May 17, 1877J 



NA TURE 



53 



position of the bones seen in situ, it was inferred by the students 

 that the body had originally been cast ashore by the sea with 

 one arm extended beyond the head, and that in this posture it 

 had been covered up with mud and gravel. The stratum, 

 containing the remains, lay about i,\ feet above the present high 

 water-mark, and was covered with qarthy sand. 



NOTES 



We regret to see what we must characterise as an unwarranted 

 attack made upon Sir Wyville Thomson in the current number 

 of the Aiiimh and Ma'^azinc rf A'a/itra/ History, as to the dis- 

 posal of tlie specimens obtained by the Challenger Expedition. 

 Dr. Martin Duncan appears to have taken for granted that an 

 extract of a private letter which some indiscreet friend of Mi. 

 .V'.exan'lcr Agassiz published in Si/limtrn's Journal, and which 

 then found its way into the English journals, is "official." lie 

 would liave done well to have ascertained whether this was really 

 the case before allowing himself to comment on Sir Wyville 

 Thomson's proceedings in such severe terms. So far as we are 

 aware, out of the many naturalists actually engaged to work out 

 the results of the Challenger Expedition, only three are nut 

 Englishmen, two being Americans, and one German. These three 

 gentlemen are of the very highest repute in their respective 

 branches, and Sir Wyville Thomson has, in our opinion, done 

 well for science to secure their services. 



A LARGE and innuential deputation ot members of both 

 Houses of Parliament, headed by the Duke of Richmond and 

 Gordon, President of the Scottish Meteorological Society, 

 waited on the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Tuesday to advo- 

 cate tliat society's claims to State assistance. Sir Stafford 

 Northcote sail that the Tieaury was prepared to grant i,03o/. 

 for services rendered to Government during the past twenty 

 years, and as regards the future he promised to consider the 

 matter. 



Mr. J. Russell Reeves, F. R.S., after whom that magifi- 

 cent bird Reeves' pheasant was named, died on the ist instant 

 at Wimbledon, aged 73. As a young man in the H.E.l.C.'s 

 service in China, Mr. Reeves contiibuted not a little to our 

 knowledge of the flora and fauna of that country, several new 

 plants and animals having been sent home or described by him. 

 His love for natural history continued to the time of his death, 

 and for some time he kept up a good aviiry at his house at 

 Wimbledon. 



The Rhind lectures, delivered in Edinburgh by Dr. Arthur 

 Mitchell, on the condition and antiquity of the cave-man of 

 Western Europe, in otlur words the early, or earliest European 

 of whom we have any knowledge, were brought to a close on 

 Friday last. Dr. Mit'.hell showed that the cave-man's weapons 

 of the chase and war were made of bone or horn, and highly 

 finished, while his implements of stone were extremely rude, and 

 calculated chiefly to serve as tools in the making of his bone 

 implements, thus placing him in the bone rather than in thejstone 

 age of civilisation. P'rom an elaborate e.xamination of the 

 objects which the cave-man has left, displaying an art-faculty, 

 and from the study of the crania of the cave-people themselves, 

 he showed that they must have possessed a higli capacity for 

 culture in all directions, and must have been as complete in their 

 whole manhood as living Europeans. From an e.Khaustive 

 examination of the cave-fauna, and of the actual f.iuna of 

 Western Europe, Dr. Mitchell gave reasons, which certainly call 

 for grave consideration on the part of archieolrgists, for 

 believing that the antiquity of the cave-man of Western Europe 

 is to be measured by a few thousands, and not by tens or 

 hundreds of thousands of years. 



The Anthropological Institute will hold a Conference_at 

 4, St. Martin's Place, Trafalgar Square, on May 22, on the 



Present State of the Question [of the Antiquity of Man, when 

 the following papers will be read : — Prof. Boyd Dawkins, 

 F.R.S. — "On the Evidence Afforded by the Caves of Great 

 Britain ; " Prof. McKenny Hughes — ' ' On the Evidence Afforded 

 by the Gravels and Erick Earth ; " Mr. R. H. TidJeman. — 

 "On the IIya?na Bed in the Victoria Cave." Communications 

 have also been solicited from foreign anthropologists. 



The Paris Acclimatisation Society distributed its medals last 

 Saturday at the Vaudeville. One of them was awarded to Mr. 

 Alfred Mosenthal, Consul of the late Transvaal Republic, for his 

 admirable work on the acclimatisation of the ostrich. Suc- 

 cessful experiments on his system have lieeu made on a large 

 scale in Algiers. 



Mr. Ethf.ridge writes to the Times with 'reference to his 

 examination of the red and green shales found below the depth 

 of 1,073 f*^^' ™ '^^ boring at Meux's Brewery, and of which 

 Prof. Judd spoke in a recent article in Nature on Deep Well- 

 borings'in London. He states that the evidence now shows them 

 to be of palxozoic age, and of the continental type of Devonian 

 rocks containing the molluscan fauna of that period. 



At the April session of the German Geological Society Ilcrr 

 Speyer exhibited a number of fine palKontological specimens 

 belonging to the Permian formation, obtained at a depth of 242 

 metres from barings in the vicinity of Memel. The twenty-five 

 species found embraced eleven molluscs, five entomostracK, two 

 bryozoa, &c. Although nearly all of them are represented in 

 the Lower Permian of Thuringia, Hesse, and Wetterau, but one- 

 third of the number are found in the corresponding jEngUsh 

 formations. The above-mentioned borings yielded in the midst 

 of the Permian formation occasional specimens of dolomite, with 

 crinoidal stems and imperfect remains of brachypods, belonging 

 properly to the Devonian. 



The monument to Liebig to which we have previously re- 

 ferred, was unveiled at Darmstadt, his birthplace, on the 12th 

 inst., the seventy-fourth anniversary of his birth. 



The Annual Meeting of the Cumberland Literary and 

 Scientific Association was held at Iveswick on the first three 

 days of the present month. This association, as we have pre- 

 viously intimated, is formed of a large number of local Cumber- 

 land societies, and both its first and its recent meetings have 

 been highly successful. The idea of thus associating the various 

 Iccal societies of a county is adniiiable, and we would strongly 

 recommend its universal adoption. The president at the last 

 meeting was the Bishop of Carlisle, who gave a really interesting 

 and fairly liberal address on the "Analogies and Contrasts 

 between Human and Divine Science," the greater part of which 

 consisted of an account of some recent advances in physical 

 science. Several other papers were read, nearly all of them 

 scientific, and more or le.ss on subjects connect-, with the dis- 

 trict. The new president is Mr. Isaac Fletcher, M.P., F. R. S., 

 and the next meeting will be held at Cockermouth in May, 

 1878. 



Commander Perkier read a paper at the last meeting of the 

 Geographical Society of Paris, on the determination of the longi- 

 tude of Algiers by telegraphy. The e.xact longitude is 2' 5o"'2i 

 east from Paris, the probable error being only o"'0l. The time 

 required for the transmission of the electricity from Paris to 

 Marseilles was found to be only itit; of a second ; the distance 

 between these two cities being 863 kilometres, it shows that the 

 velocity of the electricity was not less than 46,0x1 kilometres per 

 second. Similar experiments tried on the submarine cable 

 between Algiers and Marseilles proved that the time required to 

 travel was f(i\ of a second ; for a distance of 926 kilometres this 

 shows a velocity of only 4,000 kilometres. But the battery used 

 for signalling in the aerial line was composed of 100 elements. 



