5" 



NATURE 



[July 13, 191 1 



the evidence and expert opinion to be found in the 

 well-illustrated and excellent scientific memoir now 

 under review indicate .1 re recent age for Pithe- 

 canthropus. It belongs, not to the Pliocene, but at 

 the utmost to an early Pleistocene formation. 



The late Prof. Emil Selenka, who did more than 

 any man of his time to advance our knowledge ul the 

 higher primates, saw very clearly that the right way to 

 solve the Pithecanthropoid problems was not discus- 

 sion, but exploration. After his death in 1902, his 

 widow took up the aim he had in view, and the 

 manner in which she has carried it out commands our 

 unstinted praise. Only those who have organised a 

 scientific expedition know the care, labour, and ex- 

 pense entailed. Financial assistance was obtained 

 from learned institutions in Berlin and Munich, but 

 the major part of the expenditure had to be met from 

 Frau Selenka 's private purse. Scientific investigators 

 and overseers had to be selected and sent out; coolies 

 had to be engaged — as many as seventy-rive were 

 employed at one time — and barracks built for them ; 

 Frau Selenka accompanied the expedition into this 

 remote and unhealthy part of Java. Extensive mining 

 and digging operations were necessary for die fossil- 

 bearing layer lies under 35 feet of a sedimentary 

 deposit of volcanic origin. In the seasons 1907-8 

 10,000 cubic metres of material were removed, and 

 forty-three large boxes filled with the fossil remains 

 found. The contents of these boxes were sent to 

 Europe and distributed amongst seventeen specialists. 

 Their reports, with an introduction by Frau Selenka 

 and a summary of results by Prof. Max Blanckenhorn, 

 make up the present memoir. 



So far as Pithecanthropus itself is concerned, the 

 expedition was a failure; the stone which Dubois 

 erected to mark the spot of his discovery was found, 

 but no further trace was seen of the much-discussed 

 fossil primate. In the dry bed of a tributary of the 

 Bengawan — about two miles from the scene of 

 Dubois's discovery — the crown of a human tooth was 

 picked up ; it is a human lower molar of rather re- 

 markable dimensions, but otherwise showing no 

 special feature beyond its state of preservation. Dr. 

 Walkholf found that the dentine within the enamel 

 cap was replaced by a fossilised organic matrix. From 

 its condition he infers that it may be older in point 

 of time than the remains found of Pithecanthropus, 

 and is inclined to regard it as the earliest known 

 trace of man. 



Dr. K. Carthaus has prepared even a greater sur- 

 prise for the readers of this memoir. In the same 

 Stratum as contained Pithecanthropus he has found 

 traces of man's existence. These traces are: — (1) 

 Certain splinters of bones and tusks ; (2) hearth 

 foundations and wood charcoal. He is quite aware 

 of the fact that jungle fires by ignition from volcanic 

 outbursts still occur in Java, but believes the appear- 

 he has seen cannot be explained by any acci- 

 dental conflagration. 



On the slender evidence thus brought forward by 

 Drs. Walkhoff and Carthaus, Frau Selenka supports 

 the theory that man was a contemporary of Pithe- 

 canthropus, and that therefore-the latter is an aberrant 

 form, taking no place in the line of human evolution. 

 The evidence, in our opinion, is rather of the nature 

 of suspicion than of fad ; the Selenka expedition 

 leaves the problem of Pithecanthropus SO far as con- 

 cerns its structure and position, unchanged, but it 

 may be otherwise as concerns its geological age. Dr. 

 F. Carthaus regards the Pithecanthropus stratum as 

 belonging to a comparatively recent Pleistocene forma- 

 tion ; Frau II. Martin-Tcke finds thai R7 per cent, of 

 the gasteropods found in ii are modern forms, and con- 

 cludes that the formation must be well within the 



no. 2176. vol. 87] 



Pleistocene period ; the evidence and opinion of the 

 botanist, Dr. J. Schuster, tend to the same conclusion. 



The problems relating to the estimation of the age 

 of a fauna ol a tropical and distant country are many 

 and difficult; most palaeontologists will follow the 

 example of Dubois and look to tlie mammalian launa 

 as the means of fixing, if not the age, at least the 

 degree of evolutionary change undergone by higher 

 vertebrates in this part of the earth since the period 

 of Pithecanthropus. It is the mammalian fauna which 

 is best known; Dubois found remains of nineteen 

 genera and twenty-seven species ; Dr. H. Stremme 

 and Dr. W. Janensch, who describe the mammalian 

 remains of the Selenka expedition, found fourteen 

 genera and seventeen species, many of which are 

 new. The whole of the mammalian fauna contem- 

 poraneous with Pithecanthropus has been extin- 

 guished or modified, and hence those authorities lean 

 towards Dubois's estimate that Pithecanthropus be- 

 longs to the Pliocene period. tiWjgg at least not on a 

 point of geological age that fpinecanthropus can be 

 excluded from the genealogy of modern human races. 



Prof. Blanckenhorn 's general summary of the re- 

 sults of the expedition constitutes one of the best 

 chapters of this memoir. He recognises the difficulty 

 of drawing a line between Pliocene and Pleistocene 

 in the formations of Europe and the even greater 

 complexity in correlating the geological data of Europe 

 and Java. As a tentative hypothesis he places the 

 age of Pithecanthropus in the first interglacial period, 

 corresponding to the formation of the Norfolk beds ; 

 the Heidelberg man- whose lower jaw only is known 

 from the Mauer strata — he places in the second inter- 

 glacial period, while the Neanderthal race he assigns 

 to the third period. From an anatomist's point of 

 view this provisional dating will answer very well, 

 for these three forms are certainly progressive steps 

 towards the modern human type. A. Keith. 



DR. G. JOHNSTONE STONEY. F.R.S. 



DR. JOHNSTONE STONEY has passed away, 

 one of the last of those who, during the latter 

 half of the nineteenth century, contributed to the 

 development of the modern ideas of the constitution 

 of the atoms, which have borne such a rich harvest 

 during the last two decades. 



Ii is often difficult to get back to the point oi view 

 from which to estimate correctly the pioneer work 

 of those who took the first steps; often tin- new ideas 

 introduced bv them have become the commonplace, so 

 to speak, of science, but it is just these first steps 

 breaking away from the older positions which mark 

 the far-seeing intellect. 



So early as 1S71 we find Stoney endeavouring 

 to formulate a relation for spectral lines depending 

 upon possible simple harmonic modes of vibration in 

 the atom, and he succeeded in finding a numerical 

 relationship of a simple character in the case of the 

 hvdrogen spectrum, which has proved to be the fore- 

 runner of much subsequent work. Twenty years later 

 he returned to the subject in a paper in which he 

 considered the question more systematically, viewing 

 the internal movements of the atom as those of a 

 planetary system. Much work had been done by 

 others in the meantime in following up the clue which 

 Stoney, had found in the numerical relationships of 

 the spectral lines of hydrogen, and he was able him- 

 self to show further that double and triple lines wotdd 

 be produced by perturbations of elliptic orbits described 

 under controlling forces in the atom, double lines 

 being attributed to apsidal motions, triple lines to 

 precessional motions. These conceptions of the con- 

 stitution of the atom afterwards found satisfactory 



