May 6, 1887.] 



SCIENCE. 



443 



the lakes of Switzerland, particularly on the Lake 

 of Constance. A few specimens have been found 

 in Sicily, Greece, and Asia Minor. Fischer con- 

 cludes from these facts that the implements were 

 brought to Europe by a nation immigrating into 

 France from the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, 

 and that the material came from Asia. He sup- 

 poses the same to be the case with the nephrites of 

 the Swiss lakes. His principal reason for adopt- 

 ing this theory is the failure of all attempts to find 

 the material in Europe. He is convinced that 

 geologists and mineralogists would be just as able, 

 to find it as the natives, in all parts of the world 

 who discovered the usefulness of the hard and 

 tenacious mineral, and found it in considerable 

 quantities, which are now scattered over countries 

 where it does not exist in situ. As Fischer does 

 not prove that the European nephrite is identical 

 with any Asiatic variety, and his conclusions de- 

 rived from the distribution of the objects are 

 rather forced, his views on the subject fail to 

 convince us. 



— A Catholic missionary was sent by Bishop B. A. 

 Thiel of Costa Rica to the Tule or Cunos Indians of 

 the villages of Paya and Tapaliza in Darien. His 

 observations on these tribes have been published 

 inPetermann's Mittheilungen, 1886, No. 9. Though 

 a great number of the natives have become Chris- 

 tians, some of their ancient customs still prevail. 

 The men leave the greater part of the work to 

 the women. They go fishing or hunting, and cut 

 wood : the women cultivate the fields. A«ll of 

 them drink great quantities of chicha, an alcoholic 

 drink made of corn. They are monogamists, and 

 the women are very chaste, adultery being of 

 rare occurrence. The marriage is concluded in 

 presence of the chief. Illegitimate children are 

 drowned in the river, and the mother is severely 

 punished. Their mortuary customs are remark- 

 able. They dig a pit between two trees, and put 

 the corpse into a hammock, which is fastened to 

 the trunks, so that it hangs over the pit. Then it 

 is covered with branches, boards, and earth. 

 Chicha and corn are deposited in the grave. They 

 believe that the soul does not come to rest until 

 the ropes of the hammock are rotten and the 

 corpse is fallen into the pit. The Indians of Tapa- 

 liza are more civilized, and do not practise these 

 mortuary customs. Illegitimate children, how- 

 ever, and widows who give birth to a child after 

 the death of their husband, are drowned. The 

 missionary made a reliable census of the villages, 

 which shows that Paya has 318, Tapaliza 112, in- 

 habitants. 



— In the ArcMv fi'ir Anthropologie, 1886, p. 591, 

 we find a German edition of B. A. Thiel's vocabu- 



laries of the Costa Rica languages, which were pub- 

 lished at San Jose de Costa Rica in 1882. W. 

 Herzog compares these Bribri dialects with other 

 American languages, and finds that a great num- 

 ber of Tupi roots occur in the words of these dia- 

 lects, and that the language probably belongs to 

 the same stock. 



— Nature says that Tippo-Tip, the famous Afri- 

 can trader, came upon a remarkable tribe on the 

 Kongo, to the north of Nyangwe, who do a great 

 deal of work in copper, and whose inlaid work in 

 that metal is of a highly artistic character. 

 Among the same people, enormous spear-heads of 

 very thin copper are made, some six feet in length, 

 which serve as a kind of currency. Probably 

 these are the Basonge, who make work of this 

 description. It is well known that the tribes of 



Fig. 4. — Battle-axe of the Basonge from Lukasi Riveb 

 (15^ by 9% inches). 



central Africa are very skilful blacksmiths and 

 carvers. Wherever explorers entered those parts 

 of the continent where the native industries were 

 not deteriorated by contact with the whites, the 

 spears, arrows, and fetishes are beautifully made. 

 The accompanying sketch is drawn from an orna- 

 mental battle-axe of the Beneki, a tribe of the 

 Basonge. The ornaments are of copper, laid into 

 the iron blade. The handle is covered with the 

 skin of a snake. Iron spear-heads of enormous 

 size, which are used in festivals or as a kind of 

 currency, are in use among the tribes of the upper 

 Kongo, 



