380 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 168. 



health officers and other sanitarians, week- 

 ly abstracts of the consular sanitary reports 

 and other pertinent information received 

 by him, and shall also, as far as he may be 

 able, by means of voluntary cooperation of 

 State and Territorial health authorities, 

 and through them, municipal health author- 

 ities, public associations, and private per- 

 sons, procure information relating to the 

 ■climatic and other conditions affecting the 

 public health. 



Sec. 7. That a special report of the said 

 commission of public health, relative to 

 such action as will most effectually protect 

 a,nd promote the health of the people of the 

 United States, may at any time be required 

 by the President of the United States. 



Sec. 8. That the commission shall co- 

 operate with State, municipal, and local 

 boards of health in establishing and main- 

 taining an efficient and accurate system of 

 notification of the existence and progress of 

 ■contagious or infectious diseases, and of 

 vital statistics in the United States. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 CAN SEX BE DISTINGUISHED IN SKULLS? 



Enthusiastic osteologists frequently as- 

 •sert that they can distinguish the sex by an 

 ■examination of the skull. It is possible, 

 when one is familiar with many skulls, from 

 the same stock and geographically limited 

 to narrow bounds, that this can often be 

 accomplished. But in general it is not pos- 

 sible. There is no sex-criterion in the skull. 



In an inaugural dissertation, published 

 in Berlin last year, and noticed in the Cen- 

 iralblatt fur Anthropologie, January, 1898, Dr. 

 Paul Bartels submitted the question to a 

 new and searching examnation, founded on 

 J, 090 skulls — 685 male and 405 female. He 

 could discover no positive chai'acteristic of 

 sex. The fossa-typanico-stylo-mastoidea, of 

 which much has been made, he shows to be 

 inconclusive ; and the same is true of every 



other trait which has been advanced as a 

 determination of sex. 



THE earliest ITALIANS. 



One of the numbers of the ' Piccola Bib- 

 lioteca delle Scienze Moderne,' published by 

 the Brothers Bocca, at Turin, is a treatise 

 by Professor Sergi on the earliest inhabit- 

 ants of Italy (Arii e Italici, pp. 229, illus- 

 trated) . 



The author's theory may be briefly stated. 

 The oldest tribes on the peninsula, the Pe- 

 lasgians and Ligurians, belonged to the 

 ' Mediterranean ' stock, which at a remote 

 date moved northward from equatorial 

 Africa. The Aryans entered much later, 

 coming from the north, and originally from 

 Asia, bringing with them the Umbrian, 

 Oscan and other Indo-European dialects. 

 The Etruscans, of unknown affinities, but 

 members of the ' Mediterranean ' stock, 

 entered by sea, on the west coast, about 

 800 B. C, arriving from the eastern Medi- 

 terranean shores. 



The author bases most of his argument 

 on cranial forms, but also discusses with 

 some detail the archseologie evidence, and 

 slightly that derived from language. It is 

 unnecessary to point out how many ob- 

 stacles present themselves to such a solu- 

 tion of this intricate question. 



D. G. Beinton. 



TJNiVEESiTy OF Pennsylvania. 



NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 



The Chemical Neivs published two papers 

 by Professor William Kamsay and Dr. Mor- 

 ris W. Travers before the Eoyal Society on 

 January 20th. The first is on the homo- 

 geneity of helium. In a previous paper 

 recently noticed in this column an account 

 was given of an attempt to separate argon 

 and helium into two portions of different 

 densities, by diffusion through pipe clay. 

 These experiments showed that while it did 



