7 66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ty ; when human sacrifices became impossible, animals were sub- 

 stituted ; when combats between men seemed too horrible, fights 

 of animals of cocks, bulls, and fishes were instituted. It has 

 been said that the minister who should try to abolish bull fights 

 in Spain would provoke a general revolt. In these cases the mul- 

 titude are only spectators of the carnage ; but when a people like 

 the Spanish loves these sanguine representations with so furious 

 a passion, can we be surprised that people less civilized ardently 

 lust after the pleasures of collective criminality, although their 

 manners may be in course of amelioration ? 



Besides having a historical interest, the study of these crim- 

 inal festivals is very important for criminology, because it brings 

 numerous evidences in support of the atavistic theory of crime. 

 In discussing the questions whether crime is a phenomenon of 

 atavism, or whether at least atavism does not play a considerable 

 part in criminality, many criminologists have maintained that 

 while most savage peoples are thieves, cruel and dissolute, noth- 

 ing authorizes the affirmation that the ancestors of civilized peo- 

 ples resembled them. We have, indeed, no direct proof of this 

 fact ; but if, in default of proof, we examine the usages and insti- 

 tutions of these peoples, which are a kind of fossil remains of 

 their evolution, we may conclude that the primitive ancestor of 

 the Greek was no more moral than the Australian or the Java- 

 nese. These criminal festivals can be explained only by assuming 

 an ancient condition of moral disorder ; which admitted, every- 

 thing becomes clear, and is susceptible of a simple and logical 

 explanation. Translated for The Popular Science Monthly from 

 the Revue Scientifique. 



THE prevalence of lake basins in glaciated countries is accounted for by Mr. J. 

 C. Hawkshaw by assuming that whenever earth movements take place in limited 

 areas they will tend to form basins. Since such movements are as a rule gradual, 

 the basins will tend to fill up with -water-borne detritus, the growth of vegetation, 

 etc., as fast as they are formed. In glaciated countries, however, they are occupied 

 with ice, and that protects them from being filled up by such processes, and they 

 will be preserved to appear as lake basins when the ice melts. Such basins are 

 probably more numerous in rainless countries than we are aware of, for, not con- 

 taining water and not presenting a different appearance from the rest of the 

 country, they do not attract attention. An instance of them is presented in the 

 Raian basin of Egypt, which has been surveyed by Mr. Cope Whitehouse, with ;i 

 view to making use of it in works of irrigation. 



A SERIES of Roman tools, more than sixty in number, discovered in a rubbish 

 pit during excavations at Silchester, England, in 1890, are described by Sir J. 

 Evans. Among them are anvils, hammers, chisels, gouges, adzes, axe?, and a car- 

 penter's plane. The find also included two plow-coulters, a sword-blade, a large 

 gridiron, a lamp, and a bronze steelyard. 



