Feb. 19, 1880] 



NATURE 



381 



theory, which has rationalised the study of the races of 

 mankind, and the discovery of quaternary man, which 

 has extended human antiquity' to a period long enough 

 for the development-theory to work in. Dr. Tylor next 

 proceeded to give an account of the Anthropological 

 Society of Berlin, which, founded ten years ago, has, 

 under the presidencies of Professors Virchow and 15as- 

 tian, steadily risen to over 400 members, and has done 

 admirable work. Its financial arrangements differ much 

 from those of the English Society, it being housed by the 

 State, and receiving an annual grant from the Minister of 

 Public Worship, through which aid the members receive 

 publications exceeding in value their moderate subscrip- 

 tion. Among the contents of its publications for the last 

 few years, special mention was made of the accounts of 

 anthropoid apes in the Zoological Gardens of Germany. 

 The life of Mafuka, who lived some time at Dresden, is 

 among the most instructive of ape-biographies, as illus- 

 trating the approach of the anthropoid to the human 

 mind. Knowing how to unlock her cage with the key, 

 she stole and hid it for future use ; she took the carpen- 

 ter's bradawl and bored holes with it through her own 

 table ; when pouring drink from a jug into her cup, she 

 would carefully stop short of overfilling it. Her death 

 had an almost human pathos : she threw her arms round 

 the neck of the director, Herr Schdpf, kissed him, and 

 then putting her hand in his, lay down and died. Men- 

 tion was made of Dr. Kulischer's paper on sexual selection 

 in primitive times, which collects more fully than has been 

 done by previous writers, the evidence that a pairing- 

 time like that of the lower animals prevailed in rude 

 human society, taking effect especially in festivals held 

 in spring and autumn, as the times of returning warmth 

 and plenty. On these occasions the great feature 

 is the courting-dance, the often-unrestrained proceedings 

 of which are not to be looked on as abnormal orgies, 

 but as simply and undisguisedly natural, forming, indeed, 

 part and parcel of the marriage-system of rude communal 

 society. The courting-dance, though becoming more 

 decorous with advancing culture, has held on with extra- 

 ordinary tenacity through the history of society. In the 

 middle ages it fully kept its connection with the season- 

 festivals to which it especially belonged, curious relics of 

 which still remain in European villages, for instance, the 

 Ascension- Day festival near Gotha, where the dance under 

 the linden-tree still marks the union of the peasant 

 couples. Dr. Tylor added that the dances of the modern 

 ball-room, however refined and ceremonious, show clear 

 traces of descent from these ruder performances, not only 

 in form, but in actual purpose. 



Among matters of pre-historic archaeology which of 

 late have attracted attention in Germany are the " high- 

 fields," or "heathen-fields," where the marks of ancient 

 tillage are traced on ground now waste or forest-grown. 

 These resemble the well-known "elf-furrows" of Scot- 

 land, but in neither country has the old agricultural 

 race been identified. It is much the same with the 

 "vitrified forts" once supposed to be peculiar to Scotland, 

 but which are now found to be common in Central 

 Europe. In a concluding general survey of the past 

 year's work of the Anthropological Institute itself, par- 

 ticular stress was laid by Dr. Tylor on the contribution 

 of new evidence for the Asiatic origin of the Polynesians, 

 by Mr. Keane and Col. Yule ; the minute examination of 

 the Andaman islanders by Prof. Flower tending to prove 

 them representatives of the primitive negro type; the Rev. 

 J. Sibree's account of Malagasy relationships, where the 

 indefinite use of such terms as father and mother points 

 to an early stage of the idea of kinship ; Dr. Tuke's 

 investigation of De Rochas' theory that the Cagots of 

 France and Spain owe their exclusion from society, not to 

 being descendants of heretics, but of lepers, real or 

 supposed ; and Mr. Woithington Smith's collections 

 increasing the area in England over which palaeolithic 

 man is now proved to have lived. 



NOTES 



We are again enabled, by the courtesy of General .Myer, to 

 present our readers with one of those monthly weather maps for 

 the northern hemisphere, of the value of which we have spoken 

 on several occasions. The present map is for May, 1878, repre- 

 senting the mean pressure, mean temperature, mean force, and 

 prevailing direction of wind, for that month. Our readers will 

 find it both instructive and interesting, as is indicated in our 

 Meteorological Notes this week, to compare it with the corre- 

 sponding map for April of the same year, which we published 

 in our number for January 29. 



An extraordinary prize of 3,000 francs has been awarded by 

 the French Academy of Sciences to Mr. Crookes, F.R.S., in 

 recognition of his recent discoveries in Molecular Hiy.-ics and 

 Radiant Matter. 



We are glad to learn that it is intended to commemorate, by 

 a permanent memorial, the distinguished services rendered to 

 science and education by Dr. Thomas Andrews, during the thirty 

 years that he was occupant of the Chair of Chemistry in the 

 Queen's College, Belfast. At a meeting of a highly distinguished 

 character which was held in the Queen's College, it was resolved 

 that the memorial should consist — "Firstly, of a portrait or bust to 

 be placed in the College, and of a replica to be presented to Dr. 

 Andrews's family. Secondly, of a prize or scholarship to be 

 founded in the Queen's College, Belfast, and awarded for high 

 attainment in those sciences in which Dr. Andrews has achieved 

 his distinction." We think that the form which the proposed 

 memorial is to take will commend itself not only to Dr. Andrews's 

 personal friends, but to the wider circle who appreciate his 

 scientific work, and who desire to encourage the studies to which 

 his life has been devoted. Subscriptions to the memorial are 

 invited by the Executive Committee, and will be received by the 

 treasurers, Mr. E. H. Clarke, Belfast Bank, and Mr. W. C. J. 

 AUen, Ulster Bank, Belfast. 



It is announced as certain that M. Krantz, the director of the 

 1878 Universal Exhibition, will be appointed director of the 

 Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, and that many improvements 

 will take place on the occasion of < his appointment. 



News has reached Kew of the arrival of Prof. Bay ley 

 Balfour at Aden on January 24. In compliance with instruc- 

 tions from the Admiralty, Capt. Heron, of H.M.S. Sca^uU, 

 arranged to conveyJProf. Balfour to Socotra, and the latter 

 hoped to start on February I or 2. 



The veteran French chemist, Sainte-Claire Deville, has 

 resigned the professorship at the Ecole Normale of Paris, after 

 bavin" filled it in the most brilliant manner for twenty-nine 

 years. Of his manifold and classical investigations during thi^ 

 period, the most noteworthy were those on aluminium, which, 

 supported by Napoleon III., led to the creation of the aluminium 

 industry ; the adaptation and application of the same metallur- 

 gical processes to magnesium which created likewise the industry 

 of this metal, and the extensive researches on platinum and its 

 allied metals in company with Debray, in the course of which 

 platinum was fused for the first time. Although, perhaps, of 

 less financial value, still the results obtained by Deville in 

 inorganic chemistry may fairly be placed at the side of the 

 remarkable contributions of his fellow savanl Pasteur, in the 

 biological department of the same science. His successor is 

 Prof. Troost, whose career as an investigator dates back some 

 twenty-live years. He has likewise confined his attention almost 

 exclusively to the problems of inorganic chemistry, and is best 

 known by long- continued and exhaustive studies on the pheno- 

 mena of heat connected with chemical reactions. 



