ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



129 



species, converted into 

 a lantern, the fish being 

 hung up with a candle 

 or small electric light 

 suspended inside. The 

 subjoined figure (<i) is 

 made from a photo- 

 graph of this puffer-fish 

 lantern and is taken 

 from Dr. Townsend's 

 article on "The Putter. 

 Its Defense by Infla- 

 tion." published in the 

 Bulletin of the New- 

 York Zoological Society 

 for March, 191(3, page 

 1331. 



In this article Dr. 

 Townsend further says: 



"It is a common practice with the Japanese 

 to make lanterns of inflated and dried puffers 

 by cutting out the back as shown in the accom- 

 panying photograph of a puffer 'lantern' in the 

 New York Aquarium. A 

 candle suspended by a 

 wire serves as a light 

 which shows as brightly 

 through the stretched 

 skin of the fish as 

 through a piece of oiled 

 paper." The puffer from 

 which this lantern is 

 made is eighteen inches 

 long. In the course of a 

 fairly extensive exami- 

 nation of books of travel 

 in the South Seas, a 

 number of instances of 

 a still more remarkable 

 use of the skin of the 

 porcupine fish Diodon 

 has come to hand. If 

 this fish makes use of 

 its spine-eovered skin 

 for its own protection, 

 why should not man 

 likewise and for the 

 same reason use it? And 

 so the ingenious natives 

 of these interesting re- 

 gions have done. Com- 

 mander Charles Wilkes, 

 in Vol. V of his Narra- 

 tive of the United 

 States Exploring Ex- 

 pedition during the years 1838-18 t2 published 

 in 1815, has on page forty-eight a figure of a 

 Drummond Islander wearing a helmet made of 



(rn\ 



7— A DIODON SKIN HELMET 

 nun. I Islander (Kingsmills) . After Wilk 



8— A TARI TARI ISLANDKR, GILBERT GROUP 

 Wearing a Diodon skin helmet. After Mayor 



the dried skin of a por- 

 cupine fish, Diodon. 

 There is, however, no 

 reference to it in the 

 text. The figure is re- 

 produced herein as fig- 

 ure seven. Wilkes also 

 gives a separate draw- 

 ing of the helmet. 



A few years later 

 ( 1847), however, we 

 come across a very defi- 

 nite statement in John 

 Coulter's Adventures on 

 the West Coast of South 

 America and . ... In- 

 cluding a Narrative of 

 Incidents at the Kings- 

 mill Islands, etc. In 

 Vol. I. page 191, he describes the Drummond 

 Islanders (in the Kingsmills) accoutered for 

 war. the head being "surmounted by an extra- 

 ordinary looking apology for a helmet, in a coni- 

 cal shape and made of 

 dried fishes' skin, with 

 two or three feathers of 

 various colours stuck in 

 the top for a plume." In 

 the next few pages he 

 twice refers again to 

 this "fish-skin cap." 



Likewise George 

 French Angas, in his 

 book Polynesia ( Lon- 

 don. 1 866 ). says of the 

 Kingsmill warriors that: 

 "On the head is worn a 

 cap formed of the skin 

 of the porcupine fish, 

 bristling with sharp 

 spines." 



The next account 

 chanced upon is from 

 the pen of William 

 Wyatt Gill, a mission- 

 ary in the South Seas 

 whose powers of obser- 

 vation were keen and 

 highly developed as the 

 wealth of natural his- 

 tory notes in his books 

 shows. On page 108 of 

 his Jottings from the 

 Pacific (New York, 

 .elmet. After Mayor 1885). he writes that 



"The Islanders came to 

 see the white strangers and to dispose of hel- 

 mets of porcupine fish [skin]." 



(Continued on page 132) 



