October 19, igi 1] 



NATURE 



523 



type. From the present distribution of the short- 

 headed races we may regard Russia as the most 

 probable cradle of this race. The brachycephalic fair- 

 haired European may be regarded as the latest and 

 perhaps highest product in evolving humanity. Time 

 will show that the brachycephalic peoples of Europe 

 are essentially of Slavonic origin, and that brachy- 

 cephaly will prove to be a Mendelian dominant in 

 the fusion of long- and short-headed peoples. 



Dr. v. Buttel-Reepen adopts Dr. Penck's three 

 intermissions of the Glacial period — a first, second, and 

 third; and in the tentative condition of our knowledge 

 that division is as good as another. To the beginning 

 of this period he assigns Homo Heidelbergensis, 

 known from his mandible only and by the Eoliths 

 ascribed to him. A minute study of this mandible 

 leaves no doubt that Homo Heidelbergensis must be 

 assigned to the Neanderthal race. Remains of this 

 race are also ascribed to the second interval and the 

 third succeeding Ice age — a period estimated at 

 200,000 to 400,000 years. If such a period is approxi- 

 mately correct, then it is wonderful that the type 

 remained so constant throughout such a vast interval 

 of time. We know of only nine crania of the race, 

 and the limb bones of only five or six individuals, and 

 in all of them the state of preservation is incomplete. 



The rarity of such specimens probably explains the 

 extraordinary sum paid by the Museum fur Volker- 

 kunde, in Berlin, for the skeleton discovered by Herr 

 O. Hauser near Le Moustier in 1908 — a price, 

 according to Dr. Buttel-Reepen, amounting to 

 160,000 marks. The skull of this skeleton, like that 

 found at Chapelle-aux-Saints, was so broken that in 

 neither case has an approximately accurate recon- 

 struction been made. Indeed, the only cranium which 

 is nearly complete and intact is that found at Gibraltar 

 so long ago as 1848 — nine years before the discovery 

 of the Neanderthal calvaria. This cranium, which 

 Dr. Buttel-Reepen regards as of little scientific value, 

 is, in the opinion of the writer, the most primitive 

 and therefore probably the oldest of all the remains 

 yet found of the remarkable Neanderthal race. It is 

 the only one which shows a cranial capacity decidedly 

 below the average of modern Europeans ; the palate, 

 and especially the teeth, are of the most primitive 

 form known in this race. In such a long period 

 of time as that ascribed to the Ice age, there must 

 have been a succession of many races, and in 

 the remains found at Krapina (Croatia), and at Spy 

 (Belgium), we see what is apparently a mixture of 

 older and more recent forms. 



In the third interval of the Ice age the Neanderthal 

 race apparently disappeared ; his successor at present 

 is supposed to be the type of man found at Gaily Hill 

 in Kent, and at Briinn in Moravia — a long- and 

 narrow-headed race, so unlike the Neanderthal that 

 Prof. Klaatch propounded the theory of a multiple 

 simian origin for human races — a theory which Dr. v. 

 Buttel-Reepen says must be taken cum grano salis. 

 The remains found in the Grimaldi cave, near Men- 

 tone, and the Cro-Magnon race are also assigned to 

 the close of the Glacial period. The Cro-Magnon race, 

 which thus early appeared in Europe, is from a phy- 

 sical point of view, and also as regards the cranial 

 capacity, one of the finest races of mankind ever 

 evolved. The bearing of all recent discoveries of an- 

 cient man in Europe, both as regards his physical 

 structure and his culture, is to remove the beginning 

 of humanity into a more remote past — one which 

 reaches into the Pliocene period at least. 



Dr. Buttel-Reepen, like nf manv of his German 



colleagues, is inclined to assign the skull discovered 



in Gough's cavern, Cheddar, and described bv Mr. 



H. N. Davies in 11104, to the Palaeolithic period. 



NO. 2190, VOL. 87] 



There can be no doubt this is an error, for the cranium 

 in question is an example of the "river-bed" type — 

 the characteristic form in England during the early 

 Neolithic period. The Tilbury skull, and one recently 

 found in a Derbyshire cave by the Rev. E. H. Mullins, 

 are also of this type. A. Keith. 



COAL DISCOVERIES IN BRITISH COLUMBIA. 

 'THE announcement, made in a special article in 

 ■*• The Times of October 14, on "Coal in British 

 Columbia," that an "immense body of anthracite coal 

 exists at the head-waters of the Skeena . . ."to quote 

 the words used in the telegram from the Minister of 

 Mines of that province, need cause no surprise when 

 it is considered how little is yet known about the 

 mineral resources of the vast territories comprised 

 within the Dominion of Canada. If the figures given 

 by Reuter may be taken as trustworthy, 2100 square 

 miles and 43,000,000 tons per square mile, the esti- 

 mated coal resources of the province leap up in a 

 single bound from 40,225,000,000 tons, as estimated in 

 1910, to 130,525,000,000 tons, the addition amounting 

 to about three times the quantity estimated to be 

 contained in our own South Wales coalfield. 



Very little information appears to have been allowed 

 to leak out regarding this immense coalfield almost 

 up to the moment when publicity was given to the 

 foregoing statements. All that is said about it in the 

 annual report of the Minister of Mines for the year 

 ending December 31, 1910, is that "the anthracite 

 district around the head-waters of the Skeena con- 

 tinues to attract attention " (p. K88). Again, on 

 p. K176 of the same document a summary is given 

 in the form of a table of the estimated coal-content of 

 the various known coal areas in British Columbia, 

 extracted from a paper read by Mr. D. W. Dowling, 

 of the Geological Survey, before the Canadian Mining 

 Institute at the Quebec meeting in March, 1911, in 

 which the Skeena River is credited with sixteen square 

 miles and 61,000,000 tons of anthracite. Lastly, when 

 the present writer had the pleasure of meeting Mr. 

 McEvoy (mentioned in the telegram of the Minister 

 of Mines) in Toronto on March 7 last, nothing that 

 he can recollect was said to give him any clue to the 

 vastness of the coalfield which Mr. McEvoy was then 

 about to re-visit. 



In the table referred to above the names of twelve 

 separate coalfields are given, probably all of Cretaceous 

 age, containing 30,674 million tons of bituminous coal; 

 three, probably of Tertiary age, containing 490 million 

 tons of lignite ; and one, the Skeena River coalfield, 

 the geological age of which is not mentioned, con- 

 taining sixtv-one million tons of anthracite. The 

 largest areas are those of Comox, 300 squares miles; 

 Nanaimo, 350 ; Elk River, 230 ; Elk River north, 140 ; 

 Graham Island, 60, all containing bituminous coal; 

 and Graham Island, 100, lignite. Although the areas 

 of Comox and Nanaimo fields are the greatest, the 

 assumed thickness of coal in each, namely, six feet, 

 puts their estimated reserves far behind those of the 

 two Elk River fields, each with 100 feet of coal dis- 

 tributed in a number of separate seams. As stated in 

 the article in The Times, the two first are in Van- 

 couver Island. The seams of coal, Douglas and 

 Wellington, with a rider from two to three feet thick 

 under the first, and a similar rider from two to four 

 feet thick above the second, crop out at a greater or 

 less distance from the shore, not exceeding six or 

 seven miles perhaps at most, and dip under the sea in 

 the Strait of Georgia and under the small islands 

 near the shore. The two last, Elk River and Elk River 

 north, are cut through by the defiles in, and not far 

 from, the watershed of the Rocky Mountains, and 



