318 
NATURE 
[ Fan. 20, 1870. 
tary, 2 caracaras, 1 Australian thick-knee, 1 snapping turtle, 20 
grey parrots, 12 green parrots, 20 king lories, 1 China lori, 4 
Pennant’s parakeets, 3 Roselle’s parakeets, 12 large cockatoos, 
16 rose cockatels, 5 Leadbeater’s cockatoos, 3 Nasicu cockatoos, 
1 China cockatoo, ro pair cockatilles, 4 large white-crested 
cockatoos, 1 male bloodwing, 1 mealy rosella, 6 ringnecked 
parakeets, 2 Alexandrine parakeets, 1 dwarf parrot, 2 rare 
Amazones, 7 pair Carolina parrots, piping crow, 1 mynah, 60 
pair African love-birds, 80 nonpareils, 1 hang nest, 1 Indian } 
crow pheasant, 55 pairs St. Helena wax-bills, 60 Virginian 
nightingales, 20 grey cardinals, 16 popebirds, 20 pair Java spar- 
rows, Wydah birds (yellow-backed, red-shouldered, Cape of 
Good Hope), Madagascar grosbeaks, zebra waxbills, chesnut 
finches, Napoleon bishops, common bishops, harlequin doves, 
zebra doves, Australian doves, necklace doves, 3 blue Australian 
porphyrios.” 
WE notice that an individual was examined on Tuesday at Wor- 
ship Street on the charge of sweating sovereigns. The details of 
the case, which are of considerable importance to the public, | 
will be watched with interest. It appears that the coins are dis- 
solved by acid, aided by a battery, and that the loss in some 
cases equals about two shillings in the sovereign. 
In the track of vessels from Australia to China lies an island 
called Pleasant Island. Previous to 1865, the natives had a bad 
reputation. A Captain Brown reported favourably of them in that 
year, and mentioned that he was told that an Englishman was 
residing there. In August 1868, Captain Hall, of the barque 
Glenisle, was boarded by the island canoes, and two whale- 
boats, with two Englishmen, one of whom had been twenty- 
eight years on the island, and had a son eighteen years of age. 
They told him they tried to visit all ships passing within easy 
distance, and seemed anxious for it to be known that they could 
supply ships with pigs and cocoa-nut oil. . By his advice they 
purposed to cultivate potatoes, and gave him ax advertisement to 
put in the colonial papers. 
baffled all attempts to decipher it, from the faulty writing. The 
island was stated by them to be nine miles across, and twenty 
two miles in circumference. 
ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY 
[We have been favoured by the Count Marshal of Austria with the 
following ‘abstracts of the more important papers read.at the Innspruck 
Congress.] 
Prof. Semper on the Natives of the Pellew Islands 
THESE natives have come to a comparatively rather high 
degree of civilisation, and have been wronged by being ranked 
among the primitive savages. Prof. Semper, who has lived 
several months among them, proves his assertion by a detailed 
exposition of their political, social, and religious institutions. The 
residence of the pontiff-king and the house where the chieftains 
of tribes hold their meetings, are decorated with painted basso- 
relievos. The traces of a commixture of the natives with the 
Malayan race are insignificant; they seem, however, to have mixe@ 
notably with the Papuans. 
Prof. Strobel on the Paraderos of Patagonia 
THESE “ Paraderos” (from the Spanish verb fava7, to stay) 
are accumulatiuns of remnants of repasts, fragments of pottery, un- 
polished stone-knives, arrow-heads, &c., superficially covered with 
blown sand. In one of these accumulations a human skeleton, 
and several skulls of brachy-hypocephalous type; were found. The 
pottery had evidently been shaped by hand, and butnt hard by an 
open fire—not in furnaces. The distinction between a Palzolithie 
and a Neolithic period cannot be maintained with respect to the 
southern-most portion of South America; no polished stone-imple- 
ments having hitherto been found south of St. Luis in the centre 
of the Pampas, although grinding-stones and polishablé minerals 
are not wanting there: The polished stone-implemeénts found at 
Unfortunately, this document has | 
St. Luis may have been imported from Peru. The objects 
found in the Paraderos-must be anterior to the European inva- 
sion; neither the Patagonians nor the Indians of the Pampas 
using at present any stone-weapons, but being armed with 
lassoes, bolas, and lances. Arrows and bows having gone out of 
use since the introduction of horses by the Europeans. The 
Indians of Chaco and the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego, 
who have refused to use horses, still use arrows as a weapon. . 
Horsemanship seems not to have had any diminishing action on _ 
the size of the Patagonians, still conspicuous for tallness ; the 
inhabitants of Terra del Fuego, though no horsemen, being 
rather of small size. Prof. C. Vogt said that the collections 
made in South America by Mr. Claray have safely arrived in 
Europe, and that among them is a human lower jaw of un- 
common size. Prof. Seligmann observed that the skeleton of a 
giant, in the museum of Innsbruck, offers likewise an uncom- 
monly developed lower jaw, a peculiarity mentioned by Prof. 
Langer as generally connected with gigantic size. Prof. Vir- 
chow remarked that the outline of the jaw in question is rather - 
curved than angular. 
Prof. Virchow on Comparative Measurements of 
Crania 
Ir is uncertain whether the great number of crania found in 
Denmark in sepultures of the Stone Period, belonged to the 
persons of rank, or to those immolated to honour them—as 
Mr. Worsaae concludes from the circumstances under which they 
have been found. At all events, they must have belonged to inha- 
bitants of the Danish isles, or of their immediate neighbourhood. 
Ninety-six crania have been extracted from one single sepulture 
near Borreby. Those from the first part of the Bronze Period, 
when the dead were buried unburnt, are not abundant. Eschricht 
and Nilsson agree in ascribing the crania of the Stone Period to 
Laplanders or Esquimaux. ‘(he crania of the Greenlanders are 
conspicuously Dolichocephalous, not to say Scaphocephalous. 
The insertions of the temporal muscles are unusually distinct, 
the temporal ridges reaching beyond the “era partetalia ; 
the root of the nose is very narrow and the eyes very near to each 
other ; the facial portion is more developed than in any other 
race. The few Dolichocephalous crania found in the sepul- 
tures are far {rom offering any analogy to those of Greenlanders. 
‘The Laplanders are known to be a. Brachycephalous race, 
whose ontward form is evidently the result of their mode of 
living. The temporal diameter of the ecrania of this people is 
ordinarily very considerable, the root of the nose is very broad, 
and the middle of the lower jaw conspicuously compressed. 
The crania from the sepultures do not bear more than a 
distant resemblance to the type just described. The crania of 
the Finnic race—abstraction made of individual variations— 
are relatively Brachy-hypocephalous. . The Danish crania here 
in question may be possibly of Finnic origin, the more, as 
history proves this race to have spread formerly far more 
southward in Scandinavia-than at present. Two forms may 
be distinguished among these crania, not so discrepant, howewer, 
as to indicate the co-existence of two distinct nations, although 
a commixture between two nations may have taken place. The 
Slavonians are nearly generally admitted to be Brachycepha- 
lous, and the Germans to be Dolichocephalous ; the Poles and 
the Wends, however, make an exception to this rule, being 
anything but Brachycephalous. Crania from peat-bogs of 
North Germany exhibited to the Anthropological Congress, 
held at Paris in 1867, are decidedly Dolichocephalous, not 
Prognathous, without a decidedly ferocious expression, &e. 
Those extracted from the Danish peat-bogs exactly resemble them, 
and have, moreover, the greatest analogy with the crania of the 
Basques, a nation which (as may be historically ascertained) 
had spread in ancient times over Southern France and North 
Italy under the denomination of “Iberians.” It results from 
all this, with some degree of probability, that the nation to 
which the skulls in the peat-bogs are to be referred was rather 
of Meridional than of Septentrional origin. Chronological 
dates, relating to the crania here in question, are still insuf 
ficient. At present, no trace of man’s existence during the 
reindeér-period has been ascertained in North Germany. 
Remains of reindeer have been found in Mecklenburg and 
lately (probably) in the Uckermark, but not associated with 
any products of human industry. The co-existence of the - 
Dolichocephali, whose remains have been found in peat-bogs, 
with the reindeer, is therefore not yet proved, although in Some 
degreéé probable: 
