April 21, 192 1] 



NATURE 



2^7- 



I 



S-c -t s 



S S c S 

 -n 2 "^ .^ 



r 6-S >> 



4i « S 





2 o^ 5j 



S r- S"- 

 U S S ° 

 •U « « (O 



« - S-- 



g 0.2 s 



.5 <n ? N 

 "S I "(is 



2 r 3 

 5 §-o S 



O Bl O ,, 



•2 ■ 2 ^ 



-=U « ;£ 



:o-^ '■ 



-O -^ Si 



^ "o-S 

 i; u „ 



^-^ S 



1 2 c »! 



- 1^-2 



•- u o *! 



rp 



O • " c 



!/) M a g 



V. C 4J i. 

 > Cl.^«i 



j= 2 r; t* 



•fl E „ « 

 E o— J- 



.5 S i^ £ 



u X rt M 



a: S " o 

 a u o 



£^^:^ 



.S.2 fe > 



*7 e c *> o 

 '. '^ J* lT 3 



type of this species thus far found. The autumn 

 scene of this series is in northern New Jersey, 

 the place of discovery of the deer-moose, or Cer- 

 valces, of the northerly range of the tapir, and of 

 the North American coypu type of rodents known 

 as Castoroides. 



On the opposite side of the hall, facing the four 

 seasonal series, are other murals, which represent 

 the life of the Pampean region, the ground sloths, 

 glyptodonts, toxodonts, and macrauchenias, in a 

 series of groups. Very careful studies of the 

 superb fauna of southern California are now 

 being made for murals, which will depict the life 

 discovered in the tarpools in the vicinity of Los 

 Angeles, where occurs the most remarkable col- 

 lection of extinct mammals so far found in the 

 whole history of palaeontology, since the entire 

 fauna of early and middle Pleistocene times is 

 represented, including the three types of mam- 

 moth — the imperial, the Columbian, and the 

 woolly — the bison, the horse, the camel, the sabre- 

 toothed tiger, and the giant lion, Felis atrox. It 

 is intended to show here the entire mammalian 

 and avian fauna of the period. Studies upon the 

 animals in these murals now extend over eight 

 years, and other years of additional study will be 

 needed. The restorations themselves are pre- 

 ceded by models. The naturalness of the scenes 

 is aided by kinema reproductions secured by 

 recent museum expeditions of similar scenes 

 among existing large mammals of Africa and 

 from drawings made in early days in Africa, wheiV 

 the mammals were still in their primitive number 

 and variety. 



Materials in the central cases devoted to human 

 prehistory are placed in ascending order, begin- 

 ning with replicas of the Trinil man of Dubois, 

 the Piltdown man of Smith Woodward, and the 

 Heidelberg man of Schoetensack. In the final 

 arrangement each will occupy an entire case show- 

 ing the geologic position of the find, replicas of 

 the original materials, the author's restorations, 

 and museum restorations by Prof. McGregor. It 

 is noteworthy that a hundred years of fossil hunt- 

 ing in various parts of the world have yielded 

 only these three individual types of human and 

 prehuman ancestors. As soon as the period of 

 human burial begins, in the closing centuries of 

 the long period when the Neanderthal race 

 covered western Europe, skeletal remains become 

 very abundant, and it will require two large cases 

 to exhibit replicas and restorations of the Nean- 

 derthal species of man successively discovered 

 near Gibraltar, Neanderthal, Spy, Krapina, at 

 many points in the Dordogne Valley, and most 

 recently in Spain. The masterly work of Boule on 

 this race is supplemented by the exhaustive 

 anatomical studies of McGregor and other ana- 

 tomists which form the materials on which the 

 first of the murals depicting life in the Old Stone 

 age is founded ; this is the beginning of the Cave 

 period, and a group of Neanderthals is represented 

 in a flint quarry in front of the Grotto Le 

 Moustier, which gives its name to the whole period 

 of Mousterian culture. 



NO. 2686, VOL. 107] 



