September i6. 1S97] 



NA TURE 



4S7 



Dr. Franz Boas, was read. This closes a very valuable piece of 

 work which was instigated at the first meeting of the As- 

 sociation in Canada. 



Mr. E. Sidney Hartland gave a comparative account of hut- 

 burial among the American aborigines and other jieoples, and 

 its probable significance. The origin of the custom must be 

 sought for in the savage idea of kinship, and in the desire to 

 retain within the kin the deceased and all his power and virtues. 



The papers on physical anthropology, or somatology, as our 

 American colleagues call it, were four in number, the most I 

 important being two papers by Prof. A. Macalister. In dealing 

 with the causes of brachycephaly, he pointed out that those 

 brain areas are the first to increase which will be earliest called 

 upon to work ; thus the area which presides over the skilled 

 movements of the arm develops before that which is connected 

 with similar movements of the leg. The central parietal and 

 temporal lobes grow quickest, and thus in the majority of cases 

 we find an infantile brachycephaly. By the end of the first 

 dentition the frontal length and parietal height increase. About 

 the end of the first year the brain ceases to be free and un- 

 trammelled by its envelope, and a contest begins between brain 

 and bone. The hitherto broad open sulci become narrowed 

 and linear. In the English child the change from brachycepha- 

 lism to mesaticephalism takes place shortly after completing the 

 first dentition. Two types of brachycephaly may be distin- 

 guished : (i) Primary, due to the retention of foetal proportions 

 of the components of the brain, and hence short-headedness 

 accompanied by microcephaly. (2) The secondary brachy- 

 cephaly is due to increased frontal growth, and is usually 

 associated with megacephaly. The second paper gave a ristimd 

 of a study of the brains of several Australian aborigines, and 

 exhibited a number of photographs and drawings. He demon- 

 strated that these brains were not deficient in those areas that 

 were implicated in regulating the movements of the limbs, or 

 in the sensory centres ; but that there was a disproportionate 

 lack of development of those regions which are known as the 

 association centres. 



In a paper detailing an experimental analysis of certain corre- 

 lations of mental and physical reactions, Prof. Lightner Witmer 

 gave the following statistics relative to rate of movements. 



Rate of mov< 

 merits in 



American males. American females. 



Right Left 

 arm. arm. 



Right. Left, 



Indians. 



Right. Left. 



Flexion... \ 77 78 ; 163 154 132 | 124 



E.xtension 107 no 197 194 150 | 153 



Minimum 77 154 124 



Maximum no 197 ' 153 



lie staled as the results of his experiments, that women were 

 deficient in will power, and do not know how to move so 

 rapidly as men. They also felt more responsibility, while 

 making these experiments, that is, they were more self-con- 

 scious. When experiments on sensation for pain were made, 

 there was a tendency for the females to anticipate the sensation, 

 and for the men to deny they felt it at all. 



A prominent feature of the session were two discussions, in 

 which the American anthropologists present took a prominent 

 part. The first was on the evidences of American- Asiatic con- 

 tact, and the second was a joint discussion with Section C 

 (Geology) on the first traces of man in the New World. The 

 fornier was led off by Prof. Putnam giving an account of the 

 origin, aims and organisation of the Jesup expedition to the 

 North Pacific. The object of this extremely important and 

 well-planned expedition is to minutely study the natives of the 

 North-west coast of Canada, those of Alaska and of the corre- 

 sponding coasts of Siberia, and thus to endeavour to gain accurate 

 data towards the solution of the problem of the origin of the 



NO. 1455, VOL. 56] 



American aborigines. The funds for the expedition, which will 

 be six years in the field, have been supplied through the muni- 

 ficence of Mr. Jesup of New York. The discussion was very 

 animated, and was joined in by the President of the Section, 

 Messrs. Morse, Cushing, McGee and Chamberlain. Prof. 

 Morse argued strongly against any cultural influence between 

 Asia and America, appealing to the distinctness in the pottery, 

 roofing tiles, method of arrow release, «.Vc. , and to the absence 

 in America of the thumb-ring in archery, of the chop-sticks, 

 plough,!potter's-wheel, and tea. Cushing argued on the same side, 

 though he l)elieves in a primitive Asiatic origin of the Indians. 

 He said if there is a science of anthropology it must be demon- 

 strable that the development of man is according to certain fixed 

 laws, and hence there must be some similarity between different 

 peoples in an analogous stage of culture. In his reply Putnam 

 referred to the distribution of jadite and nephrite implements, 

 and still maintained that there had been more Asiatic influence 

 than most of the speakers admitted. 



Not less interesting was the discussion of the antiquity of 

 man in America. This was opened by Prof. F. W. Putnam, 

 who gave an account of the excavations in the Trenton gravels, 

 and of the argillite implements that were found in the lower beds. 

 Prof. E. W. Claypole narrated the discovery of a polished stone 

 implement in the Drift of Ohio {cf. Nature, vol. Iv. p. 350). 

 Sir John Evans argued that the Trenton finds were all neolithic, 

 and that paleolithic forms were absent from America, though 

 widely spread overlthe Old World. The true test of a Palreolithic 

 age was the occurrence of animals now extinct. Dr. J. W. Spencer 

 stated that the Lafayette beds followed the Glacial Period, as 

 they contain some re-arranged glacial deposits ; then came a 

 period of elevation and denudation, in which the Columbian 

 beds were deposited. Later there were several oscillations of 

 level, during some of which the Trenton gravels were formed. 

 The Trenton gravels may be older than the Falls of Niagara (to 

 which he gave 32,000 years), and he believed they were deposited 

 between 5000 and 50,000 years ago. Dr. McGee believed that 

 the gravels were a wind-blown formation, and stated that Prof. 

 Holmes had failed to find a single artificial object in the undis- 

 turbed Trenton gravels, but .such objects were found in the 

 , talus. Few geologists think implements occur in the gravels. 

 He did not lay much stress on the argument based on the argel- 

 lite implements. Argellite quarries have long been worked by the 

 i Algonquins, and plenty of their rejects have been considered as 

 palteoliths. Prof. Putnam, in his reply, said Sir John Evans 

 I was wrong in supposing that neoliths were found in the gravels. 

 The various forms of European palaoliths could be easily 

 matched in numbers in America ; but it must be remembered 

 that the European examples are made of flint, but as there is no 

 true flint in America we must not expect a very close corre- 

 spondence. He again emphasised the preponderance of argel- 

 lite implements in the lower beds, and alluded to the presence 

 of 99 per cent, of argellite implements in the oldest parts of the 

 shell-heaps of New Jersey. 



The genesis of implement-making was the subject of a 



thoughtful and suggestive essay by F. H. Cushing. He believed 



that anthropoidal man, who arose somewhere about the Indian 



Ocean, was coaxed down from the trees by the abundance of 



food along the shores of the sea, and there, by his own domesti- 



; cation, sowed seeds for variation. Manual dexterity set at 



naught all the effects of previous evolution, and henceforth 



evolution became more psychical than physical. As a psychic 



effect of the upright position, the nascent human beings now 



looked, for the first time, into the face and eyes of their mates, 



and conscious love was begotten, then volitional selection began 



to replace mere sexual selection, and language became possible. 



For a long period man was " prelithic," and supplemented his 



teeth and nails with the fangs and claws of wild animals. Stones 



I were picked up and used as occasion required without any pre- 



! liminar)' dressing. At first, judging from the actions of monkeys 



I and children, the bones and nuts were broken upon the stones ; 



I later, stones were used as crushing or breaking implements. 



I Some of the brui.sed stones were found to be more effective than 



1 others, and these would be treasured, and soon it would occur 



to people to intentionally fracture stones so as to resemble these. 



I It is possible that some of the earliest implements to be manu- 



j factured were made in imitation of the sharks' teeth that they 



I picked up on the shore and used as implements. In employing flint 



I implements on bone or horn it would be discovered that the bone 



j actually worked the flint, and so the removal of flakes by pressure 



would be found to be more effectual than by hammering, and 



