BRIEF NOTES. 



383 



of the Comedas is probably the Kiumito of Hwen- 

 tsang, and the land of Komedh in Ibn Dasta, 

 which probably lay northeast of the great bend 

 of the Oxus. The stone tower would thus have 

 been situated at the upper end of Kurateghin, 

 where the valley rises up to the steppe country 

 of the Alai. This, however, does not coincide 

 with the theory that Osh was the site of the stone 

 fort. 



There is much room for conjecture in the 

 question as to the route from the Stone Fort to 

 Issedon Scythica. Ptolemy gives a caravansary 

 on the line of the Imaus, i. e., near the water- 

 parting. This would naturally be situated at the 

 point of junction of two important trade-routes 

 and was very probably at the point where the 

 way from Karateghin joined that from Ferghana 

 and the Terek Pass. At the present time Balkh 

 has lost its importance, so that the Karateghin 

 route has fallen into disuse ; but, in the fifteenth 

 century, Shah Rukh's embassy, on its return, 

 separated into two parties in the " defile of An- 

 dijan," one going toward Balkh, and the other 

 toward Andijan and Samarcand. 



The summary of his researches is thus given 

 by Baron Richthofen : From 114 b. c. to 120 

 A. d. (with a break of fifty-six years between), 

 the silk was brought along routes from Sha-chow 



and Lob-Nor which traversed the southern part 

 of the Tarim Basin, and preferably used the 

 Terek Pass for those caravans resorting to the 

 great mart of Tawan, or Ora-tepe. Thence 

 the silk went to Samarcand, and thence partly 

 through the lands of the Upper Oxus to India, 

 and partly through the lands of the Parthians to 

 Farther Asia and the Roman market. The only 

 journey of Western traders of which we possess 

 detailed information did not, however, follow the 

 Samarcand route, but diverged probably, at Merv, 

 and passed through Balkh, probably through 

 Karateghin and the Alai, entered the Tarim Basin 

 at Kashgar, proceeded to Khotan, and followed 

 the southern border of the basin of the Tarim, 

 till they reached Sha-chow. Thence to the chief 

 mart of China the account is too vague to fol- 

 low. When the Chinese lost their hold on the 

 Tarim Basin in 150 a. d., they could no longer 

 protect their caravans, and the trade fell into the 

 hands of the Persians, and Kan-chow-fu became 

 the frontier mart of China. The introduction of 

 the silk into Europe dates from the sixth century, 

 when Dizabul, the prince of the Tukin, sent an 

 embassy to Constantinople to secure a market 

 for the silk. From the following century the 

 overland route of the silk-traders lost all its for- 

 mer importance. — Geographical Magazine. 



BRIEF NOTES 



Dr. Paul Broca on the Antiquity of Man. — 

 M. Paul Broca, in his opening address at the 

 meeting of the French Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science, sketched the history of 

 scientific opinion concerning the antiquity of man. 

 M. Broca frankly admitted that the evidence for 

 the existence of man in Tertiary times is not yet 

 conclusive. He classified into three races the 

 prehistoric men whose bones have been found in 

 Europe. The oldest of these three types of man 

 is the Canstadt race. To this we must refer the 

 Neanderthal skull. The Canstadt people were 

 of short stature, with very long heads, much 

 flattened at the top, the flattening being mainly 

 due to the retreating forehead : they were doli- 

 choplatycephalic, or with long and flattened heads. 

 These people were, according to M. Broca, more 

 savage than any in existence now. They date 

 back to the Quaternary period, and appear to 

 have had a very wide geographical distribution. 



Next comes the Cromagnon race, a dolichocephalic, 

 or long-headed, people, like those of Canstadt, 

 but of vastly superior organization ; they flour- 

 ished as far back as the second half of the Qua- 

 ternary period, and were at their zenith during 

 the reindeer age. Finally, there is the Furfooz 

 type, so called from Furfooz, in Belgium, where 

 some remains were found a few years ago. The 

 men of this race were extremely short, with a 

 type of cranium decidedly lower than that of the 

 Cromagnon people. The head is rounded, but 

 not decidedly brachycephalic. This race arrived 

 in Belgium at the close of the reindeer age. 

 They were acquainted with the art of making 

 pottery. 



Impervious Coatings on the Skin. — Dr. Sena- 

 tor, of Berlin, cites experiments made by himself 

 to prove that the covering of the skin of human 

 beings with an impermeable coating (varnish, for 



