October 17, 1884." 



SCIENCE. 



379 



yonder above, and 3-onder below." Then the 

 boy said, kW I have found my name: call me 

 *A11 the sides of heaven.'" The point for 

 criticism is, that, while the name the bo} 7 be- 

 stowed upon himself is strictly in accordance 

 with the philosophic status which the Samoan 

 (as well described by the author) had reached, 

 the name or title ' Space ' is wholly inappro- 

 priate to that status. 



What may be the proper translation of the 

 native word ' Valevalenoa,' or whether it can 

 be translated, it is not possible for us to deter- 

 mine ; but it does seem clear that the meta- 

 plrysical conception of ' space ' could not have 

 been made by the Samoans. 



The genealogical table of the divinity gives 

 1 Tangaloa, the explorer of lands,' as his father, 

 and the ' Queen of earth ' as his mother ; and 

 k Tangaloa, the explorer of lands,' was the pro- 

 geny of ' Tangaloa, the dweller of lands,' as 

 his father, and i Cloudy Heavens ' as his 

 mother ; also the parents of k Tangaloa, the 

 dweller of lands,' were ' Cloudless Heavens ' 

 for father, and the ' Eighth Heavens ' for 

 mother. After that amount of definiteness, 

 it would not be probable that in an attempt to 

 commence from the first of all, Leai (noth- 

 ing) . and arriving at Avhat might be called the 

 practical account of the earth itself, and its 

 deities, one would be constantly encountered 

 with the conception of ' Space ' as the progeny 

 of the foregoing. It is true, that, from a meta- 

 physical point of view, space might as well 

 proceed out of nothing, as nothing out of 

 space ; but with the intermediaries mentioned, 

 it would not be in accordance with the gen- 

 eral lines of savage cosmogony to have started 

 with nothing, and through a respectably elabo- 

 rate family tree to have arrived at practically 

 the point of departure. 



An instance of light is thrown upon a prob- 

 lem which has for some time occupied physiolo- 

 gists. We refer to the subject of prehistoric 

 trephining as explained by an account of the 

 manner in which headache was cured, confirm- 

 ing the theory of Dr. Fletcher in his address 

 before the anthropological society of Washing- 

 ton in 1881, that the prehistoric trephining 

 was to relieve disease of the brain. The 

 operation was to let out the pain at the crown 

 of the head by the following surgen\ The 

 scalp was slipped up and folded over, and the 

 cranial bone scraped with a fine-edged shell 

 until the dura mater was reached. Very little 

 blood was allowed to escape. In some cases 

 the scraped aperture was covered over with 

 a thin piece of cocoanut-shell ; in other in- 

 stances the incised scalp was simply replaced. 



This is perhaps, the first instance in which 

 savage trephiners have been caught in the act 

 with operations on the scale of a custom. The 

 cure was death to some, but most of the cases 

 recovered. To such an extent was this remedy 

 for headache carried on, that sharp-pointed 

 clubs were specially made for the purpose of 

 striking that known weak part of the crown 

 of the head, causing instant death. 



The precise operation of trephining has not 

 been found to be practised among the tribes of 

 North America ; but they very generally scari- 

 fied and wounded parts of the body where pain 

 was seated, or supposed so to be. Their phi- 

 losoprry of pain was, that it was an evil spirit 

 which they must let out. The early writers, 

 who believed in the benefits of phlebotomy 

 more than is now the fashion, gave much credit 

 to the Indians for this practice. It was one 

 of the proofs of their advance in medical and 

 surgical science. It is suggested that the cus- 

 tom of cutting the breast, arms, and some 

 other parts of the body, at the mourning cere- 

 monies, may have originated in the idea of 

 letting grief, the pain of sorrow, out of the 

 mourner. 



The principles of the taboo are made very 

 clear and expressive by the tale of the devices 

 by which property was protected. For in- 

 stance, to protect the bread-fruits, the owner 

 would plait some cocoanut leaflets in the form 

 of a sea-pike, and suspend it from one or more 

 of the trees which he wished to protect. The 

 thief would be frightened from touching the 

 tree ; expecting, the next time he went to 

 the sea, a sea-pike would dart up, and mor- 

 tally wound him. Another of the instances is 

 the cross-stick taboo, a piece of anj T sort of 

 stick suspended horizontally from the tree, 

 expressing the imprecation of the owner that 

 any thief touching it might have a disease run- 

 ning right across his body and remaining fixed 

 there until he died. This is recommended as 

 a contribution to the literature on the mysti- 

 cisms of the cross. 



The interesting subject of tattoo marks is 

 also dwelt on with more than usual information. 

 Reference is made to the mistake of Behrens 

 in describing the natives of Samoa in his nar- 

 rative of 1772, when he stated that Cw they were 

 clothed from the waist downward with fringes 

 and a kind of silken stuff, artificially wrought." 

 A nearer inspection would have shown him 

 that the fringes were a bunch of red leaves 

 glistening with cocoanut-oil ; and the kind of 

 silken stuff, the elaborate tattooing. An inter- 

 esting point is the worship of the octopus, 

 or cuttle-fish, which may be compared with its 



