26 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IV., No. 74. 



received his collegiate training, and first manifested 

 that interest in the study of nature which became so 

 fully developed, and yielded such good fruit, in after 

 years. The sisters of Professor Hartt were present 

 on the occasion of the unveiling of the tablet, and 

 have presented to the college a fine crayon portrait 

 of their brother, by Black & Co. of Boston. 



— It has long been the custom of certain entomol- 

 ogists to form albums of butterflies' wings by press- 

 ing the wings on gummed paper. The scales adhere to 

 the paper ; but, after they are stripped off, the scales 

 lie with the under side exposed. Milani and Garbini, 

 in the current volume of the Zoologischer anzeiger 

 (p. 276), describe the following method of transferring 

 the scales to a second piece of paper, so that they may 

 lie right side up. After the first paper is dry, the 

 second piece is painted with a solution of gutta-percha; 

 the two pieces are then pressed together, and allowed 

 to dry; they are next soaked in water until the 

 gummed paper can be pulled off, and left or washed 

 until all the mucilage is dissolved ; the paper with the 

 scales is then dried in the sun. The gutta-percha 

 solution is prepared by soaking five parts gutta- 

 percha, cut very thin, in fifty parts sulphuric ether 

 for twenty-four hours, then adding two hundred 

 parts benzine in which five parts of elemi have been 

 previously dissolved. 



— Holmes's ' Art in shell ' is an extract from the sec- 

 ond annual report of the Bureau of ethnology, shortly 

 to appear. It contains a hundred and twenty-six 

 pages, and fifty-six plates. A small portion of the 

 matter has appeared previously in the second volume 

 of the Washington anthropological society's transac- 

 tions. Even the present paper is not final, but is to 

 be regarded simply as an outline of the subject, to be 

 followed by a more exhaustive monograph of the ' art 

 in shell' of all the ancient American peoples. The 

 first few pages treat of shells used as implements and 

 utensils, either unchanged by art, or converted into 

 vessels, spoons, knives, scrapers, agricultural imple- 

 ments, fishing appliances, weapons, and tweezers. 

 Much of this matter is familiar; but it is admirably 

 grouped together and illustrated, and new facts are 

 brought to light. Shells were for ornamental pur- 

 poses converted into pins, beads, pendants, perforated 

 plates, and engraved gorgets. Mr. Holmes studies the 

 beads as to their form in perforated shells, discoidal 

 beads, massive beads, tubular beads, and runtees ; 

 and as to tbeir uses for ornament, for currency, and 

 for mnemonic purposes. The chapter on wampum 

 will give great pleasure to many readers, but that 

 portion of the paper which treats of engraved gorgets 

 possesses the most absorbing interest. " Many of the 

 gorgets obtained from the mounds and graves of a 

 large district have designs of the most interesting 

 nature engraved upon them." For the purposes of 

 description and illustration, they are presented in 

 the following order: the cross, the scalloped disk, 

 the bird, the spider, the serpent, the human face, the 

 human figure. In addition to the many theories of 

 the origin of the cross symbol, Mr. Holmes suggests 

 the following: " The ancient Mexican pictographic 

 manuscripts abound in representations of trees, con- 



ventionalized in such a manner as to represent 

 crosses. By a comparison of these curious trees with 

 the remarkable cross in the Palenque tablet, I have 

 been led to the belief that they must have a common 

 significance and origin." Those familiar with the 

 paper of Dr. Joseph Jones on the antiquities of 

 Tennessee will remember a rosette-like, carved shell, 

 in rough outline resembling a Mexican calendar. 

 Mr. Holmes describes and figures a number of these, 

 believing them to be calendar disks. The bird disks 

 are not very interesting, either in form or variety, 

 although the occurrence of odd forms in widely sepa- 

 rated areas will occasion some astonishment. On the 

 contrary, the spider gorgets are both novel and beau- 

 tiful. If we are not mistaken, it was Col. Hilder of 

 St. Louis who first drew attention to these wonderful 

 objects. Major Powell tells us that the Shoshones 

 regard the spiders as the first weavers, who taught 

 their fathers the art. The wild tribes call the Nava- 

 jos, spiders. And down in the bottom of a mound, 

 on the breast of a skeleton, lay the disks of the Busy- 

 con, on whose concave surfaces were carved the 

 image of this ancestral spinner, bearing the cross 

 symbol on his back. The serpent symbol is a famil- 

 iar object in aboriginal art, and we are not surprised 

 to find it on shell disks. The remarkable similarity 

 of some of these serpent forms, on disks found in 

 mounds, to the representations of the same animal 

 in Mexican and Central-American antiquities, is 

 barely hinted at by the writer, and dismissed for 

 want of space. The mask gorgets are very rude and 

 uninteresting, but the |most astonishing of all are 

 those depicting the human figure. In looking at the 

 drawings, one does not know which to admire more, 

 — the cleverness of the artist in masking his design, 

 or the shrewdness of Mr. Holmes in the interpretation 

 of it. You are asked to look at the image of a man 

 in plate lxxi. You surrender the task as hopeless. 

 The author guides your eye here and there, and you 

 are convinced and delighted. The close examination 

 of the subsequent figures assures you that he is right. 

 We cannot close this brief notice without calling 

 attention to the wonderful unfolding of new problems 

 by the solution of older ones. In the same volume 

 that will contain this paper, by Mr. Holmes, the 

 mound-builders will be severed from Mexico and 

 Central America; but here are new facts to explain, 

 even more perplexing than the old. 



— A laboratory for bacterial research has been 

 founded in the Pathological institute of Munich, and 

 the first course of lectures, founded on Dr. Koch's 

 latest methods, has begun. 



— Dr. Emmerich, an assistant in the Hygienic in- 

 stitute of Munich, professes to have discovered the 

 cause of an epidemic of inflammation of the lungs, 

 by which a hundred and sixty-one persons were at- 

 tacked, through discovering the peculiar bacteria of 

 the disease in the plaster of the infected house. 



— Mr. Huxley's report of last year's salmon-fishing 

 confirms his own assertion that very little is known 

 about the influences which regulate salmon-supply. 

 The take of salmon and sea-trout has increased and 



