450 



NATURE 



[December 23, 191 5 



mentioned already, the Molluscs form the subject 

 of a monograph by E. v. Martens. Unfor- 

 tunately the Crustacea have not Jaeen studied, the 

 late Prof. T. H. Huxley being unable to finish the 

 fresh-water Malacostraca, which he had hoped to 

 describe. The Spiders, Harvestmen, Scorpions, 

 Pedipalps, and, to a certain extent, Mites and 

 Centipedes, have, however, been fully worked out. 

 As is so often the case, the Beetles, which num- 

 bered more than 18,000 species, receive special 

 notice, and indeed the Coleoptera and the Lepi- 

 doptera were the only two groups for which 

 sufficient specialists were forthcoming to describe 

 the collections completely. The Hymenoptera, 

 unfortunately, have not been fully examined, and 

 the Bees and Social Wasps have had to be passed 

 by. The Diptera, again, yielded comparatively 

 few species, and the same is true of the Ortho- 

 ptera. 



The whole world benefits by this series of stately 

 tomes, but the debt of our country is even deeper, 

 for all the collections brought together with so 

 much care and cost now repose in the British 

 Museum (South Kensington). We cannot refrain 

 from including the following quotations in this 

 short notice : — 



"All the insects from Mexico and Central 

 America, the Salle and Janson collections of 

 beetles, our own general collection of birds and 

 butterflies, and the Henshaw collection of birds, 

 have been presented by us to the British Museum, 

 and are being gradually incorporated with the 

 National Collection." 



"The various accessions are enumerated in de- 

 tail in vol. ii. of the ' History of the Collections 

 'contained in the Natural History Departments of 

 the British Museum ' (1906), and in the subse- 

 quent annual reports of that Institution. The 

 first instalment of Neotropical birds (50,120 speci- 

 mens) was presented in January, 1885, and other 

 instalments followed from time to time ointil the 

 whole of them became the property of the nation. 

 Amongst the insects, up to 1906, the total number 

 of specimens given in the ' History ' is as follows ; 

 Coleoptera (85,920), Lepidoptera Rhopalocera 

 (17,829), Lepidoptera Heterocera (12,883), Diptera 

 (17,525), Hymenoptera (10,004), Rhynchota Hetero- 

 ptera (5543), etc. These figures do not include 

 the Rhynchophora or weevils (22,793), the Staphy- 

 linidae and water-beetles (9474), the Odonata 

 (3000), the Rhynchota Homoptera (5509), the 

 supplementary unworked parasitic Hymenoptera 

 (6293), etc. From 1906 onwards the remaining 

 collections have been handed over to the Museum 

 as soon as the enumeration of the species was 

 completed; that of the Coleoptera was finished in 

 191 1. Our own general collection of butterflies 

 probably included nearly 100,000 specimens, and 

 the beetles alone from Mexico and Central 

 America perhaps double that number. Besides 

 NO. 2408, VOL. 96] 



these a considerable number of mammals, reptiles, 

 fish, etc., of which no account was kept, were 

 presented to the National Museum." 



The " Biologia Centrali Americana " must ever 

 remain a classic. Biological science owes a deep 

 debt to those who planned, designed, financed, 

 and carried out tnis truly monumental work. In 

 every sense of the word it is a credit to the British 

 nation, and we only wish that Mr. Salvin had 

 lived to share with his collaborator the widespread 

 recognition of the great services they have ren- 

 dered to their science and to their country. 



FOSSIL MAN. 

 The Antiquity of Man. By Prof. A. Keith. 

 Pp. XX + 519. (London : Williams and Norgate, 

 191 5.) Price los. 6d. net. 



THE chief works on the antiquity of man 

 have hitherto been written by geologists 

 and archaeologists. Prof. Keith now treats the 

 subject from the point of view of the human 

 anatomist. The available facts and speculations 

 of geology and archaeology are all briefly stated 

 and introduced at appropriate stages in the argu- 

 ment ; but the anatomical characters of the various 

 known human remains and their significance form 

 the author's main theme. The plan has obvious 

 disadvantages, for the value of the conclusions 

 depends on the authenticity of the materials, which 

 none but an expert geologist can determine. It 

 also fosters a tendency to make dogmatic state- 

 ments about the age of the various remains in 

 terms of years, which may please a section of the 

 inquisitive public but cannot be admitted as 

 science. At the same time, the human anatomist 

 is an essential factor in unravelling the story of 

 primitive man, and Prof. Keith has produced an 

 important work, which is all the more fascinating 

 since It is the direct outcome of his own personal 

 observations. 



The great interest of Prof. Keith's volume, in- 

 deed, depends on the insight it affords into the 

 methods and aims of modern research in pre- 

 historic anthropology. It is sometimes technical 

 and tedious, but the whole is written with the 

 inspiring enthusiasm of an investigator, and it is 

 enlivened by many personal touches when describ- 

 ing the circumstances of the different discoveries. 

 The general reader will also be much helped in 

 the comparison of the human skulls and jaws by 

 the author's method of placing his numerous 

 figures in rectangular frames of standard size. 



Prof. Keith begins with the long-headed men of 

 Neolithic times, and observes that they exhibit 

 no primitive features in their skeleton. He de- 



