292 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



individual who, though small of stature, must yet have been of accu- 

 rate proportion. He had been most interested in the examination of 

 the cranium, which he had expected to find allied to the Papuan or to 

 the negro variety. He had found, however, that the skull exhibited 

 none of the characteristic peculiarities of the Papuan, and still less of 

 those of the negro ; that it had no affinity with the Malay or the 

 Mongolian type of cranium ; in fact, that, with the exception of the 

 prognathous jaw-bones, in its classic, oval, and in its general propor- 

 tions, it was most nearly allied to the skull of a Caucasian. In the 

 course of his'investigations, some suggestions had presented themselves 

 to him. Why is it necessary that, in determining the race to which 

 the inhabitants of detached groups of islands belong, we should ex- 

 pect to find invariably that they are connected with the inhabitants 

 of conterminous continents ? In the case of many of these islands, 

 particularly of Ceylon, it had been shown that the geological age of 

 the island was much earlier than that of the adjacent mainland. 

 Why, then, might not the inhabitants of such groups of islands be the 

 descendants of races who had peopled continents which no longer 

 exist, but of which these islands are the remains, and in comparison 

 with which the present continents in the eons of geologic history are 

 of very recent date ? 



Novelty in Cattle-Breeding. Production of Sexes at Will. The 

 Archives des Sciences for Sept. 1863, contains a communication from a 

 Swiss agriculturist, stating that in February, 1861, he received from 

 Professor Thury, of Geneva, a letter containing confidential instruc- 

 tions, which he was to carry out for the purpose of experimentally 

 verifying an assumed law regulating the production of the sexes among 

 animals. The result was that in twenty-two successive cases, females 

 were obtained, according to desire. The animals bred from were 

 Swiss cows and a Durham bull. M. Cornaz then purchased a Durham 

 cow, and desired to procure, by breeding, a Durham bull, in which he 

 succeeded. He also desired to breed six bulls, crossed between Dur- 

 ham and Schwitz, and by selecting cows of the color and height he 

 wanted, he was again successful, and regards Prof Thury's method as 

 of the highest importance to breeders of cattle. 



The law enunciated by Prof. Thury, and confirmed by M. Cornaz, 

 is that sex depends on the degree of maturation of the egg at the 

 moment of fecundation. In uniparous animals, fecundation at the 

 commencement of the rutting period gives females, at its termination, 

 males. In multiparous creatures, the first eggs that descend from the 

 ovary generally give females, the last, males ; but M. Thury says, 

 that in a second generative period that succeeds the first, circumstan- 

 ces are considerably changed, and the last eggs give females. Many 

 of our rural readers, engaged in agriculture, will be able to verify 

 these curious statements, which may have an important influence on 

 the profits of farming. 



Inoculation for PI euro-Pneumonia, or Cattle-Disease. M. Lengleri 

 describes to the French Academy the success of inoculation as a pre- 

 servative against the above disease. In the first place, he obtained the 

 virus from the lung of an ox that was affected; but subsequently he ob- 

 tained the matter in a milder form from the tails of the inoculated ani- 

 mals, portions of which became diseased and were cut off by the 



