342 



NATURE 



[November 21, 1912 



rations. One remarks, among other wise provisions, 

 the practice of setting up lines of signs across the 

 line of march for some distance on either side of some 

 of the depots, so that if, on the return, a deviation 

 Iiad been made, the depots could still have been found. 

 During the depot-laying journeys a minimum tem- 

 perature of —50° F. was observed. 



The expedition was extraordinarily favoured by the 

 weather conditions. During the year of the sojourn 

 in the south only two moderate storms w^ere encoun- 

 tered ; otherwise the wind was mostly light and 

 easterly. During five months temperatures below 

 — 56° F. were observed, and on August 13 — 74'2° F. 

 was recorded. These low temperatures delayed the 

 start for the pole, and even occasioned a false start 

 and an enforced return early in September. It was 

 not until October 20 that settled weather justified the 

 journey being finally undertaken. 



In 83° S. high mountains — 10,000 to 15,000 ft. — 

 were observed to the south-west (the travellers' course 

 Iving due south). These probably belong to the South 

 Victoria land range, and were found to be met, about 

 86° S., 163° W., by a much lower range trending 

 east and north-east.' The junction of the ice-barrier 

 and the land was reached on November 17 in 85° S., 

 165° W. No very grave difiRculties were encountered 

 in ascending to the polar plateau between the great 

 peaks of the above range. The greatest height, 

 attained on December 6, was 10,750 ft., from which 

 the plateau was found to continue flat to 88° 25' S., 

 and thence to slope slightly down. Progress was 

 easy, and even leisurely. Beautiful weather was ex- 

 perienced ; the region seemed to be one of constant 

 calm, and even the absolutely plain surface of snow- 

 strengthened this impression. At the latitude last 

 mentioned the last good azimuth observation was 

 obtained. On December 14 and 15 close observations 

 gave the latitude as 89° 55'. On December 16 the 

 camp was removed the remaining distance to the pole, 

 and observations were taken hourly by four men 

 through twenty-four hours. The plateau was given 

 the name of King Haakon VII. 



So far as concerns the Antarctic land-mass, the 

 main p-eographical importance of the expedition seems 

 to lie in the observations of the great mountain-range 

 mentioned above, which, with clear weather on the 

 return journey, was observed from 88° S., where it 

 was lost on the horizon, to the junction-point in 

 86° S., and has been given the name of Queen Maud. 

 But three of the party, including Lieut. Prestrud, who 

 did not accompany the southward expedition, carried 

 out topographical work in the vicinitv of the Bay of 

 Whales, and east of it as far as Scott's King Edward 

 Land, while Captain Nilsen, in the course of cruising 

 which extended from Buenos .'\ires on one hand to 

 Africa on the other, made oceanosraphical observa- 

 tions at sixtv stations, and by navigating the ¥ram 

 to a poijit further south than any known vessel had 

 reached before, set the crown on the fame of that 

 ship in polar exnloration. 



ANTHROPOLOGY AT THE BRITISH 

 ASSOCIATION. 



NOTWITHSTANDING the unfortunate overlapping 

 in the dates of the meetings of the .Association 

 and the International Congress of Prehistoric 

 .'\rrhaeologv at Geneva, which seemed likely at one 

 time to affect seriously the attendance of anthropo- 

 logists at Dundee, the proceedings of Section H 

 (.Anthropology), which met this vear under the presi- 

 dency of Prof. G. Elliot Smith, F.R.S., were, if aiiy- 

 thing, of even greater interest than usual, and in- 



cluded several communications of considerable import- 

 ance. The attendances throughout were good, and 

 if, in the first half of the meeting, the discussions 

 were a little below the customary standard, this was 

 due to lack of time rather than to lack of interest, 

 and was more than counterbalanced in the second part 

 of the meeting, when the problems of Mediterranean 

 archseology and the President's views on the origin 

 and distribution of megalithic monuments gave rise 

 to animated interchanges of opi'/,on. 



In any detailed review of the papers presented to 

 the section it would be necessary, on more grounds 

 than one, to give a prominent place to the two com- 

 munications by Prof. Anthony, of Paris, who attended 

 the meeting as the distinguished guest of the section. 

 These dealt respectively with the suprasylvian oper- 

 culum in primates with especial reference to man, and 

 the brain of La Quina man, one of the earliest and 

 the finest of the brains of Palaeohthic man yet known, 

 and now described for the first time. With these two 

 papers must be included Prof. Keith's exhibit of the 

 brain of Gibraltar man, the three forming a group 

 pendant to the President's address, and affording 

 further evidence in support of his conclusions as to 

 the evolution of the human brain, and in particular 

 of the association areas. 



Other communications also dealt with early types 

 of man. Dr. Duckworth's description of the fragment 

 of a human jaw of Palaeolithic age found in Kent's 

 Cavern, Torquay, in 1867, but previously undescribed, 

 in the absence of the author was appropriately pre- 

 sented to the section by Prof. Boyd Dawkins, who 

 was a member of the committee appointed to explore 

 Kent's Cavern which recorded the discovery in a 

 report presented to the Association at the Dundee 

 meeting in 1867. On anatomical grounds. Dr. Duck- 

 worth considers the jaw to belong to the Neanderthal 

 type. Dr. Ewart gave an account of an important 

 find of human remains in a raised beach at Gullane, 

 the skeletons being described by Prof. Keith. When 

 the results of this discovery are published in full, they 

 will be found to have an important bearing upon 

 the prehistory of the Scottish area. In the discussion 

 which followed the reading of the paper. Prof. Bryce 

 stated that, in his opinion, the skeletons found in 

 association with the very early types of Neolithic 

 implements represented the earliest type of man yet 

 discovered in Scotland, antedating the men whose 

 remains have been found in the cairns of Tiree. 



Other papers dealing with the physical side of the 

 study of man were Dr. Duckworth's contributions to 

 Sudanese anthropometry based upon measurements 

 made in the south-eastern Sudan by Dr. Atkey ; Dr. 

 Wood Jones's papers on the lesions caused by Judicial 

 hanging, in which injuries received by criminals 

 executed in Egypt in Roman tirnes were contrasted 

 with those received in modern instances, and on the 

 ancient and modern Nubas, in which he suggested 

 an origin for the foreign immigrants into Nubia in 

 the early Christian era whose remains have been dis- 

 covered by the Archaeological Survey of Nubia ; Mr. 

 D. E. Derry's description of a macrocephalous skull 

 from Egypt ; and a highly interesting paper by Mr. 

 L. Taylor on the Bontoc Igorots now exhibited at 

 Earl's Court, based upon measurements which sug- 

 gest that these people may not be of such unmixed 

 Indonesian stock as has usually been supposed. 



Two organised discussions were largely attended 

 and aroused much interest. The discussion on the 

 ethnological aspects of Scottish folklore was opened by 

 Mr. Crooke with a paper on customs connected with 

 the Scottish calendar, followed by Mr. Hartland with 

 a paper on folklore as an element in history. Canon 

 J A. McCulloch, after a reference to features in 



NO. 2247, "^OL. go] 



