cred, or as looking to them as representing their clans or secret religious orders." Observers of Moki ceremonies have seen large wooden tablets in their kivas or ceremonial chambers painted with a green ground, ornamented with the rain prayer and some one of the countless Moki gods, and have remarked that the little bird in the clouds suggests the thunder bird of the plains Indians." Bourke remarked upon the constant appearance of feathers, chiefly those of the eagle and turkey. The Indians will not part, for any amount of money, with the wands of eagle feathers used for fanning living serpents at their snake dance, for fear of offending their bird deity. Sacrificial plumes of eagle down, attached to little sticks, are buried in the corners of the field at the opening of spring. The feathers of the parrot, brought up from Mexico, are treasured in the Pueblos, and will always be found, according to Bourke, "carefully preserved in peculiar wooden boxes, generally cylindrical in shape, made expressly for the purpose. With them is invariably associated the soft white down of the eagle. The Mokis have an especial veneration for the two species of eagle, which are kept by them in cages, and are fed largely on field mice and rabbits. Captain Bourke alludes to eagle feathers as common articles of commerce among these people, to which they attach a determinate value, and ascribes the high price placed upon them by all the sedentary Indians of Arizona and New Mexico to graver considerations than mercantile.
"Wild Indian Corn."—The question whether wild Indian corn is growing in America is raised in Garden and Forest by Robert P. Harris, who assumes that such a corn has been found in several regions of this continent, naturally reproducing itself, and that it has a character of growth that fits it for long preservation in a dry climate, although, if planted and cultivated for a few years, all the characteristics of wildness gradually disappear. "The cobs of wild maize are thin and hard, covered with lines of mushroom shaped elevations, each having a wirelike pedicel growing from the top, attached to a glume inclosing a small pointed grain, or a flat grain smaller than any pop corn. These kernel husks overlap each other toward the point of the ear, like the shingles on the roof of a house. The imbrications are largest and longest at the butt of the ear, and gradually become less pronounced as they advance in distinct rows to the point. The individual glumes are from an inch to two inches long, and are much longer than this where the grains are not fertilized, particularly if the entire ear is of this character, as is proved by a specimen in my collection. Over these imbrications is the outside husk as we have it in all cultivated corns." Mr. Harris further says that Indian corn in its wild state has been found in Arizona, southern Texas, the valley of Mexico, and Central America. He has known Rocky Mountain corn a long period of time; it has very small ears. One of the professors of the University of Mexico has been experimenting with the wild corn of the valley, and has the engraving of a plant that grew to be about five feet high. Wild corn has also been grown by the Landreths, near Philadelphia, to whom it was sent from Arizona. Some found by Dr. Williams, of Houston, Texas, is a white flint of large size; but fifteen stalks produced only four ears, which grew on two of the stalks. The plant is a very vigorous grower, but it is not productive, and eight stalks grown in Texas did not bear a single ear. It may be doubted whether the evidence is as yet sufficient or is clear enough to establish that these specimens are really wild corn and not corn that has escaped from cultivation—the more so, because Indian corn with glumes to each kernel is not rare.
Dr. Yersin and Plague Virus.—Nature, of February 1 8th, brings an interesting account of Dr. Yersin's discovery of the plague virus and its antitoxiue, during the epidemic at Hong Kong in the spring of 1894. His attention being attracted to the extraordinary number of dead rats lying about in the squalid Chinese quarters of the city, he examined them, and discovered immense numbers of a short bacillus, that could be easily stained and cultivated in the usual manner. He found the same bacilli in different organs of plague patients. Noticing quantities of dead flies in the room where he carried on his post-mortem examinations, he investigated this symptom, and established
