522 



NATURE 



|_OcTOBER 19, 191 1 



Great improvements have also been effected in the 

 heating elements themselves. In the earlier apparatus 

 it was customary to use coils of wire coated with or 

 embedded in enamel, but trouble was experienced 

 owing to the different coefficients of expansion of the 

 wire and the enamel, and consequent cracking and 

 gradual disintegration of the latter, due to unequal 

 expansion. Enamel insulation has been considerably 

 improved in this respect now, and some makers employ 

 it with success, but the favourite method is to wind 

 the high-resistance metal in the form of ribbon on 

 mica strips, or to use flat strips of metal wound edge- 

 wise and separated by mica. One maker employs 

 spirals of wire in quartz tubes, and another has for 

 long been particularly successful with strips of mica 

 upon which very thin films of metal have been 

 deposited. 



An interesting attachment to a water-boiler (made 

 by the Bastian Electric Heating Syndicate) is shown 

 diagrammatically in Fig. 5. Above the chamber con- 



Details of Switch Release. 



Sectional Elevation. 



Fig. 5.— Water Heater with Automatic Switch. 



taining the heater is a light, hinged metal flap, upon 

 which bears the end of a rod connected to a catch 

 lever holding the switch in the "on" position. The 

 bubbling of the water when boiling causes the flap 

 to rise, releasing the switch and thus turning oil 

 the current. 



MANKIND— FROM THE PLIOCENE TO THE 



PRESENT. 1 

 ■pvURING the last forty years the opening period of 

 -L^ mankind has receded further and further into 

 the past. At first we were content to count the years 

 in thousands, then in tens of thousands, and 'now 

 nothing less than hundreds of thousands is regarded 

 as sufficient to cover the known period of man's 

 existence on the earth. 



The three works noticed here cover the whole of 

 the human period so far as it is yet known. Dr. 

 H. v. Buttel-Reepen deals with the Europeans of the 

 Pleistocene or Glacial period, to which, following the 

 teaching of Dr. A. Penck, he assigns a round hali- 



1 "Aus dem Werdegang ck-r Menschheit. Der Urmensch vor und 

 wahrend der Eisi. n ... Europa." Von Dr. H. v. Buttel-Reepen. Pp. vi + 

 130+109 figures in te.vt + 3 tables. (Jena : Gustav Fischer, rgn.) 



vim- il, s K. mtons Schaff- 

 hausen speziell des Klettgau 1 i/erz. Neue Denkschriften 

 der schweizerischen naturforschenden Gesellschaft, Bd. xlv., pp. 83-292 + 

 8ofigur ) , .. (Zurich: Ziircher & Furrcr, 1910.) 



" La Race Slave, Statistique, D^mographie, Anthropologic" Par Prof. 

 Lubos Niederle. Traduit du Tcheque par Louis Leger. Pp xii+231 + 1 map. 

 Paris: Felix Akan, 1911.) Prio 



NO. 2190, VOL. 87] 



million of years. Dr. Franz Schwerz takes up the 

 story where Dr. H. v. Buttel-Reepen leaves off, and 

 describes the various races which have inhabited his 

 native canton of Schaffhausen since the Neolithic 

 period began — one which he regards as commencing 

 about 25,000 years ago. The third work, by Prof. 

 Niederle, of the University (Tcheque) of Prague, is 

 concerned with events which lie within the Christian 

 period — the expansion and fate of the Slavonic race 

 into south and central Europe and into Asia. 



The three works are very different in nature ; Dr. 

 v. Buttel-Reepen 's small monograph is a concise and 

 excellent summary of the facts and theories relating 

 to mankind in Europe during the Glacial period ; it 

 is the best of the many books that have lately ap- 

 peared in Germany to supply a popular demand for 

 information concerning early man, and is richly illus- 

 trated. Dr. Scherwz's monograph represents the 

 results of personal research, and reflects the exact, 

 elaborate, and painstaking methods of the Zurich 

 school of anthropologists. Prof. Niederle 's book is a 

 stock-taking of the Slavonic race ; he estimates that 

 there were 139,000,000 Slavs at the commencement of 

 the present century, more than 20,000,000 of whom 

 occupy territories outside Russia, and are a continual 

 cause of political unrest in central and eastern Europe. 



It is the anthropological rather than the political 

 data of Prof. Niederle's writings which interest us 

 here. He appears to supply the answer to a problem 

 which has puzzled Dr. Schwerz and has been an 

 enigma to anthropologists in every country, especially 

 in England. The problem concerns the source and 

 supply of the brachycephalic races of central Europe 

 and their sporadic appearance in Britain. The oldest 

 human remains yet found in Schaffhausen — a canton 

 almost surrounded by German territory — are those of 

 Schweizersbild — remains which supplied Prof. Koll- 

 man, of Basle, with the basis for his famous theory 

 of a pygmy prehistoric race in Europe. There can 

 be absolutely no doubt that the Schweizersbild Neo- 

 lithic men are identical with the Neolithic English 

 described by Huxley as the "river-bed type" — people 

 of rather low stature and with small heads, somewhat 

 compressed from side to side and falling in the 

 dolichocephalic group. The inhabitants of Schaff- 

 hausen soon after the beginning of the Christian 

 era were also a long-headed people, which Dr. 

 Schwerz associates with the Reihengraber of south 

 Germany. The modern inhabitants of Schaffhausen 

 are eminently short-headed, but as to how and when 

 the short-headed people replaced the long-headed Dr. 

 Schwerz can give no answer. 



The change in head form in Schaffhausen is most 

 probably due to a Slavonic permeation. In colouring 

 and head-form the modern inhabitants of Schaffhai 

 are Slavonic. As far back as history and tradition 

 can take us Russia has been the home of tin • greatesl 

 and most homogeneous mass of brachycephalit 

 humanity. Prof. Niederle paints a picture ol the 

 exodus of the Bulgarians, Servians, Slovenes, 

 Slovoques, Tscheques, Lusaciens, and Poles, from thi 

 parent stock in Russia, and their absorption in 

 German-speaking peoples. 



We may be certain that what has taken place in 

 historical times — a continuous exodus and absorption 

 of the round-headed Slavonic stock — had been at work 

 during the greater part of the Neolithic period, if not 

 earlier. A round-headed race is not known to occur in 

 western Europe until the latter part of the Paleolithic 

 period. There is every reason to regard the short- 

 headed races of mankind as comparatively recent 

 products of evolution ; every known example of Glacial 

 and early post-Glacial man, with the possible excep- 

 tion of some Krapina people, is of the long-headed 



