Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/288

276 facts of the state of the weather three times a day, and reports of health are received regularly. The reports, as a whole, show how certain diseases vary with the season, and indicate that relations exist, for instance, between the great heat of summer and the amount of sickness from diarrhœa, cholera-morbus, cholera-infantum, etc., and between the cold, dry air in winter and spring and the increase of sickness from pneumonia and similar diseases, which nearly disappear during the warm months. In several years the sickness from pneumonia increased slightly in September, decreased slightly in October, about the time of the Indian summer, and then gradually rose as cold weather set in. When the facts are represented in diagrams, a correspondence appears to be shown between the changes in certain features of the weather and the progress of particular diseases. Thus, the line representing the amount of ozone at night for 1879 nearly agrees with the line representing the prevalence of pneumonia. The bronchitis line is nearly parallel with these, while the lines representing zymotic diseases run in an opposite direction. It is unsafe, however, to lay too much stress on these coincidences, for it is not probable that the amount of ozone was accurately measured. Intermittent fever was at its highest from July to September, remittent fever in August, typho-malarial fever in September, typhoid fever in November, and cerebro-spinal meningitis was irregular, prevailing most from January to March.

Skull-Worship.—"Skull-Worship in the Pacific Ocean" was the title of an address recently made by Herr J. D. C. Schmeltz before a scientific society in Hamburg. The Museum Godefroy in Hamburg has several skulls which have been adorned with stripes over the eyebrows; on some a triangle has been traced in red, from the apex of which another red stripe has been drawn down the nose, with black stripes on either side of it. In other specimens a red line has also been drawn from the apex of the triangle to the roof of the skull, ending there in a spiral on either side. It was already known that the under jaws, if not the whole skulls, of dead relatives were often peculiarly adorned and highly honored in New Guinea. Herr Schmeltz, observing similarly painted skulls in the New Britain Islands, has concluded that a like cultus exists there. Herr Kleinschmidt, of the Museum Godefroy, relates that at stated times a kind of priestly person, called at Pall-Pall the Duk-Duk, or religion-man, collects the skulls of the dead and commits them to the care of their relatives; and he has sent to the museum a skull from there, in which the fleshy parts are represented by plaster and the eyes by a snail-shell, and the whole is painted. On one of the New Hebrides Islands whole skeletons of deceased persons have been exhumed, endowed with a flesh prepared from vegetable matters, and installed in the temples. A traveler on the German man-of-war Ariadne sent the museum at Hamburg a skull from the Island of Isabel (Solomon Islands) which had been browned with smoke, and with it the statement that, "when prominent men, who have distinguished themselves in war or by superior power, die, they enjoy after death a particular reverence, which appears to originate in the belief that the spirit of the dead man passes over to his worshiper and makes him fit for similar deeds. After the body has remained for a half-year in the earth, the grave is opened and the skull taken out. It is then subjected to a course of various processes, especially to a protracted smoking, after which it is deposited in the temple as an object of worship."

Chesapeake Zoölogical Laboratory.—The fourth annual session of the Chesapeake Zoölogical Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University was to begin at Beaufort, North Carolina, May 2d, and will continue till the end of August. Dr. W. K. Brooks, Associate in Biology and Assistant Professor of Comparative Anatomy, has charge as director. The laboratory is designed for advanced students, and for persons who are qualified to carry on original investigations. No definite courses of instruction are given, as the persons who are received as students are presumed to have sufficient knowledge to carry on their studies without such aid. An elementary class will also be conducted in connection with the laboratory, during about six weeks of the summer, at which daily lectures will be given, and