300 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No. 217. 



mistake in his reasoning is well pointed out by 

 Mr. Alfred Nutt in a review of the work in the 

 Folklore Journal (March, 1898). Identity of 

 psychology, he justly insists, is the true expla- 

 nation. 



THE MEANING OF PRIMITIVE OENAMENT. 



On few questions in ethnology is there wider 

 diversity of opinion than about the intention of 

 primitive decoration. Does It arise from a 

 mere love of imitation, without further idea? 

 Is it mystical and symbolic, in some way an ex- 

 pression of the religious sentiments? Is it due 

 to utilitarian aims, a sort of graphic method ? 

 Or is it the expression of the sense of the beau- 

 tiful, genuinely artistic? 



Bach of these opinions has its defenders. In 

 the Internal. Archiv fur Ethnographie (1898, 

 Heft II.) Van Panhuys caustically reviews the 

 question, and concludes with the pertinent in- 

 quiries : Cannot the same decorative designs 

 arise among peoples who have had no relations 

 with each other? Why must the meaning or 

 origin of these designs be everywhere the same? 

 These are, indeed, pointed and pertinent inter" 

 rogatories and hint at the true solution of the 

 inquiry. 



GENEALOGY AS A BRANCH OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 



In his opening address before the last meet- 

 ing of the German Anthropological Society, 

 Professor Johannes Eanke emphasized the 

 value of genealogical investigation as an aid to 

 anthropology. By it we learn the facts of 

 heredity, the influence of kinship, the conse- 

 quences of intermarriage of relations, the per- 

 manence or variation in family traits, psychical 

 and physiological peculiarities and their trans- 

 mission, the tendency to reversion of types, the 

 effect on the children of marriages at different 

 ages, and many more points of very great in- 

 terest. 



For genealogy, however, to be thus promoted 

 to the dignity of a science it is necessary that 

 those who cultivate it should be willing to tell 

 the truth about the family trees in which they 

 are interested ; and in America, notably in 

 Philadelphia, they are yet a long way off from 

 taking this position. 



D. G. Beinton. 



University of Pennsylvania. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

 The Berlin Academy of Sciences has con- 

 ferred its Helmholtz medal on Professor Vir- 

 chow. It was established on Helmholtz's birth- 

 day in 1892, and has since been conferred on 

 DuBois-Reymond,Weierstrassand Lord Kelvin. 



Dr. Eoux, of the Pasteur Institute, has been 

 elected a member of the Agricultural Section of 

 the Paris Academy of Sciences, in the room of 

 the late M. Aime Girard. M. Risler, Director 

 of the Agricultural Institute, received fourteen 

 votes, and M. Maquenne, professor of the ap- 

 plications of physics to agriculture in the Paris 

 Museum, received two votes, as compared with 

 forty-one for BI. Roux. 



At the last meeting of the British Institution 

 of Electrical Engineers, Lord Kelvin was elected 

 an honorary member. Lord Kelvin is the oldest 

 surviving past President of the Institution, hav- 

 ing held the office of President in 1874. 



The Hungarian Society of Natural History 

 has elected M. de Freycinet a corresponding 

 member, and has translated into Hungarian his 

 essay, ' Sur la philosophie des sciences.' This 

 translation is distributed among the members 

 of the Society, which, we are glad to learn, 

 number 8,000. 



Invitations have been issued for the cele- 

 bration, at Cambridge, of the jubilee of Profes- 

 sor Sir George Gabriel Stokes, to the plans, 

 for which we recently called attention. Sir 

 George Stokes was elected Lucasian professor 

 of mathematics on October 23, 1849. The 

 ceremonies will take place on June 1st and 2nd 

 of the present year. 



M. PiCAED, Commissioner-General of the 

 Paris Exposition of 1900, has been elected an 

 honorary member of the British Institution of 

 Civil Engineers. 



Professor E. B. Wilson, of Columbia Uni- 

 versity, after visiting the Naples Zoological 

 Station, has gone to Egypt, and is endeavoring 

 to follow up the work of Messrs. Hunt and 

 Harrington in pursuit of the life-history of 

 Polypterus. 



The Berlin Academy of Sciences, with the as- 

 sistance of the Heckmann-Wentzel foundation, 

 has undertaken to explore Lake Nyassa and the 



