472 



NA TURE 



[March 15, 1894 



and Dr. D. MacAlister, Assessor to the Regius Professor of 

 Physic, have been appointed to represent the University at the 

 International Congress of Hygiene and Demography to be held 

 in September next in Budapest. 



Mr. F. Darwin has been appointed an Elector to the Pro- 

 fessorship of Boiany, Prof. Ray Lankester an Elector to the 

 Professorship of Zoology, Dr. G. J. Hinde an Elector to the 

 Profe^sorship of Geology, and the Rt. Hon. T. H. Huxley an 

 Elector to the Profc-sorship of Physiology, for the next eight 

 years. 



Mr. E. H. Douty, of King's College, has been appointed 

 University Lecturer in Midwifery, in the room of Dr. Walter 

 Griffith. 



The Senatus of Aberdeen University has conferred the 

 honorary degree of LL.D. on Mr. Henry O. Forbes, recently 

 appointed director of Liverpool museum-;. 



The Seiiatus of the University of Edinburgh has offered the 

 honorary degree of LL.D. to Dr. W. H. Gaskell, F.R.S., 

 Lecturer on Physiology, University of Cambridge ; James A. 

 Russell, Lord Provost of Edinburgh ; and Dr. George Wilson, 

 Medical Officer of Health, Mid- Warwick. 



Prof. W. C. Arnison and Dr. James Murphy have been 

 selected by the Faculty of Medicine to represent the University 

 of Durham at the forthcoming Medical Congress at Rome. 



fluences mingled. — Dr. P. Topinard continues his memoirs on 

 the distribution of thecolour of the eyes and of the hair in France, 

 the subject of the present essay being the chart of red hair. He 

 arrives at the following conclusions : (i) That, as in the British 

 Isles, where red hair is comparatively common, and in Italy, 

 Turkey, and Armenia, where it is seldom met with, so in France 

 it is more commonly found in the middle of the country than 

 elsewhere ; {z, that in those French departments in which the 

 blonde type predominates, red hair is twice or three times as 

 frequent as in those inhabited by people with dark hair ; (3) 

 that, probably, red haired people are allied exclusively to the 

 blonde type, of which they are a simple normal variety, with- 

 out any anthropological signification. M. Topinard has con- 

 sequently leunited the chr^'eitx blondes and the cheveii-\ mux 

 under the name oi cheveiix clairs. 



Antropologia Guterale. — Lezioni su I'uomo secondo la teoria 

 deir evoluzione dettate nelle R. Universiia di Torino e di Genova 

 dal Prof, Enrico Morselli. (Turin, 1894). — In the thirty-fourth 

 part of this valuable work. Prof. Morselli treats of certain casts 

 of atavism, and instances several cases of hypertricosis, amongst 

 others the Russian Adrian Jeftichjew, who was known as the 

 " human dog," and the celebrated Julia Pastrana, the con- 

 figuration of whose skull was so much like that of the Nean- 

 derthal. Reference is also made to steatopygia and the 

 "Hottentot apron." The prehensile power sometimes met 

 with in the human foot is discussed, and shown to be perfectly 

 homologous with that of the hind hand of the ape. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



1.^ Anthropologie, tome iv. No. 5, September-October, 1893. 

 — Dr. E. T. Hamy contributes a paper on the Merovingian and 

 Carolinian crania of the Boulogne district. In the first volume 

 o{ \)c\t. Revue d'Anthropologie, Broca published a paper on the 

 nasal index, in which he stated that of all European groups 

 whose crania he had measured, the French group of Chelles, 

 Champlieu, &c. was alone mcsorhinc, having a mean nasal 

 index of 48 87, and he concluded that this anatomical peculi- 

 arity was derived from a cross with some more or less Mon- 

 goloid people previous to their appearance in the West. Dr. 

 Hamy now gives a detailed description of thirty-five crania, 

 twenty male and fifteen female, taken from four Merovingian 

 burial places in the Boulogne district, and in the second part of 

 the paper he gives a comparatve study of the crania, of a later 

 date, exhumed by M. I'Abbe Debout from the mound of 

 Tardinghen ; some of them from the surface, and others from 

 graves beneath flagstones, the Merovingian age of the former 

 lieing clearly indicated by the articles buried with the bodies, 

 and the latter probably belonging to the end of the Carolinian 

 period. A critical examinati"n of lhe=e crania leads to the con- 

 clusion that the original type of the inhabitants >Aas altered by 

 loreign occupation, and that the elements thus violently intro- 

 duced were eliminated little by little, and the primitive popula- 

 tion, thrown into the shade for a while, gradually regained 

 their supremacy. Undoubtedly there remain on the coast of 

 the Channel, especially on the Pas-de-Calais, many tall and 

 strong men, with fair hair, ruddy conplexion, narrow head, 

 and long face, who represent, to some extent at least, with 

 fidelity the Saxons or Franks from whom they are descended, 

 but the brunettes who surround them are mote numerous 

 than thej', and are gradually absorliing them. To take 

 one example only : in the canton of Marquise, the school 

 population, consisting of 1750 boys and girls, yields 913 

 subjects with dark hair (of whom 163 have black hair), 

 against 779 blondes (54 of whom have red hair) ; consequently 

 52 2 per cent, are dark, and only 47*8 per cent, fair, and as 

 these are for the most part childien whose hair has not yet 

 attained its final colour, some of those now classed as blondes 

 will become brunettes as adults. — M. E. Deschamps describes 

 some instances of albinism observed by him at Mahe, on the 

 coast of Malabar, and M. Salomon Reinach contributes 

 the first part of a vigorous attack on " Le Mirage Oriental," 

 in which he argues that credit has been given to the East for a 

 far greater influence upon European civilisation than has really 

 been exercised by it. Mycenaean civili>ation is entirely of 

 European origin ; it is only orientalised on the surface by con- 

 tact with the civilisations of Syria and of Egypt. Greece, the 

 Archipelago, and the coast of Asia Minor are the places where, 

 in a remote antiquity, European, Asiatic, and Egyptian in- 



NO. 1272, VOL. 49] 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 



Royal Society, February i. — " Insect Sight and the De- 

 fining Power of Composite Eyes." By A. Mallock. 



The optical arrangement ol the simple eyes of vertebrates is 

 well understood, but as regards the action of the composite eyes 

 of insects and Crustacea less certainty has hitherto prevailed. 



In the former class of eye a single lens, or its equivalent, 

 forms an in-age on a concave retma, built up, as a sort of 

 tesselaled pavement, of the sensitive terminations of the fibres 

 of the optic neive, and, if the lens is perfect and the pupil 

 large enough, the definition is limited by the distance apart of 

 the nerve-terminations, for, in order that two objects may ap- 

 pear as two to the eye, they must subtend at least such an angle 

 that their im9.ges as formed by the lens shall not fall on the 

 same nerve-termination. 



In the human eye the distance between the sensitive points 

 on the retina is such that it subtends about a minute of arc al 

 the optic centre of the lens, and in good eyts the optical part of 

 the apparatus is sufficiently perfect to allow of this degree of 

 definition being attained over a small part of the field oi view. 



For reasons, however, which will be given presently, such 

 definition as this is not to be looked for in composite eyes. 



The general plan on which all composite eyes are constructed 

 is that of a convex retina having a separate small lens in front 

 of each sensitive part, together with an arrangement of screens 

 which allows only that light coming from the immediate neigh- 

 tiourhood of the axis of the lens to reach the nerve. 



The theory of "mosaic vision" put forward by Johannes 

 Miiller has been opposed by some physiologists who appear to 

 have considered that each lens of a composite eye formed a 

 complete image which was taken cognisance of by the nerves as 

 in the vertebrate eye, and that the whole of these images were 

 in some way added together and arranged by the brain. I here 

 bring forward some optical reasons which show that Miiller s 

 view is the true one. 



On the supposition, therefore, of "one lens, one impression, ' 

 the definition obtained by a composite eye will be measured t)y 

 the total solid angle of view -r- whole number of lenses in the 

 eye. 



The simplest form of composite eye would be a spherical 

 shell, AB, Fig. I, perforated with radial holes, c, c, c, the 

 diameter of these holes being small compared with the thickness 

 of the shell. 



If sensitive paper were placed in contact with the inner sur- 

 face of the shell, it would be impressed with a picture of sur- 

 rounding objects, for the light which reaches the bottom of any 

 hole is limittd to that making an angle less than Adef with the 



