July 29, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



127 



thought. The scheme is comprehensive 

 and well carried out in a brief compass. 



Dr. Donath notes several of the prevalent 

 errors in such investigations, as lack of dis- 

 crimination between a given stage of cul- 

 ture and the psychic faculties of those who 

 exhibit it, the mistake of assuming that 

 mental power is correlated to cranial ca- 

 pacity, and especially the incorrectness of 

 supposing a parallelism between the psych- 

 ical evolution of a child and the race, as 

 Bucke, Baldwin and others have too literally 

 assumed. ('Die Anfange des Menschlichen 

 Geistes,' pp. 47 ; F. Encke, Stuttgart, 1898.) 



MUSHROOM- SHAPED IMAGES. 



Theobert Maler and others have pub- 

 lished illustrations of stone pillars with 

 mushroom-shaped summits, occurring in 

 Yucatan, Guatemala and elsewhere in 

 Mayan territory. 



In the Glohus for May 28th Dr. Carl Sap- 

 per gives a picture of one in excellent pre- 

 servation, about 30 centimeters in height, 

 from San Salvador. On the shaft the face 

 of a man (or monkey) is roughly outlined. 

 Over it is the umbrella-like expansion. 



These have generally been considered 

 phallic emblems. Dr. Sapper doubts this, 

 and in fact there is no evidence for it be- 

 yond a vague resemblance. He advances, 

 however, no other explanation. 



I would offer a suggestion. They re- 

 semble in shape mushrooms or toadstools, 

 and why should not that be their intention ? 

 "Why should it be ? Because the word for 

 mushroom in Maya (Tzental dialect) is 

 hu, sufficiently near to the word for moon, 

 uh or yuh, to recall it in sound, and the 

 night growth of the fungus would 

 strengthen the mythical alliance. They 

 would thus be emblematic of the lunar 

 and nocturnal divinity. 



AMERICAN INDIAN GAMES. 



This subject is treated in an interesting 

 manner from ample material by Mr. Stewart 



Culin in the Bulletin of the Museum of the 

 University of Pennsylvania, No. 3, Vol. I. 

 He selects for analysis the game of dice or 

 tossed staves, which he finds among sixty- 

 one North American tribes. With much 

 ingenuity he compares their implements 

 and the decorations upon them, reaching 

 the conclusion that they were all derived 

 from some center in northern Mexico or 

 near there ; the thread of connection which 

 leads him being the throwing-stick, or atlatl,. 

 of the Mexicans. 



This is ingenious, but not wholly con- 

 vincing. One may ask why the atlatl might 

 not have drawn its local symbols and trap- 

 pings from the game, rather than vice versa. 

 The symbolism is surely more recent than 

 the game ; atlatU are found elsewhere with- 

 out it ; and there are simpler explana- 

 tions of the elementary symbolism of the 

 game in the northern tribes. In the study 

 of development it is usually wiser to begin 

 with the simple and proceed to the complex, 

 rather than the reverse. 



D. G. Beinton. 



University of Pennsylvania. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

 PREVENTIVE INOCULATION AGAINST PLAGUE. 



M. Haffkinb made recently an address on 

 the above subject at Poena, in the course of 

 which, according to the report in the London 

 Times, he compared the invasion of India by 

 the plague bacillus to the invasion of Aus- 

 tralia by rabbits, to the invasion of cer- 

 tain soils in south Europe by the phylloxera, 

 and to the invasion of South Africa by the or- 

 ganism of the rinderpest, and used these anal- 

 ogies to show that there are, in both the animal 

 and vegetable worlds, diseases of which the 

 cause, the morbid organism, can live and propa- 

 gate outside the patient's body, can grow in 

 the soil, in water, be carried by clothing, bed- 

 ding, instruments, by any living or dead object. 

 If it happens that the natural conditions of a 

 country are favorable to the life and propaga- 

 tion of such an infectious organism, and as long 



