2Z4 



NATURE 



[January 5, 1893 



pologists, to whom it will be of great service in methodizing 

 the vast and growing information with which they have 

 to deal. This application of graphical method, it is true, 

 has difficuhies which even the greatest skill cannot 

 altogether overcome, but Prof. Gerland may well be 

 content with his success in making evident at a glance 

 the characteristics of mankind, seen from many points 

 of view. Their distribution over the earth, as thus made 

 evident, may often lead straight on into theories of 

 origin. The fifteen plates contain nearly fifty maps, each 

 suggesting a principle, or showing where there is room 

 for one. 



Plate I. represents on two planiglobes the classifi- 

 cation of human races as to skin and hair. Prof. 

 Gerland does not even combine these two characteristics, 

 and points out in his introductory remarks that any 

 attempt to map out man into defined physical races 

 is impossible, for such division does not exist in 

 nature. Anthropologists of course know this, but 

 care is not always taken to make it clear that race- 

 types are not so much complete realities as statistical 

 abstractions from partial realities, the various measurable 

 charactersof skull, limbs, complexion, hair-form, &c.,co n- 

 bining and blending too intricately for absolute definition. 

 I was struck by meeting lately in a popular book with a 

 confident mention of the four distinct Aryan race-types, 

 and it occurred to me that it would bring the statement 

 down to its bearings to put one of Prof. Gerland's plani- 

 globes before the author, desiring him to define and map 

 out these varieties of mankind. Even in Gerland's 

 broad general distinctions of complexion and hair, an 

 anthropologist not thoroughly special on the anatomical 

 side may find novelty and difficulty. The opinion that 

 all native Americans are similar as to race is here strongly 

 and probably with reason modified by the native Brazil- 

 ians being separated on the complexion-map from other 

 peoples of North and South America, and placed to match 

 the Tartars and Chinese. What amount of evidence there 

 is for placing the Berbers of North Africa under the same 

 map-colour seems not so clear, but it is to be noticed that 

 the same tint includes several more or less distinct 

 grades in Broca's scale. An attempt is even ma.ie to 

 separate the friz-haired negroids into classes according to 

 the arrangement of their corkscrew-tufts of hair on the 

 skin. Plate III., in two maps, classifies man according to 

 his religious beliefs and customs, and here the prevalence 

 of special rites offers instructive generalizations . Thus the 

 American line which limits the smoking of tobacco as a 

 religious ceremony, indicates the spread of this peculiar 

 rite from some religious centre over an enormous area. 

 No doubt it is rooted in nature, from the fact that its 

 narcotic ecstasy brought the priest into direct visionary 

 contact with the spirit-world. But none the less, it proves 

 the religions of savage tribes, separated by great distances 

 on the map, to be bound together by historical con- 

 nexion. Not less remarkable is the compactness of the 

 districts of Eastern Asia and the opposite Continent of 

 America, where masks are used, app -.rently originally 

 with religious significance Here again it is evident that 

 we have to do not merely with independent growth from the 

 human mind, but in some way with historical transmission. 

 It must be remembered in using these maps, that they bind 

 their author only to fact, and not to theoretical interpreta- 

 NO. I 2 10, VOL. 47] 



tion. This same plate maps out the immense districts 

 whose natives have a myth of a deluge, the upheaving of 

 the earth, &c., but it cannot distinguish in North and 

 South America, for instance, between regions where deluge- 

 myths are old,and those where they were introduced by the 

 Jesuits a few generations ago. Plate IV., mapping out 

 regions liable to special diseases, as malarious fevers,^ 

 pestilence, cholera, yaws, &c., contains in a condensed 

 form a vast collection of knowledge, bearing on anthro- 

 pological arguments as to the relation of race to physical 

 constitution, and thus opening into one of the great 

 problems of the history of man. Plate V. classes out the 

 varieties of human food, clothing, dwellings and occupa- 

 tions. Plate VI. and onward map out the distribution 

 of nations and tribes at different periods as known to 

 history, Plate XIV. being devoted to the distribution of 

 languages over the world. 



Anthropologists who keep this atlas at hand as a help 

 in their work will by practice find out its merits and 

 defects. The representation of the geographical distribu- 

 tion of arts and customs has lon^ been a feature of the 

 Pitt-Rivers Museum, where so far as possible each series, 

 illustrating development and transmission of culture,^ 

 is accompanied by a small world-map coloured to show 

 the parts of the world it occupies. It is of course 

 impossible to Prof. Gerland to work in such detail, 

 involving as it would do hundreds of separate charts. 

 He has to indicate his distributions on a moderate 

 number of plates and mostly uses planiglobes, a pro- 

 jection which, after being neglected for generations, 

 will, in its improved modern arrangement, certainly 

 come into more general favour. On these, by ingenious 

 devices of tinted patches and streaks, combined with 

 lines and dots, he succeeds in giving a more general 

 survey of man and civilization than our students have ever 

 had in their hands before. Edward B. Tylor. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 



Castorologia ; or, The History and Traditions of the Can- 

 adian Beaver. By Horace Martin, F.Z.S. (London : 

 Stanford, 1892.) 



"Beaver" was once the most important fur in the 

 world. In former days the pelt of this Rodent was the 

 standard by which all barter in the Dominion of Canada 

 was regulated, and " beaver " passed as current coin 

 throughout the whole of North America. Even now the 

 quantity of beaver skins brought to England is consider- 

 able. Mr. Poland, in his " Fur bearing Animals," tells 

 us that upwards of 63,000 beaver skins were sold by the 

 Hudson's Bay Company in 1891. But "beaver-hats" 

 formerly required a much larger supply than this, and in 

 1743 it is said that 127,000 beaver-skins were imported 

 into La Rochelle alone. Our "top" hats are now made 

 of silk, and beaver has become a fur of second-rate 

 importance. 



Besides the fur of the beaver many other points of 

 interest attached to this animal will be found discussed 

 more or less completely in Mr. Martin's volume. Long 

 before its fur was required for hats castoreum or castorin 

 — a substance found in two large glands, situated near 

 the base of the beaver's tail — was a much-valued specific 

 in medicine, as spoken of by Hippocrates and Pliny. 

 Even at the present time its use is by no means aban- 

 doned, and the " crude article "is " still sold at our drug- 

 stores " at prices varying " from eight to ten dollars a 



