GRUESOME "LOTS" FOR SALE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13390, 19 January 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

GRUESOME "LOTS" FOR SALE.

STRANGE - HUMAN HEAD - ' IN AN AUCTION ROOM.

What is claimed to be man's head, little larger than a hen's egg, whs sold in London recently.

The history of this gruesome relit- makes interesting reading. While travelling in Central Mexico a traveller heaid from his guide remarkable stories about a small race of pigmies that inhabited that part of the world hundreds of years before Montezuma was conquered by the Spaniard Cortes, and how, they used to bury their dead in the rocks. Later he discovered a head of one of these little people in the possession of a ranchman, who, after much persuasion, parted with it for a considerable sum.

If, therefore, this head is genuine, this race of pigmies must have been about twenty-four inches in height, as the. held measures a little over three inches from the crown to the chin. At the same sale three other heads Mere sold: these, however, were larger, and more animal-like in appearance. Such strange objects are by no means uncommon in the saleroom. During the pas*; few years collectors have had the opportunity of purchasing a book bound in the skin of a malefactor, a piece of the skin of a notorious pirate, and a strip of skin the history of which was told by the inscription upon it. "Jeremy Beutham bequeathes his body for anatomical purposes."