26 



NATURE 



\Nov. 14, 1889 



But though all these facts give reason for regarding 

 the rumour we refer to as very possibly correct, they 

 need by no means prevent those who are interested 

 in the question from entertaining strong hopes of avert- 

 ing such a national disaster as that which we fear. 

 We have only to remind them of the very consider- 

 able degree of success that followed the efforts recently 

 made by Sir Henry Roscoe and other leaders in science 

 in the case of the examinations for admission to the Royal 

 Military Academy at Woolwich. These efforts, we may 

 remind our readers, not only resulted in an advantageous 

 revision of the Woolwich examinations, but brought 

 about satisfactory changes in the case of the Sandhurst 

 competitions. In connection with this result it is satis- 

 factory to observe, in the Report of the Civil Service 

 Commission for 1888, that the Commission, in a letter 

 directed to the Director-General of Military Education on 

 July 10 in that year, have described the changes that had 

 been submitted to them as likely to influence beneficially 

 the education of officers in the army before they begin 

 their professional studies. 



Whatever difficulties there may be in the way of ob- 

 taining just treatment for science candidates under the 

 new scheme for the selection of Indian civil servants, it 

 has, we fear, become again imperative that men of science 

 should unite to protest against the assumption that 

 natural science studies are in themselves inferior as a 

 mental training to the classical languages and mathe- 

 matics, and to insist, so far as they may, upon such 

 studies being placed upon a proper footing in this particular 

 examination. This should be done in the interests of 

 education, and still more of our Indian fellow-subjects, 

 whose administrators should be men of as wide and 

 liberal an education as possible, as has, indeed, been 

 recognized in more than one public investigation of the 

 regulations for these appointments. 



THE LUND MUSEUM IN THE UNIVERSITY 

 OF COPENHAGEN. 



E Museo Ltindit : En Samlmg af Afhandlinger om de i 

 det indre Brasiliens Kalkstenshiiler af Professor P. V. 

 Lund udgravede Dyre-og Menneskeknogler. Udgivet 

 af Dr. Liitken. (Kjobenhavn : H. Hagerup, 1888.) 



THIS work, as its title indicates, consists of various 

 monographs, descriptive of the collections made by 

 Dr. Lund in his interesting exploration of the limestone 

 caverns in the interior of Brazil. These important finds 

 are the fruits of nearly ten years' unremitting labour in 

 the neighbourhood of Lagoa Santa, on the Rio das 

 Velhas, in the province of Minas Geraes, where Dr. Lund 

 prosecuted his researches from 1835 to 1844. On the 

 completion of his cave explorations he presented the 

 whole of his incomparable collections to the Danish 

 nation. The gift has been duly appreciated, and now 

 constitutes, under the name of the " Lund Museum," 

 one of the most important palasontological sections of the 

 Zoological Museum in the University of Copenhagen. 



Dr. Lund inspected as many as 800 of the Brazilian 

 lapas,, or bone-caves, of which he had discovered 1000. 

 Of these only sixty yielded any very interesting results, 

 while scarcely half that number contained a sufficient 



quantity of bones to demand any very prolonged investi- 

 gation. In some instances, on the other hand, the mass 

 of broken bones was so enormous that from the earth 

 collected in a packing-case whose dimensions did not 

 exceed half a cubic foot, he extracted 400 half jaw-bones 

 of a marsupial and 2000 belonging to different rodents, 

 besides the remains of innumerable bats and small birds. 

 This discovery led to further research, and, after fifteen 

 weeks' continued exploration, he found that one cave, which 

 he had at first estimated to be about 25 feet deep, had a 

 depth of nearly 70 feet, and was so densely packed with 

 bones that the yield of 6500 barrels, of the size of an 

 ordinary bulter-firkin, justified the assumption that this 

 special lapa contained the remains of seven and a half 

 millions of animals, belonging for the most part to Cavia, 

 Hystrix, and small rodents and marsupials, the estimate 

 being based on the numbers of half jaw-bones extracted 

 from the mould. 



In these enormous cave deposits we have, according to 

 Dr. Lund, and his biographer Dr. Reinhardt, a prehis- 

 toric ornithological kokken inodding, birds of prey havmg 

 resorted to the lapas of Brazil as suitable retreats in 

 which to devour their innumerable victims, whose frac- 

 tured bones, belonging in almost equal proportions to 

 extinct and living animals, have revealed to us many 

 long-hidden secrets in the history of the changes which 

 the Brazilian fauna has experienced in the course of ages. 

 Comparatively few remains of the larger living mammals 

 have been found, three caves only having yielded evidence 

 of the presence of bears, of which, moreover, the bones 

 of only five individuals were recovered. But while various 

 groups, as e.g. the Ungulata, were sparsely represented,, 

 several families among the Edentata have contributed so 

 largely to the bone remains of the Brazilian lapas that this 

 order would appear to have constituted the most im- 

 portant section of the local fauna, both in past and recent 

 times. Among the cave armadillos, Lund recognized 

 several forms, differing only by their larger size from 

 Dasypus puiictatus, and D. sulcatus j but besides these 

 he found one of colossal dimensions, which, with a body 

 of the size of an ox, and a tail 5 feet in length, ex- 

 hibited differences of dentition which induced him to 

 assign it to a special genus, to which he gave the name 

 Chlamydotherium. A peculiar characteristic of this fossil 

 animal, whose food he believes was leaves, and not 

 insects, was the fusion or overlapping of several of the 

 vertebra; into nodes, or tangles. In this respect it 

 resembles the still more remarkable armadillo, of whose 

 scales and bones he found enormous quantities, and 

 which he described under the name of Hoplophorus. This 

 animal, of which the different species varied from the size 

 of a hog to that of a rhinoceros, was described about the 

 same time by Prof. Owen, to whom various specimens of 

 its bones had been sent from La Plata, and who estab- 

 lished a new species for its reception, to which he gave 

 the name of Glyptodon. The extraordinary rigidity of 

 the shields of some of the Brazilian armadillos, the 

 apparent immobility of the head, and the interlock- 

 ing of the vertebral bones, make it difficult to under- 

 stand how these unwieldy animals could have obtained 

 their food. The most probable solution of the problem 

 seems to be supplied by a study of the short massive 

 hind legs, which, with their sharp and powerful claws, 



