— 
DECEMBER 4, 1913]| 
of man from the ape, the first by Prof. Carveth Read, 
dealing with the consequences—physical, mental, and 
social—following from the preference for a meat diet, 
which differentiates man from the other primates; 
a second by Dr. Harry Campbell on the essentially 
_ mental character of man’s evolution, the pre-human 
anthropoid, being only imperfectly equipped as a 
beast of prey, and having in consequence been com- 
pelled to rely upon the development of his intelli- 
gence; and a third by Dr. L. Robinson on the rela- 
tion of the jaw to articulate speech and its effect on 
the development of the chin. In the discussion which 
followed, Prof. Elliot Smith briefly referred to his 
own position with regard to the part played by the 
brain in the evolution of man, as set forth in his 
presidential address at Dundee, and with special refer- 
ence to Dr. Robinson’s paper, said that, in his view, 
it was not the conformation of the jaw which made 
speech possible, but the acquisition of speech which 
developed the jaw; the absence of the genio-glossal 
muscle and the chin in the Piltdown skull proved 
nothing as to the power of speech. Prof. Fleure and 
Mr. T. C. James then gave an account of the further 
results of their anthropometric survey of Waies, 
especially in relation to the distribution of racial types, 
and Prof. Petrie described the early Egyptian skele- 
tons discovered in his excavations, with special refer- 
ence to the traces of racial admixture discernible in 
skeletal remains of the early dynasties found at Tark- 
han and due to an invading minority race of the first 
dynasty. 
Among the ethnographical papers, considerable in- 
terest was aroused by Mr. T. W. Thompson’s paper 
on the tabus and funeral customs of the gypsies, in 
which, as the result of a close analysis of the customs 
of both English and Continental gypsies, he was able 
to show that these were distinctly gypsy in character, 
while the marriage customs tend to conform to the 
customs of the country of habitat. Dr. Rivers and 
the Rev. J. Hall, in a joint communication on a 
gypsy pedigree, that of the Heron family, were able 
to demonstrate a number of facts of sociological and 
biological interest as to the gypsy family and mar- 
riage. Prof. W. J. Sollas, in a communication on 
the relative age of the patrilineal and matrilineal 
tribes of south-east Australia, discussed the evidence— 
physical, linguistic, and cultural—which appeared to 
point to the increasingly primitive character of the tribes 
from north to south—a conclusion which, as might 
be expected, was in agreement with the usual assump- 
tion that Australia and Tasmania had been peopled 
from New Guinea—and suggested further that the 
evolutional change had been from Kurnai through 
Kulin to Narrinjeri. Mr. E. S. Hartland put forward 
a warning against the uncritical acceptance of the 
historical traditions of the Baganda and the natives 
of the Congo, while Mr. Crooke in like manner was 
able to show by an examination of marriage customs 
that there was less stability in the caste and tribal 
systems of India than Risley had supposed when con- 
sidering these aggregates as affording an unequalled 
opportunity for the application of anthropometric 
methods. 
Nearly the whole of one morning’s session was 
devoted to papers dealing with seasonal customs in 
various parts of the world; Dr. Rivers, in a com- 
munication on sun cults and megaliths in Oceania, 
pointed out the coincidence in the distribution in this 
region of these monuments and the existence of secret 
societies, the rites of which might, either by direct 
evidence or by inference, be connected with the sun 
cult, an exception, however, being found in the island 
of Tonga, where there was no evidence for the sun 
cult. Miss Burne dealt with the seasonal customs of 
“souling,” ‘“‘catterning,” and ‘“‘clementing” in the 
NO. 2301, VOL. 92] 
NATURE 
4i3 
western Midlands, which she connected with the 
beginning of the. Celtic year in November, and Mr. 
H. Powell suggested that the custom of hook- 
swinging in India, which he assigned to a Dravidian 
origin, was a commutated form of human sacrifice. 
Miss M. Murray discussed the evidence for the prac- 
tice of killing the king in ancient Egypt. In her 
view the evidence for human sacrifice was conclusive, 
and so far Dr. Frazer’s theory of a vegetation spirit 
was the only one which covered the facts. Mr. W. J. 
Perry, in a communication dealing with the practice 
of orientation of the dead in Indonesia, pointed out 
that in all cases the direction indicated lay towards the 
home of the dead, and suggested that in this direction 
lay the place of origin of each people in question. 
Dr. G. Landtman described the ideas of the Kiwai 
Papuans regarding the soul, which this people look 
upon as separable from the body in life as well as in 
death; in the former case its appearance constitutes 
an omen, sometimes foretelling misfortune to the 
owner; and Miss Czaplicka demonstrated the effect 
of environment upon the religious beliefs of the in- 
habitants of north-east Siberia, the tundras of the 
north producing a religious dualism in which a belief 
in ‘‘black spirits” prevails, family shamanism is more 
important than professional shamanism, and want of 
light and suitable material produces a poor shamanistic 
apparatus and a poor myth ritual; while in the more 
open and more favoured steppe country a belief in 
“white spirits’ and an anthropomorphic and imagina- 
tive mythology are found. Major Tremearne supple- 
mented the studies of the Hausas which he had sub- 
mitted to the section at the Portsmouth meeting of 
the association by a description of Hausa magical 
practices and an account of the Bori, or spirit cult, of 
the Hausas of Tunis and Tripoli. Mrs, Charles 
Temple, in her analysis of the social customs of the 
pagan tribes of Northern Nigeria, which was drawn 
largely from official reports, gave an object-lesson of 
the work, valuable both to the man of science and 
to the official, which is possible under an intelligent 
and enlightened administration. 
Archeology usually takes a prominent place in the 
proceedings of the section, and this year was no 
exception to the rule. Prof. Petrie’s account of ex- 
cavations at Tarkhan, on a site near Gerzeh, and at 
Memphis, of remains of the first, the twelfth, and the 
eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, carried out by 
the British School of Archeology in Egypt, attracted 
a large and appreciative audience. His discoveries of 
Tarkhan, where the preservation of the tombs is 
remarkable, have revealed much of the civilisation of 
the people, apart from the king and court, while, as 
he pointed out, this site may be regarded as of the 
highest importance in the study of the meeting of the 
prehistoric and earliest historic races of Egypt. Prof. 
G. Elliot Smith traced the dolmen to the typical 
Egyptian tomb of the pyramid period, imperfectly 
copied in a degraded form in a foreign land where 
skilled workmen were unobtainable. 
Prof. J. L. Myres’s valuable contribution to the 
archeology of Cyprus was based upon a recent re- 
examination of the Cesnola collection in New York 
Metropolitan Museum, which had enabled him to 
extend the upward time limit of the great series of 
votive statues to a period when Assyrian influence 
was not yet fully developed, and Syro-Cappadocian 
affinities were discernible, and to show that the 
Minoan costume extended in ceremonial, possibly in 
common, use, well into historical times, while the 
Cretan syllabary was found to contain elements link- 
ing it on to the Minoan script. Mr. G. A. Wain- 
wright, in discussing the origin of the Keftiu, usually 
identified with the Cretans, demonstrated by a de- 
| tailed analysis of the evidence of the Egyptian monu- 
