their 
correct scientific names, and the chief facts of interest 
that concern each as to its uses to mankind. Some ot 
these plants, all of which are presumed to be capable of 
cultivation in extra-tropical countries, are good for food, 
either as yielding pot-herbage, or roots, or fruits. Others 
are useful for dyes, for their fibre, as fodder-plants, as 
medicinal plants, or as timber-trees. The information in 
all cases is given in the fewest possible words. Baron 
von Mueller is to be congratulated on the honourable 
part he has taken now for many years in enriching the 
culture-resources of his adopted country, and we evho 
his hope that this most valuable manual of useful plants 
may be placed in the leading library of every State school 
in the Australian colonies, when it will be sure to aid in 
educating the youth instructed therein, in a special 
knowledge that may be of immense service in the future 
of Australasia. OA 
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 
[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 
by his correspondents. Nether can he unaertake to return, 
or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts. 
No notice is taken of anonymous communications. 
[The Editor urgenily requests correspondents to keep their letters 
as short as possible, The pressure on his space ts so great 
that it is impossible otherwise to ensure the appearance even 
of communications containing interesting and novel facts.] 
Vignettes from Nature 
Ir Mr. Grant Allen does not mean what he says, I should 
strongly recommend him, alike for his readers’ sake and bis 
own, to say what he means. 
When he wrote, ‘‘ As a matter of fact, it seems probable that 
our actwa/ fauna and flora are on the whole not only quite as 
big as any previous ones, but even a great deal biyger,” and 
went on to cite the ‘‘modern” whales, the ‘‘living ” forty-feet 
shark, and the elephants of the ‘‘recent period” (which not I, 
but his friendly reviewer, Mr. Wallace, converted into the ‘‘ pre- 
sent time”), I naturally understood him to mean that the 
“actual,” ‘modern,’ or “living” forms of these types are 
larger than any corresponding ‘‘ extinct” forms of the same. It 
now appears, however, that he meant to include ext:ct whales, 
extinct sharks, and the extinct mammoth (with, of course, its 
contemporaries) as members of the ‘‘ actual” fauna, 
To me it seems far better that_science should not be taught to 
[March A, 1882 } 
enthusiastic way, and the behaviour of its inhabitants is ; 
