132 Reviews — Transport by Running Water. 



reveal. It is a matter of common knowledge that several important 

 discoveries of ancient human remains are even now awaiting 

 description, and no doubt many more important fragments will come 

 to light now that the attention of the public is being educated to the 

 importance of saving such material as chance may reveal. Professor 

 Graebner tells me that a few weeks before the present war was 

 declared two complete skeletons of Neanderthal man, with animal 

 remains and implements in association with them, were found in situ 

 during the excavation of a railway cutting near Bonn. The remains 

 of a Pleistocene human skeleton were recently found in South Africa ; 

 and a skeleton from East Africa, concerning which fantastic accounts 

 appeared in the public Press a year ago, still awaits description. 

 Even in Australia a fossilized human (child's) skull has just come to 

 light, thirty years after it was picked up by a boundary -rider on the 

 Talgai station (near the village of Pilton !), not far from Warwick on 

 the Darling Downs of Queensland. On August 22 this specimen 

 was exhibited and described by Professors Edgeworth David and 

 Wilson at the recent meeting of the British Association in Australia. 

 The skull was found in a spot rich in the remains of Diprotodon and 

 other extinct marsupials. It was discovered in a position precisely 

 similar to that in which these extinct animals occur, and its state of 

 mineralization is identical with that of many of these fossils, now in 

 the Brisbane Museum, from the same area. Professor David has no 

 doubt that the human being whose skull has been thus recovered was 

 a contemporary of the Diprotodon and the Thylacoleo. At the same 

 meeting illness prevented Mr. Etheridge, the Director of the 

 Australian Museum in Sydney, from demonstrating the fact that the 

 Dingo was also a contemporary of these extinct animals. Thus we 

 have this complementary evidence to substantiate the belief that, 

 even before the great marsupials had become extinct, Man with his 

 dog had ferried across " Wallace's line ", even if no other straits were 

 then open, and made his way into Australia. Quite apart from the 

 question of its age, this fossilized Pro to- Australian skull is of peculiar 

 interest, for it is provided with exceptionally large teeth and great 

 projecting canine teeth worn on their posterior borders (by the lower 

 premolars), unlike any other human teeth. Professors David and 

 Wilson intend to publish a full account of this interesting specimen 

 in the near future. 



Eor the proper appreciation of the precise significance of such new 

 information as this which the future will reveal Dr. Smith 

 Woodward's little Guide-book should be invaluable. 



G. E. S. 



II. — The Transportation of Debris Br Running Water,. By 



G. K. Gilbert. United States Geological Survey, Professional 



Paper 86. pp. 263. 1914. 



rpHlS elaborate report embodies the results of a lengthy experi- 



1_ mental investigation of the laws of transportation of debris 



by running water. The work was done in a specially equipped 



laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, during the 



years 1907-9. Unfortunately, the artificial streams used in the 



