37^ 



NA TURE 



[Feb. i8, li 



was smaller in size. They were pjlished with great care, and in 

 shape resembled certain Scandinavian stone axes. From in- 

 quiries which he made, he came to the conclusion that in recent 

 times there existed in the centre of the Malay peninsula a people 

 wholly ignorant of metals, and he asks whether these "fire 

 apes" are a remnant of the aborigines, who were overwhelmed 

 by a Negrito invasion, or whether they are merely Sakayes who 

 fled before the Malays. The Sakayes, it should be noted, 

 preserve a tradition of the use of stone implements, and it is 

 probable that before the Malay invasion they knew notliiiig of 

 metals. It is curious to notice that the Malays, who frequently 

 find stone axes in the soil, called them " thunderstones," 

 believing that they proceed from a thunderbolt, thus reproducing 

 -an old Breton notion in the centre of the Malay peninsula. 



We have more than once referred to the extraordinary diver- 

 sity and confusion of the names of States and towns in the 

 eastern half of the Indo-Chinese peninsula. The Marquis 

 •d'Hervey de Saint-Denys, well-known for his Chineie researches, 

 Jias recently read a paper on this subject before the Paris 

 Academy of Inscriptions, which throws much light on the his- 

 tory of this nomenclature. In the sixth century of our tra the 

 Chinese, regarding the populations of the present Kuantung, 

 Kwang'^i, and Tmquin as barbarians, called them Yuen. 

 When the present Tonquin was conquered and reduced to a 

 Chinese province, they called it Kiao-chi or Kia chow, from 

 the name of the capital, the Hanoi of our days. In 756 they 

 established in Tonquin a great district, which they styled the 

 Annam, or "pacificator of the south." This is the origin of 

 the present designation. In the fifteenth century Annam, then 

 become a feudatory kingdo j', was divided into two principalities : 

 the Western Court, Si-tong, and the Eastern Court, Tonquin ; 

 hence the latter name. In 1775 the kingdoms of Annam and 

 Cochin China were destroyed by a rebellion, and the last king 

 of the former died at Pckin, whither he had Hed. The King of 

 Cochin China, however, succeeded in recovering his throne, 

 and in adding, with the consent of the Chinese, Annam to his 

 dominions. But, in ratifying this union, the Emperor of China 

 bestowed a new name on the whole, Yue-nan. The writer 

 concludes that the country called Annam by the Chinese never 

 went beyond the seventeenth parallel of latitude, and that in 

 every document in which the title occurs the present Tonquin is 

 really meant. It would thus appear that there are, historically, 

 only two countries on the east coast of the peninsula, viz. 

 Annam (which is Tonquin, and nothing more) and Cochin 

 China. But this leaves the present Annam to be accounted 

 for. Possibly nothing short of an International Geographical 

 Congress will succeed in producing a simple uniform nomen- 

 ■clature for this region. 



The Revue Seienlifique bases the following conclusions on the 

 climate of Tonquin on the evidence given by medical and sani- 

 tary experts before the recent Commission of the French Chamber 

 on the subject. Compared with Cochin China, Tonquin is not 

 unhealthy ; from September to April there is regular spring, and 

 it is from May to October that the heat is almost insupportable. 

 Except in the mountains, which are dreaded by the natives, and 

 in the forests in the neighbourhood of Hung-hoa, there are no 

 deadly fevers as in Cochin China ; especially.are there no serious 

 diarrhoeas as in the latter. In the delta of the Red River, culti- 

 vation and vegetation render it healthy. It is doubtful whether 

 cholera is endemic in Tonquin ; the last epidemic appears to 

 have been imported from the Pescadores, and it attacked natives 

 rather than Europeans. But sunstroke is rather prevalent. Two 

 years is tie limit assigned for the residence of troops having to 

 undergo great latigue, with an insufficient quantity of good 

 food ; but on occasion this stay may be prolonged without harm 

 to three or four years. Merchants and officials may safely spend 

 fifteen to twenty years in the country. 



At the meeting of the Geographical Society of Paris on 

 January 8, M. Duveyrier described some observations made at 

 Tuggurt in 1S60, from which he calculated the latitude at 

 33° 7' 9" and the longitude at 3° 36' 24" east of Paris. M. Le 

 Chatelier sent several notes relating to the southern part of 

 Algeria. 



The Com^/e irm/ii, 'No. i, 1S86, of the Paris Geographical 

 Society, contains a suggestion from M. Alphonse de Candolle 

 referring to ihe want in geographical books and works of travel 

 of an analytical index. These works, he says, contain informa- 

 tion on natural history, agriculture, mines, ethnography, lan- 



guage, arts, religion, &c., which interest all classes of students, 

 but it is scattered throughout the various works, and few have 

 the patience or the time to get at them by an attentive perusal of 

 the whole. He has often experienced this want himself in pre- 

 paring his botanical geography, and more recently the work on 

 the origin of cultivated plants. As models of indices he points 

 to Darwin's works, and adds that the more detailed the index is 

 the better. He therefore invites the Society to encourage the 

 addition of indices to geographical works. 



The last Bulletin (No. 4, 1S85) of the same Society contains 

 the full text of M. Velain's geographical and ethnographical 

 sketch of French Guiana, and the basins of the Yari and Paru, 

 affluents of the Amazon, based on Dr. Crevaux's exploration ; of 

 M. de Saint- Pol Lias's account of his journeys in Sumatra and 

 Malacca ("Atche and Perak"); and of the journeys of MM. 

 Seneze and Noetzli in Ecuador and Peru in 1876-77. 



Globus (No. 5, 1886) contains an article by Prof. Blumentritt 

 on the tribe of Guinaus of Abra, in Luzon, based on a com- 

 munication by Lieut. Trullens, of the Spanish Army, to the 

 Boletin of the Philippine Society of the Amigos del Pais. The 

 article describes the houses, mode of life, manners and customs 

 of the tribe. They are confirmed head-hunters, notwithstanding 

 the presence of Spanish troops and police in their territory. 

 Their superstitions, Prof. Blumentritt says, go to strengthen the 

 theory that the religious notions of the Malays all over the 

 Archipelago are broadly the same. It is noteworthy that he 

 laments the general ignorance of ethnology displayed by most 

 Spanish writers on the Philippine races. 



THE LUMBAR CURVE IN MAN AND APES^ 



T N this investigation the fresh spines of twelve Europeans, of 

 four anthropoids, of fifteen different species of the lower 

 apes, and several quadrupeds were examined. In each case the 

 body was frozen, and then divided by a saw in the mesial plane. 

 When still in the frozen condition a tracing was taken of the 

 outline of the body, and of the centra of the vertebra;. The 

 results obtained all tend to minimize the importance of the 

 lumbar curve as a distinctive char.acter of any special group. 

 It is present in a well-marked form not only in the chimpanzee, 

 but also in most of the lower apes, and even, under certain con- 

 dition--, in some quadrupeds {i.e. bear). In the chimpanzee the 

 quality of the curve is identical with that of man : it only differs 

 in degree. The latter point could not be absolutely determined, 

 as the four anthropoids examined were little over four years old, 

 and yet the degree of curve was much greater than that of a 

 child of six — indeed it was comparable with that of a child of 

 thirteen. 



The second part of the memoir dealt with the adaptation in 

 form of the vertebral bodies to the lumbar curve. By measure- 

 ments it can be established that in the low races the lumbar 

 curve is not stamped upon the spine so firmly as in the case of 

 the Europeans. In other words, the European lumbar vertebrfe 

 are moulded in accordance with the curve, whilst the corre- 

 sponding vertebrae of the low races are not. 



Taking the anterior vertical depth of each vertebral body as 

 100, the following indices were obtained ; — 



Man 



* Abstract of a Paper on "The Lumbar Curve in Man and the Apes, 

 w!th an-Account of the Topographical Anatomy of the Chimpanzee." By 

 D. J. Cunningham, M.D. (Univ. nub.\ Professor of Anatomy in Trinity 

 College, Dublin. Read before the Royal Irish Academy, January 26, 1SS6. 



