G. GENERAL NATURAL HISTORY AND ZOOLOGY. 183 



PKE-HTSTORIC ENGRAVINGS ON BONE. 



Many of our readers are familiar with the magnificent 

 work of Messrs. Lartet and Christy, entitled "Reliquiae Aqui- 

 tania?," principally embracing illustrations and descriptions 

 of the remarkable relics of pre-historic times found in the cav- 

 erns of Aquitaine and other parts of France. It is among 

 these remains, for instance, that occur the curious engrav- 

 ings, by men of the reindeer period, of various animals with 

 which they were contemporaneous, the most remarkable be- 

 ing one of what is believed to be intended to represent the 

 hairy mammoth of that period. Quite recently other remains 

 of a similar character have been brought to light from the 

 same locality, one of the most noticeable being an engraving 

 on a reindeer's horn, representing a male bison pursued by a 

 naked man, the latter grasping the animal by the tail with 

 one hand, and with the other plunging a lance into its body. 

 The drawing of the man is said to be the best illustration of 

 the " humanity" of the period that has hitherto been discov- 

 ered. The absence of clothing is believed to prove that he 

 habitually went naked. The head is brachycephalic, with 

 hair standing stiffly on the cranium, and there is a short, 

 pointed beard on the chin. 3 C\October 8, 973. 



TRANSMISSIBILITY OF INTELLECTUAL QUALITIES IN ENGLAND. 



At a late meeting of the Statistical Society of London, ac- 

 cording to Nature, Mr. Hyde* Clarke read a paper upon the 

 " Transmissibility of Intellectual Qualities in England." As 

 one test of this question, he took the statistics of writers of 

 books in the " Biographia Britannica," and ascertained that 

 of 2000 authors, 750 were born in country districts and 1250 

 in towns. Examining the towns and the distribution in 

 them, 333 were allotted to London, 73 to Edinburgh, and 53 

 to Dublin. The largest numbers beyond these were found 

 in cathedral and colleg-iate cities. The deductions he drew 

 were, that intellectual activity is distributed unequally, but 

 that it is more among the town or more highly educated pop- 

 ulation than among the rural. He pointed out that the larger 

 the concentrated educated population, the larger is the intel- 

 lectual development ; and he referred to the like examples of 

 Greece, Rome, and modern Europe, where the same law is to 



