440 



lYA TURE 



[August 30, 1894 



Miss Weld read a paper on the possibility of a common 

 language between man and beast, in the course of which she 

 mentioned that she had herself reduced a large and savage dog 

 to a stale of the most abject terror by imitating some of the 

 deeper tones of his growl. 



The Rev. G. Hanwell Jones read a paper on the relation 

 between the body and mind, as expressed in early languages, 

 cosloms, and myths. The conclusions at which the author 

 arrived were that (l)the primitive condition of the pioneers of 

 civilisation was no higher than that of modern savages ; (2) the 

 parallels presented by words and ideas in countries widely 

 separated from one another cannot be satisfactorily explained by 

 mere coincidence ; and (3I the civilisation of Western Europe 

 viewed as a whole began in contact with the East. 



The following papers were also read: — Prof. \. Macalister, on 

 the heredity of acquired characters ; Prof. Arthur Thomson, 

 notes on skin, hair and pigment ; Dr. Louis Robinson, the ] 

 anthropological significance of ticklishness ; H. Ling Roth, on 

 the presence of Xegritoes in Borneo ; Prof. B. Windle, on 

 mythical pygmy races ; report of the Mental and Physical Con- 

 dition of Children Committee. 



Monday, August 13. — .\ paper by Prof. J. Kollmann, on 

 pygmies in Europe, was read. Near SchafThausen, in Switzer- 

 land, a prehistoric settlement has been discovered, in which the 

 remains of two races were found interred side by side. The aver- | 

 age stature of one of these races was that of Frenchmen of the [ 

 present day, but the average height of the other race was only j 

 1424 mm., and they must be looked upon as pygmies of the j 

 Neolithic period in Europe. There have recently been dis- 

 covered some living pygmies in Sicily and Sardinia, and in the ' 

 author's opinion these small types must be regarded, not as 

 diminutive examples of normal races, but as a distinct variety of 

 mankind which occurs in several types dispersed over the globe ; 

 and he believes that they have been the precursors of the larger 

 types of man. 



The present state of prehistoric studies in Belgium was 

 described in a paper by Count Goblet d'Alviella. The manu- 

 facture of flint implements appeared to have been an important 

 industry, extending all over Belgium, and there have been recent 

 discoveries of megalithic monuments, the existence of which | 

 was till lately denied. 



General Pitt-Rivers described the explorations of British I 

 camps and a long barrow near Rushmore. The skeletons of j 

 upwards of twenty-five persons found in and around the barrow 

 give evidence of a people of small stature with long, narrow 

 skulls. They belonged to the polished stone age. 



The following communications were also received :— Dr. E. 

 B. Tylor, on some stone implements of Australian type from 

 Tasmania ; H. Ling Roth, on Tasmanian stone implements ; 

 Dr. Emile Carlailhac, on the art and industry of the Troglodytes 

 of BruniqucI, France; Dr. l-^mile Carlailhac, on a. new ivory 

 statuette of a woman in the reindeer period ; Dr. Emile Car- 

 lailhac, on the close of the stone period on ihe borders of the 

 Mediterranean ; Prof. Max LohesI, observations relative to the 

 antiquity of man in Belgium ; General Pill-Rivers, on a new 

 craniomeler ; Dr. J. G. Garson, on the long barrow skeletons 

 from near Rushmore ; Dr. K. Munro, notes on ancient bone 

 skates ; Prof. A. C. Ifaddon, exhibition of lantern slides illus- 

 trating the people of Western Ireland and Iheir mode of life ; 

 report of the Glastonbury f^xploration Commiltcc. 



Tuesday, August 14. — Mr. Theodore Bent read a paper on 

 the natives of the Iladramut. This valley was formerly the 

 great centre from which frankincense and myrrh were exported 

 to Europe by caravan routes across the desert, and the n\odern 

 inhabitants of this district arc quite distinct from the Bedouins 

 of northern Arabia ; they have many curious customs and a 

 religion of their own, and are in all probability an aboriginal 

 race. 



Mr. J. Gray contributed a paper on the distribution of the 

 Pjcts in Britain as indicated by place-names. The evidence of 

 place names shows that probably the whole country from the 

 north of Britain to the south of Gaul was at one lime or another 

 occupied by the same race. The [ire Piclish inhabitants were 

 Iberians, and prevailed moilly in Ireland, South Wales, Cum- 

 berland, and South .Scotland. 



The following conimunications were also received : — Mrj. H. 

 Slopes, on three neolithic settlemcnls in Kent ; Lionel Decle, 

 on the native tribes of Africa between ihc Zambezi and Uganda ; 

 Prof. Max Kovalevsky, on the Lex Barbarorum of the Daghe- 

 Stan ; J. D. C. Schmcltz, on snails and mussels in the house- 



NO. 1296. VOL. 50] 



keeping of the Indoneses ; Basil H. Thomson, on the ancient 

 religion 'of Fiji ; B. P. Kehlpannala, on ceremonies observed 

 by the Kandyans in paddy cultivation. 



ll'eJnesJay, August 15 — Prof. L. Manouvrier described the 

 brain of a young Fuegian, and pointed out that the external 

 morphology of this brain showed little or no distinction from 

 that of a European. 



The Rev. l.orimer Fison re.ad a paper on the classificatory 

 system of relationship. The Fuegian system of relationship 

 divide the sexes in any one generation into groups of non- 

 marriageable persons and other groups of marriageable persons, 

 and it was shown that precisely the same groups appeared as 

 the result of the division of the community into two exogamous 

 intermarrying divisions such as are found in Austr.alia. The 

 inference w,as that wherever the classificatory terms appeared 

 these divisions had existed in the past. 



Mr. J. Graham Kerr read a paper on the Tobas of South 

 America. These Indians are nomadic in their habits, and live 

 entirely on the products of the chase. They believe in the 

 existence of numerous minor evil spirits who cau^e diseases, 

 accidents, and other misfortunes, but the .author had not dis- 

 covered that they had any notion of a supreme deity. 



Mr. Alfred P. Maudslay read some notes on native build- 

 ings at Chichen Itsa, Yucatan, and the customs of the Maya 

 Indians. The author gave an account of some excavations 

 of a burial mound in the Vera Vm of Guatemala, and 

 the discovery of small jars containing the bones of 

 little fingers, probably deposited by mourners. The earliest 

 notices of the great Maya ruins at Chichen Itsa were discussed, 

 and extracts were given from a document recently discovered in 

 Seville, in which are described the ceremonies performed by 

 the Mayas at the lime of the Spanish conquest. 



The other communications received were : — Prof. L. Man- 

 ouvrier, on a method of valuation of proportional dimensions in 

 Ihe descriplion of the brain ; II. Hellyse Baildon, notes on 

 some of the natives of British New Guinea ; Miss A. W. 

 Buckland, on the philosophy of holes ; report of the North- 

 western Tribes of Canada Committee. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 

 Aiiiaicau fournal of Science, August.— On certain astro- 

 nomical conditions favourable to glacialion, by G. F. Becker, 

 The elements of Ihe earth's orbit undergo slow variations, some 

 of which aflect climate. These are the lime of perihelion, 

 which afTecis the length of the two great .reasons ; the eccen- 

 tricity of the earth's orbit, and the obliquity of the ecliptic. 

 The winter of the period of maximum eccentricity in the rigor- 

 ous htmi-phere would be intensely cold as coinpareil with that 

 of the period of zero eccentricily, bul the difVeientc would he 

 most marked in the tropics. The summer would be intensely 

 hot, and also wet. On the whole, the period would be most 

 unfavourable to glacialion ; Ihc snowfall being the smallest, and 

 the warm rainfall the largest lh.at can occur with the present 

 obliquity. A dilTcrcnce of 1' 9', however, in the obliquity 

 would m.akc the area 10 the north of the Tropic of Capricorn 

 1,800,000 square miles greater than it is to-ilay, this area being 

 rather more than the combined areas of the Mediterranean and 

 the Gulf of Mexico. The area of evaporation supplying pre- 

 cipitation to the northern latitudes would thus be increased, 

 and the conditions would be favourable to glacialion. Thus* 

 glacial age would be due to the combination of a low eccen- 

 tricity and a high obliquity, more than to any other set of 

 circumstances pertaining to the earth's orbit. The epochs Of 

 such combinations should be deducible from astronomical dal*. 

 — Development of the lungs of spiders, by Orville L. SimmooJ. 

 The connection between Limulus and the Arachnida can only ' 

 be established by a study of the development of the lungs and 

 trachea: of spiders. The lungs arise as infoldings U|>on thcpoJ- 

 tcrior surface of the appendages of the second abdominal somite, ' 

 in ihe same nanncr .as described by Kingslcy for the gills of 

 l.iniuli'H. The trachea; develop from Ihe next pair of limM. 

 The lung-book condition is the primitive, the trachea- of the 

 Arachnids being derived from it. No ground is left for those 

 who regard Ihe " Ttacheata " as a natural group of the .animal 

 kingdom — The generation of chloiine for laboratory purposeJ, 

 by F. A. Gooch and D. A. Kreider. Chlorine may be eon- 1 

 venienlly generated by the action of hot hydrochloric acid in a 

 half-strength solution upon lumps of potassium chlorate. These 



