384 



NATURE 



[Marc/i 18, 1875 



With regard to the botanical authorities that the author 

 claims for his spelling, Mr. Hanbury has shown that 

 Ruiz, Pavon, and Mutis rather incline the other way ; 

 Ruiz and Pavon, in their great work, the " Flora 

 Peruviana," &c., adopted Cinchona, and Mutis finally 

 came to the same conclusion. Mr. Spruce, another of the 

 claimed authorities, in the Journal of the Linnasan 

 Society, writes Cinchona, though in certain Blue Books 

 he writes Chinchona. It must be remembered that such 

 Blue Books appear to have been prepared under the 

 direction of the author in his official capacity at the India 

 Office, and to have had the word Chinchona forced into 

 prominence. There remain only Tafalla, a pupil and 

 successor of Ruiz and Pavon, Zea and Caldas, pupils of 

 Mutis, all three of but little importance, as well as Dr. 

 Seemann and the author, to weigh against such authorities 

 as Humboldt and Bonpland, Poeppig, Weddell, Triana, 

 Karsten, and others, as well as the universal concurrence 

 of all the great systematic botanists from the time of 

 Linnreus to the present day. 



If then this question is to be settled by the weight of 

 usage and authority, it is evident that an exceedingly 

 rough balance suffices to give a ready result unfavourable 

 to the author's case. 



It is equally clear that much inconvenience would 

 ensue from the change proposed and adopted by the 

 author. To the systematic botanist great would be the 

 inconvenience of altering the second letter of a generic 

 name the first letter of which is C, an initial which is 

 commoner than any other, and which stands for about one- 

 seventh part of the whole number of genera. The sugges- 

 tion that in an index a cross reference would meet the 

 difficulty is good to a certain exent, but it would not alto- 

 gether remove the nuisance ; nor would the chemist, the 

 apothecary, and the public generally accept without 

 repugnance a change which would affect the spelling and 

 damage the pronunciation not only of the original word, 

 but also of derivatives in frequent use such as Cinchonine, 

 Cinchonidine, Cinchonicine. 



In short, the Linna;an name Cinchona is no longer 

 under the control of the Countess of Chinchon, nor of the 

 town of Chinchon, nor yet of those enamoured of either ; 

 it sufficiently recalls the memory of the benevolent 

 countess ; but it has long become scientific and general 

 property, and stands by the right of usage and priority ; it 

 has a settlement due to a century and a third of time, 

 and neither scientific men, nor the commercial world, nor 

 the general public will be likely to alter it and the several 

 words derived from it on the plea set up by the author. 



W. P. H. 



GERLAND'S "ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONTRI- 

 BUTIONS " 

 An/hropologischc Bciirdi;e. Von Georg Gerland. (Halle 

 an der Saale : Lippert'sche Buchhandlung, 1S75.) 



THE present volume is, as the author informs us, only 

 the first of a series of several volumes, in which it 

 is his intention to group together as far as possible all the 

 aspects under which the modern science of anthropology 

 may be considered ; to weigh the importance and estimate 

 the nature of the problems which it has to solve ; and to 

 bring clearly and objectively before the reader the dif- 



ferent steps that have been attained, or are demonstrable 

 by facts, in the history of the origin and subsequent deve- 

 lopment of mankind. 



The difficulty of the task which Dr. Gerland has thus 

 set himself seems to us to be only equalled by the pro- 

 bable remoteness of its accomplishment. We all know 

 that there is a tendency amongst German writers to pro- 

 ject works on too colossal a scale, and to fill in their 

 ground with such inexhaustible masses of detail, that 

 every fresh accumulation of facts becomes a mountain 

 across their readers' path, tending to obstruct rather than 

 to clear the view ; and valuable as are the materials which 

 Dr. Gerland has brought together, his " Anthropological 

 Contributions" cannot be pronounced free from these 

 tantalising failings. Those who have time and patience 

 to follow the author along all the collateral lines of in- 

 quiry into which his subject is incessantly divaricating 

 will no doubt find themselves repaid for their labour ; but 

 the anthropologist, who has neither the need nor the 

 leisure for going over old ground in search of new facts, 

 will find it difficult to sift the wheat from the chaff. 



In his introductory chapter Dr. Gerland considers all 

 the branches of human inquiry with which anthropology 

 is associated ; the importance of missionary enterprise in 

 relation to its bearing on the extension of our anthropolo- 

 gical knowledge ; and the influence that the estimate in 

 which women have been held among any definite people, 

 or at any fixed epoch, has had in modifying the morale 

 w\ApIiysiquc of the entire sex. 



In the second, or main section of the work, the author 

 treats of the primary and developmental history of man 

 from the evolution point of view. Setting aside the 

 hypothesis of special creation as utterly untenable, and 

 as wholly discarded by every rational anthropologist, he 

 proposes to consider man as derived by mechanical 

 means from a natural animal source ; beginning his line 

 of argument by a discussion on the relative claims of the 

 different portions of the habitable world to be regarded 

 as the cradle of the human race. In this section of his 

 work Dr. Gerland shows a vast amount of curious learn- 

 ing, and brings together a valuable mass of facts relating 

 to the past as well as present fauna and flora of different 

 regions, and their consequent greater or lesser adapta- 

 bility for the coexistence of man. He considers the fac 

 that the African races depend for their food-supplies on 

 plants such as the sorghum and other cereals, which have 

 come from Asia, although their own continent possesses 

 many edible indigenous plants to which recouise is had 

 in times of emergency, as a proof that man did not take 

 his origin in Africa, for it is wholly irrational to suppo"e 

 that after having once used native-grown cereals in the.r 

 primary condition, men should have neglected these in 

 favour of others imported from another continent like 

 Asia. 



In discussing the probable period in the earth's history 

 when man appeared, the author insists upon the absolute 

 necessity of geognostic repose as an indispensable ele- 

 ment in the development of man from an animal origin. 

 Cataclysms and violent disturbances of the earth's crust 

 are obviously incompatible with the free enjoyment of all 

 the essential requirements of animal existence, without 

 which any advance in the developmental order of such an 

 existence is inconceivable. In conclusion, he claims to 



