462 
much easier, how much more reasonable, it is 
to suppose that a pair of African elands es- 
caped from some passing show, perhaps from 
one of P. T. Barnum’s incomparable aggrega- 
tions, and fleeing to that mountain side, per- 
ished in that fissure! However, the cold fact 
is that neither our talented physical anthro- 
pologist nor any other man knows any more 
about the number of men in any country dur- 
ing the Pleistocene than he does about the 
number of Pleistocene elands in North Amer- 
ica or the number of chimpanzees that were 
living in Europe with the Piltdown man. 
‘The writer wishes to correct two misstate- 
ments. In Science of April 12, 1918, on page 
371 the statement is made that certain fossils 
had been found at Wilmington, N. C. Bruns- 
wick, Ga., was meant. In the paper in the 
American Anthropologist, Vol. XX., p. 20, it 
was stated that Dr. Samuel Aughey furnished 
no details regarding the finding of an arrow- 
head near Sioux City, lowa. Details were fur- 
nished and the arrowhead was figured. 
Outver P. Hay 
Wasuineron, D. C., 
October 11, 1918 
SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
RECENT ACQUISITIONS FOR THE LIBRARY 
AND MAP COLLECTION OF THE ROYAL 
GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 
Tur Geographical Journal reports that the 
liberality of Mr. Yates Thompson has once 
more brought some interesting additions to 
the society’s collections. One is an illuminated 
chart, on parchment, of the coasts of the Med- 
iterranean and western Europe, by a member 
of the well-known family of Oliva (originally 
Olives), who migrated from Majorea to Italy 
and worked as chart-makers during the greater 
part of the sixteen and seventeenth centuries. 
Their charts were the lineal successors of the 
old Portolan charts which so long served the 
practical needs of seamen, and which con- 
tinued to be made, long after printed maps 
and charts had come into general use, as an 
ornate furniture for the libraries of the 
wealthy. The present specimen is in excel- 
lent condition, and bears the inscription 
SCIENCE 
[N. 8. Vou, XLVIII. No. 1245 
“Placitus Caloirus et Oliva fecit in nobili 
urbe Messane, ato 1617.” It is remarkable 
for the duplication, with but slight variation, 
of the portion concerned with the Mediter- 
ranean coasts, while the Atlantic coasts are 
shown independently, though with no dividing 
line, at the left-hand side of the chart. An- 
other interesting gift from the same donor is 
that of copies, dated 1556 and 1558, of the 
map of the British Isles, engraved in Italy 
after the original by George Lily, whose mono- 
gram appears on the earliest known specimen, 
of 1546, preserved in the British Museum. 
This map was the first printed map of the is- 
lands to give a fairly correct representation 
of the outline of Scotland, though the means 
by which such an approximation was attained 
is unknown. It was revised at various dates, 
and included in Lafreri’s famous Atlas. The 
two versions now presented are almost exactly 
alike in substance, but the later of the two 
was entirely re-engraved on a somewhat larger 
scale, with slightly more ornamentation, and 
intended to be read with the west, not the 
north, at the top. In view of the question 
sometimes raised whether the name “ Britain ” 
includes Ireland, it may be noted that in these 
maps it is distinctly reserved for the larger 
island only. Other acquisitions have been 
made at book sales, of which several during 
the summer were specially important from the 
point of view of geography. The seventh 
portion of the great Huth Library was dis- 
posed of early in July, and various early works 
of travel and geography fetched unusually 
high prices, justified, no doubt, by the excep- 
tional condition of the copies offered. The 
society secured through Mr. H. N. Stevens, a 
copy of the rare small quarto Atlas of Amer- 
ica by the French cartographer Nicholas San- 
son. It is one of four similar volumes devoted 
to the four larger continents, of which the 
library already possessed those on Europe and 
Africa. These volumes consisted of both 
maps and descriptive text, and were among 
the earlier productions of their author, antici- 
pating by some years the larger general at- 
lases by which he is best known. Each ran 
