ZJo 



NA TURE 



[August 15, 1901 



grumble at Pennant ; but it would seem almost certain 

 that explanations must have followed, and with them the 

 discontent ceased. To us Pennant's influence on Gilbert 

 White appears to have been distinctly advantageous, just 

 as that of Harrington was the converse. No one can 

 study Pennant's works without seeing that he was full of 

 great ideas — whether they were original or not does not 

 signify for our present purpose — and they were in the 

 main true,' whereas Harrington's views seem to be 

 always based on some prejudice or foregone conclusion, 

 to support which he broughthis very considerable forensic 

 power to bear, and in the majority of cases arrived at an 

 erroneous conclusion — take his ingenious argument as to 

 the origin of the turkey, for example — and, though 

 undoubtedly in many respects a benefactor, he was 

 apparently White's evil genius in continually urging his 

 absurd belief in the torpidity of the swallow-kind. 



This remark brings us to Mr. Fowler's part of the 

 introduction, in which he tries to account for White's 

 astonishing adhesion to that belief, and his readiness to 

 grasp at any scrap of information which seemed to 

 support it, in spite of his own failure to discover a particle 

 of evidence in its favour, and the fact that he fully 

 accepted migration in the "short-winged birds" while 

 doubting it in those that possessed far superior power 

 of flight. Mr. Fowler's mode of accounting for White's 

 " loyalty to an old delusion " seems hardly adequate, yet 

 we must confess our inability to ofter a suggestion that 

 satisfies ourselves. We can hardly think that .Aristotle, 

 great as we admit was his authority in the Middle Ages, 

 was responsible for the misconception, or even Olaus 

 Magnus — much less Carew. They only repeated the 

 stories of the vulgar and unreflective,and how Willughby's 

 language on the subject " served to perpetuate the 

 tradition " (as Mr. Fowler maintains it did) is more than 

 we can understand. The whole thing is inexplicable, 

 and is really the one flaw in White's reputation as a 

 reasoning naturalist. Though in his earliest letter to 

 Pennant (printed as No. x.) he frankly says that no 

 account of swallows being found torpid in Hampshire is 

 worth attention, the two instances he immediately cites 

 — on the authority of "a clergyman of an inquisitive 

 turn" and of "another intelligent person," each of them 

 being in his boyhoods-must have greatly influenced him. 

 He can hardly be said to have been credulous on the 

 subject. He simply thought that the evidence in favour 

 of torpidity, though not satisfying, was such as ought to 

 be tested, and he would no doubt have been pleased to 

 obtain confirmation of it. In this respect he was like 

 many people in our own day who engage in psychical 

 research. Spirits refuse to come at their call from the 

 vasty deep or boundless space, and search as he might, 

 and did, amid the shrubs of Selborne Hanger or under 

 the roofs of his neighbours' cottages, nor swift nor swallow 

 would show itself. 



Taken as a whole, the notes to this edition are very 

 good, and those by Prof. Miall on the geology of the 

 district are most acceptable, for few, if any, of White's 

 recent editors have touched upon that subject. Those 

 by Mr. Fowler on ornithology are for the most part 

 extremely effective, whether culled from his predecessors 



1 The often quoted case of the herring migr.->tion must, of course, be 

 excepted, but thereia he w.-is misled by the reports of fishermen whom he 



NO. 1659, VOL. 64J 



or added from his own experience, and though he does 

 suggest (p. 35) that the bird "so desultory" in its flight, 

 at which White shot in vain, was a siskin and not a chift"- 

 chaff, and (p. 83) would seem to consider the motion 

 of the redstart's tail open to doubt, we have no such 

 impossible suppositions as are found elsewhere to the 

 effect that White did not know a crow from a rook, or the 

 song of the wryneck from the cry of the pied wood- 

 pecker. If the introduction could be but freed from the 

 blemishes we have here noticed, and a few more beside, 

 this edition of the " Natural History and Antiquities of 

 Selborne" might be recommended as one of the most 

 accurate, as it is one of the neatest and most handy. 



THE ORIGIN OF EUROPEAN PEOPLES. 



The Mediterranean Race : a Study of the Origin of 

 European Peoples. By G. Sergi. Pp 320 ; 93 illus- 

 trations in the text. The Contemporary Science' 

 Series. (London; Walter Scott, 1901.) Price 6j'. 



THE problem of our origins must always prove an in- 

 teresting subject for research ; speculation has 

 found it only too fertile a prey. At the present state of 

 our knowledge fresh information is being amassed con- 

 tinually, so that the field for speculation is, fortunately, 

 becoming more narrowed. .A recent contribution to the 

 problem is from the enthusiastic Italian anthropologist, 

 Prof. G. Sergi, of Rome, who has published in English 

 an entirely new book, based on his "Origine e diffiisione 

 della stirpe Mediterranea," 1S95. Those who are ac- 

 quainted with the previous writings of Prof. Sergi will 

 quite know what to expect in this new volume. The 

 familiar arguments and data are reinforced by additional 

 facts, and the author's conclusions are clearly and de- 

 finitely stated. The following is the position he has 

 adopted in this book, and which we may take as the ex- 

 pression of his matured views. 



Homo Neanderthalensis is a distinct European species, 

 which includes the Spy type and which originated in 

 Europe in early Quaternary or possibly late Tertiary times. 

 Hitherto it has not been found south of the Alps, and it 

 has not completely disappeared from Europe, but persists 

 in the Baltic, in Friesland and elsewhere. 



The Chancelade, Laugerie-Basse, Baumes-Chaudes, 

 Cro-Magnon crania constitute a group that extended 

 from the Upper Quaternary into early Neolithic times. 

 The view of Herve and other French anthropologists is 

 that this was a hyperborean stock that migrated from 

 north to south as far as Africa, but excluding Egypt and 

 the Canary Islands. Sergi shows that all the character- 

 istics of the Chancelade skull are found in typical Medi- 

 terranean crania ; indeed, he defines it as 



" a Pelasgicus sfegoides of the Ellipsoides class, still 

 found to-day in Eas't Africa. Why refer to the Eskimo, 

 a skull to be found so near as the Mediterranean .' " 

 (P- 195)- 



The other cranial types are admittedly quite Mediter- 

 ranean in character. If Scandinavia was not inhabited 

 before the Neolithic period and northern Europe cpuld 

 not be inhabited by man until after the Glacial epoch, 

 it is not easy to see how the centre and south of Europe 

 could be invaded by a race originating in the north in 

 the Quaternary epoch (p. 199). 



