244 



NATURE 



{July lo, 1879 



1 



last. First from Bournemouth and Weymouth, where they were 

 found not unfrequently dead on the shore. Again, one of the 

 Leigh " shrimpers " took about a dozen specimens in his trawl 

 net near Sheerness, at the mouth of the Thames. Another two 

 specimens were taken likewise in a shrimp trawl off Harwich. 

 None of these survived, no doubt having been too long in the 

 trawl net, which is frequently three or more hours in the water. 

 Dead specimens of these were sent for my observation, by Mr. 

 Andrew, the aquarium fish collector of Southend-on-Sea. He 

 says the Essex fishermen call them red dox-ees, but none 

 remember having seen them on that coast before this year. 



John T. Carringtox 

 Royal Aquarium, Westminster, July 6 



Habits of Ants 



My attention was lately called by a friend to the operations of 

 a party of ants. The theatre of their work was a cherry-tree 

 partly decayed in the centre. From this portion of the tree the 

 busy creatures were bringing forth small grains of sawdust-like 

 d&ris. These particles were conveyed to the prominence left by 

 an amputated branch, and thrown over to the ground, a distance 

 of abjut five feet. The particles were passed on from one anl 

 to another — a? water-buckets were at old-tiaie fires. Nor was 

 this all, for on the ground below, another party removed the 

 accumulated material. In this connection the reader should 

 consult a remarkable note on page 2 1 of Kerner's " Flowers and 

 their Unbidden Guests " to farther illustrate the intelligence of 

 ants and their recognition of the '.. principle of division of 

 labour. I am unable to state the species of ant I observed, as I 

 am not an entomologist. It was a rather large red ant. 



W. Whitman Bailey 



Brown University, Providence, R.I. (U.S.), June 17 .,»x£ 



WILLIAM FOTHERGILL COOKE 



THERE has slipped away noiselessly and quietly one of 

 England's scientific pioneers and one of the world's 

 ■benefactors. Sir William Fothergill Cooke was the 

 father of electric telegraphy. Born in 1806, educated in 

 Durham, where his father was a professor, he joined the 

 East India Company's military service in 1826, from 

 which he retired in 1835 to study anatomy and physio- 

 logy in Paris and Heidelberg. He was very clever at 

 wax modelling. In 1836 a lecture on Schilling's telegraph 

 directed his attention to the electric telegraph. His was 

 the active sanguine mind that saw the great future of 

 telegraphy before him, and that, in spite of supineness 

 and unbelief, forced the new agent on an unwilling world. 

 He was not an inventor nor a discoverer, but he was a far- 

 seeing, practical man, with a determined will, indomitable 

 energy, and of great resources. Associated with Wheat- 

 stone, he established telegraphy as a commercial under- 

 taking. The first experimental line in England was put 

 up in 1837. The first Electric Telegraph Company was 

 incorporated in 1844. The first cable was laid in 1851. 

 Now the world is one network of wires, and while the 

 pioneer of this great system is caiTied to his grave, repre- 

 sentatives from every civilised nation of the earth meet 

 in telegraphic parliament in London without heaving one 

 sigh or casting one thought 



"O'er the grave where our hero we buried." 



THE COMPARATIVE ANATOMY OF MAN'' 



IL 



The Andaman Islanders {continued) 



HITHERTO the osteological characters of these people 

 have only been known from one skeleton, briefly 

 described by Prof. Owen, two crania by Mr. Burfc, and 

 two by Prof Quatrefages. During the last half year, the 

 College museum has received a valuable series of skeletons, 

 collected, at the request of Sir Joseph Fayrer, by the late 



' Abstract of Prof. Flower's Hunterian Lectures, delivered at the Royal 

 College of Surgeons, comniensing on Wednesday, Marcli £■ Continued from 

 p. 225. 



Dr. J. Dougall, senior medical officer at Port Blair ; 

 others have been lent for the purpose of illustrating this 

 coturse by Professors RoUeston and Allen Thomson, 

 amounting altogether to nineteen skeletons, and about 

 thirty crania. 



The common estimate among Europeans, which is 

 fairly correct for averages, is that the length of the femur 

 is to the height of the living person as 275 is to 1,000. 

 Only one of the above-mentioned Andamanese skeletons 

 has been articulated, but this shows exactly the same 

 proportion. Calculated on this basis, the average height 

 of the skeletons of males would be 4 feet 9 inches, the 

 tallest being 5 feet 3 inches, and the shortest 4 feet 

 6 inches. The average height of the ten skeletons of 

 females would be 4 feet 6 inches, the tallest being 4 feet 

 10 inches, the shortest 4 feet 3 inches. 



Attention was first drawn to the fact that the propor- 

 tions of the different segments of the limbs might differ 

 in various races by the announcement in 1799, by White, 

 of Manchester, since amply confirmed, that the forearm 

 of the Negro is proportionally longer than that of the 

 European. Unfortunately, skeletons of most races are so 

 rare in collections, that we have at present but few 

 reliable data on this subject, and it is only when a suffi- 

 cient number can be obtained, on which to found a fair 

 average, that any satisfactory law can be established. 



The first ratio, or index, is that obtained by the com- 

 parison of the entire upper and lower limbs with each 

 other, the intermenibral index, or the length of the 

 humerus and radius added together, as compared with 

 that of the femur and tibia, the latter being taken as 100. 

 This ratio, in the nineteen Andaman skeletons, is 68"3 ; 

 in fourteen Europeans, measured in the same manner, 

 69'2, showing a slight diminution in the length of the arm 

 of the former, as compared with the latter. This has 

 been also found by Broca, to be the case with African 

 Negroes. The femoro-lmmcral index is the ratio of the 

 humerus to the femur, the latter being taken as 100. In 

 Europeans, according to Prof Flower's and Broca's 

 measurements, this is 72 to 73 ; in Negroes, according to 

 Broca, 68-9; in the Andamanese, 69-8 ; showing that in 

 both the latter races the humerus is relatively shorter than 

 the femur. The femoro-tibial index is the length of the 

 tibia to the femur, the latter being 100. In Europeans, 

 this is 82 ; in Negroes, according to Prof. Humphry, 

 847 ; in the Andamanese, almost exactly the same, 84'5. 

 The hnmcro-radial index, or the length of the radius, 

 compared to the humerus is, perhaps, the most important, 

 as being subject to greater variations in different races. 

 In nine Europeans measured by Broca, it is 73"9 ; in 

 fourteen Europeans in the College Museum, it is exactly 

 the same ; in fifteen Negroes measured by Broca, 79'4; 

 in the nineteen Andamanese, 81. Thus the differential 

 characters of the Andamanese, as compared with Euro- 

 peans, in respect to the proportions of the limb-bones, lie 

 mainly in the greater length of the distal segment of each 

 limb as compared with the proximal segment, a pecu- 

 liarity most especially manifested in the upper extremity. 

 In the Bulletin of the Paris Anthropological Society of 

 last year, Broca called attention to the form of the 

 scapula as a race-character, and showed that one of the 

 principal modifications of the form of this bone could be 

 expressed by an index formed of a ratio between the two 

 chief diameters of the bone, i.e., the length from the 

 posterior superior angle (c) to the inferior angle (d), and 

 the breadth from the middle of the posterior margin of 

 the glenoid cavity (a) to the point on the posterior or 

 vertebral border from which the spine arises (b). The 

 ratio of the length (c d) to the breadth (a b), the latter 

 being 100, is called the scapular index. In the anthro- 

 poid apes the index varies between 70 and 100, and in 

 most of the lower forms of monkeys and other mammals, 

 it is considerably higher. A high index is, therefore, a 

 sign of inferiority. Broca found that the average in 



