564 



NA TURE 



{April 14, 1887 



(if I have correctly translated the passage) ; and Decianus 

 Kalus (the Superintendent of the island) asserted that 

 these sums were to be treated as contributions (nra7rd^7ri/ja) 

 to be sent to Rome. To this was added that Seneca — 

 who was not only philosopher, poet, and Minister of State, 

 but also the greatest usurer in Rome — having lent (Sai-fiVaj) 

 ten millions (jKiXtnSas ^vipitiSat ; which if in sestertii would 

 amount to about 80,000'.) nKovaiv (I do not understand 

 this word) on sound hope? of interest, suddenly, and with 

 violence, exacted the return of the whole ; that it was 

 Boadicea (Voo-doo-ee-ka) who principally caused the 

 rising of the Britons. In the usual history of this lady 

 there is much to be corrected. She was >!fl} Queen of the 

 Iceni, though of the royal family (yfVoDs roC fiaixC\eiov). She 

 had no husband or children. There is not the slightest 

 allusion to any personal insult. She did not die in battle, 

 but died from disease (koo-m) after the battle. 



Boadicea, as Dion remarks, was greater than woman. 

 She collected the army of about 120,000 men. She 

 mounted a li!]iia, made in the Roman fashion, to raise 

 her from the mud. She was tall in person, very awful in 

 countenance, with keen eyes and a rough voice ; her 

 abundance of yellow hair fell far down her body ; she 

 had chain-armour of gold, a variegated vest, and a thick 

 cloak. 



A very long speech is given, of which the following are 

 the principal heads :— The superiority of liberty to slavery ; 

 the criminal character of the taxes, some even levied 

 from the dead ; the Britons themselves are the cause of 

 these evils, not having resisted them soon enough ; the 

 habits of our enemies expose them to far greater difficulties 

 than those which we endure ; and other remarks, finishing 

 with a kind of enchantment over a hare. 



The Britons proceeded to terrible and savage excesses, 

 the worse because Plautius was absent, having gone to 

 Uwvva ; which, if it be the same as the Uivn of Ptolemy, is 

 the Isle of Anglesey. But this appears to me to be, 

 etymologically, very doubtful ; and, practicallv, I think 

 It very improbable that, in such a state of affairs, Plautius 

 would have gone, by a difficult march, to such a distance. 

 Plautius however returned, and a battle soon took place. 



There is no difficulty in fixing on the site of this, one of 

 the great battles of history. In the neighbourhood of 

 Linton, at the north boundary of Essex, in a space 

 perhaps of two square miles, are places which still bear 

 the names of Shudy Camps, Castle Camps, Camp's End, 

 Camp's Green, Camp's Castle. Every one of these has 

 undoubtedly been the scene of a desperate struggle. And, 

 finally, there are the three mighty mounds, known as the 

 Bartlow Tumps, which, as I understand, have been identi- 

 fied as containing Roman remains. 



Dion has given a long account of the various phases of 

 the battle. Boadicea died of illness (votra), and the 

 Britons were driven off the field. The battle was suf- 

 ficiently decisive to prevent the re-appearance of the 

 Britons in force ; but still it appears, I think, not to have 

 made a complete conquest. 



The news was welcomed at Rome with very great 

 interest by the Emperor, the Senate, and every rank of 

 society. G. B. Airy 



THE EUROPEAN PREHISTORIC RACES 

 J T would be difficult to overrate the scientific value of 

 ••■ the discovery of human remains made last summer 

 in Belgium, and briefly noticed in Nature of February 

 24 (p. 405). Hitherto serious doubts have prevailed 

 regarding the true character of the Canstadt, Neander- 

 thal, Eguisheim, Olmo, and four or five other skulls, 

 which are collectively referred to the oldest known race in 

 Europe, but which, owing to their apparently exaggerated 

 simian features, have been loo'.ed on with suspicion by 

 Pruner, Virchow, and others, as possibly exceptional or 



even mere pathological specimens. But these doubts 

 have at last been set at rest by the lucky find made last 

 June by MM. Max Lohest and Marcel de Puydt, who, 

 during their explorations of a cave on the slope of a 

 wooded hill on the banks of the Orneau, in the commune 

 of Spy, province of Namur, came upon numerous remains 

 of two individuals amid hitherto undisturbed Lower 

 Quaternary deposits, and in association with the bones 

 of Rhinoceros tichorimis, Elephas priniigenius, Ursiis 

 speliTus, Hyirna spehca, Felis spckea, the horse, wolf, 

 sheep, and other now extinct and surviving Pleistocene 

 animals. These remains have been carefully examined 

 by M. Julien Fraipont, Professor of Animal Palaeontology 

 in the University of Liege, who unhesitatingly refers them 

 to the Palaeolithic race, to which King's expression " Homo 

 ncandcrthalensis " may now be confidently applied. 

 Taken especially in combination with the peculiarities of 

 other parts of the skeleton, such as the evidently angular 

 position of femur and tibia, implying a non-erect or 

 stooping attitude in standing or walking, the skulls of the 

 two Spy inen show clearly that those of the Canstadt and 

 Neanderthal men are in no way aberrant, but perfectly 

 normal specimens. They obviously represent a Palaeolithic 

 and pre-Glacial race, the earliest of which there is any dis- 

 tinct record, which w-as already spread over West Central 

 Europe in early Quaternary times, and which De Ouatre- 

 fages and Dr. Hamy now believe may ultimately be 

 traced back to the later Tertiary epoch. 



A far better idea of the physical characteristics of the 

 Ho>no neanderthalensis can be had from the remains of 

 the Spy men, than from any others hitherto brought to 

 light. Prof. Fraipont, who devotes a lengthy memoir to 

 the subject in the Bulletin of the Royal Belgian Academy 

 for December, gives detailed osteological descriptions of 

 the two more or less perfect skeletons, from which it 

 appears that of one there are extant : the skull, relatively 

 very complete ; the right portion of the upper jaw, with 

 five molars ; a fragment of the left portion, with the two 

 premolars, incisor and canine ; the under jaw, nearly 

 complete, with sixteen intact teeth in situ ; a left clavicle ; 

 the right humerus, less the upper epiphysis ; the left 

 humerus, less both epiphyses ; the left radius ; the right 

 femur, nearly complete ; the left femur, complete ; the left 

 tibia, complete ; the right heel. Several of the parts here 

 missing are supplied by the second skeleton ; and there 

 are also numerous vertebrae, fragments of ribs, &c., which 

 cannot with certainty be referred to one rather than the 

 other. 



The first skull (No. l) includes : the frontal bone from 

 the superciliary arches and naso-frontal suture to the 

 parieto-frontal suture ; the right parietal, nearly complete ; 

 the upper half of the left parietal ; the occipital, less a 

 considerable portion of the region of the cerebellum. Of 

 the second skull (No. 2) there remain : the frontal, very 

 nearly complete ; the right and left parietals, complete all 

 but a few fragments of the former ; the right temporal, 

 nearly complete ; the left temporal, complete ; the 

 occipital, less a portion of the region of the cerebellum. 



The first is very long, very depressed from above, 

 and narrow, being decidedly platidolichocephalic, with 

 cephalic index 70, as compared with 72 of the Neander- 

 thal skull, and 67-65 of the Clichy. The second is sub- 

 platidolichocephalic, with apparent index 74'8o, and 

 general characters less pronounced than those of No. I, 

 but not to such a degree as to prevent the two from being 

 referred to the same race. Of both, the longest antero- 

 posterior diameter is about the same, 200 and 198 to 

 200 mm. respectively, the former corresponding exactly 

 with the Neanderthal. But the transverse differs con- 

 siderably, being 140 and 150, between w-hich comes the 

 Neanderthal with 144 mm. On the other hand, the 

 antero-posterior frontal curve of the first coincides exactly 

 with that of the Neanderthal, the frontal itself being, like 

 it, low and retreating. Another typical feature of this 



