Decembkr U, 18S3.] 



SCIENCE. 



779 



in a title, ami, in ordinary cases, the abbreviation of 

 words before the vowel of llie second syllable. If 

 those in cliarse of the compilation of that magnificent 

 but cxaspeiatingly incomplete work had but taken 

 counsel of some of their l)etter trained brethren of 

 the Index society, tlie world would have had more to 

 thank them for. As it is, their shortcomings seem 

 likely to breed perjietual sorrow. 



— On the -iSth of July, about nine o'clock iu the 

 morning, a Mr. Ferry started from Dover to cross the 

 English Channel on 



a water tricycle. 

 The construction of 

 the machine is well 

 shown in the ac- 

 companying illus- 

 tration, which we 

 take from La Na- 

 ture. It is evident, 

 however, that the 

 JisjOacement must 

 have been much 

 greater than th.at in- 

 dicated. Instead of 

 the liglit wheels 

 of steel, with tires 

 of rubber, of the 

 land vehicle, there 

 are bulky paddle- 

 wheels. The small 

 wheel behind serves 

 as a nukier. Ferry 

 arrived at Calais iii 

 less than eigli 

 hours. The di- 

 tance as a bird Hit- 

 is twenty miles, b,, 

 on accoinit of the 

 currents the exer- 

 tion required was 

 considerably in- 

 creased. 



— Mr. Boyd Daw- 

 kins, who has long 

 been familiar to 

 American archeoh)- 

 gists through his 

 cave explorations, 

 and his volume on 

 early man in Brit- 

 ain, discusses in the North American review the ques- 

 tion of the antiquity of man in our own country. 

 The subject is treated as a portion of one great problem 

 common to the old and the new world, when man lived 

 in the same low stage of culture on both sides of the 

 .\tlantic, at a time when the hands of the geological 

 clock pointed to tlie same hour over the greater part 

 of the world. With reference to the absolute chronol- 

 ogy of geological phenomena, the author makes a 

 statement worth preserving: "The present rate of 

 the retrocession of the Falls of Niagara, or of the 

 deposit of Nile mud, or of stalagmite in caverns, or 

 of tlie accumulation of rocks tliemselves, or of the 



movement of glaciers, has been formerly used as 

 a natural chronometer, on tlie assumption that they 

 have been going on at the same rate throughout the 

 past, and have been warranted never to stop, or to 

 want winding up, or to go f.astcr or slower than at the 

 moment the observer was looking at them." The 

 chronology adopted in the present paper is that of 

 the author's 'Early man in Britain.' In the light of 

 Dawkins's system, Professor Whitney's pliocene man 

 is found wanting. Skulls of Mexican mustangs and 

 modern stone im- 

 plements are taken 

 from the same lay- 

 ers. The human 

 bones in the aurif- 

 erous gravels are in- 

 d i s t i n g u i s h a- 

 b 1 e from those of 

 the red Indians. 



With reference to 

 Dr. Abbott's Dela- 

 ware River finds, the 

 author remarks, 

 "The identity of 

 the implements 

 proves that the river- 

 drift hunter was in 

 the same rude state 

 of civilization in the 

 old and the new 

 world, while the 

 hand of the geologi- 

 cal clock pointed to 

 the same hour." 

 This river-drift man 

 was unmistakably 

 a man, and not a 

 ' missing link.' 



— From advanced 

 sheets of the Pro- 

 ceedings of tlie An- 

 thropological socie- 

 ty of Washington, 

 Col. F. A. Seely, of 

 the U. S. patent of- 

 fice, publishes a 

 pamphlet entitled 

 ' An inquiry into 

 the origin of inven- 

 tion." The author 

 is accustomed, day by day, as new claims for patents 

 come before him, to eliminate the successive steps in 

 the classes of machinery until he rcaches'the funda- 

 mental idea. This is the plan pursued in tracing 

 backward the whole subject of invention to its 

 sources in the mind of primitive man. The subject 

 is illustrated, first, by the story of the steam-engine, 

 and then by the ex.amination of the bow and arrow 

 and other implemeilts of the lower races. The au- 

 thor rejects Professor Gaudry's Dryopitheius, and 

 affirms, " Obviously, archeology can find no trace 

 of a remoter age than-that of stone; but X mistrust 

 that the thoughtful anthropologist will accept the 



.N WHICH »R. rEBBY CROSSED TUB ENGLISH CHANNEL. 



