900 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. II. No. 52. 



dahs. This is liberal, when it is recalled that 

 these writers confine their observations to thirty- 

 three skulls and a few skeletons. 



Harrison Allen. 



Evolution in Art, as Illustrated by the Life His- 

 tories of Designs. By Alfred C. Haddon, 

 Professor of Zoology in the Royal College of 

 Sciences, Dublin, etc. With 8 plates and 130 

 figures. 1 vol. 8vo. pp. 364. Price 6 sh. 

 (London, Walter Scott, Ltd. 1895.) 

 Prof Haddon is already well and favorably 

 known to students both of art and ethnology 

 by his admirable monograph on ' The Decora- 

 tive Art of British New Guinea,' published in 

 1894 by the Royal Irish Academy. The present 

 work may be looked upon as a development of 

 that monograph, extending the principles it 

 embodied to a much wider range of art concepts. 

 He takes, indeed, in his opening chapter the 

 decorative art of New Guinea as an example of 

 the method of study of art in general. 



The main body of the book is devoted to the 

 discussion of two questions: 1, the material of 

 which patterns are made, and, 2, the reasons for 

 which objects are decorated. Under the first of 

 these, he points out that the originals of deco- 

 rative art designs are mainly either natural or 

 artificial objects. For the latter, he adopts the 

 term suggested by Dr. H. C. March, ' skeuo- 

 morphs, ' from a Greek word signifying utensils, 

 etc. ; the former he divides into ' physicomorphs, 

 biomorijhs and heteromorphs.' He portrays 

 with a large range of illustration how these ob- 

 jective originals became transferred into sesthe- 

 tic conceptions, and at times conventionalized 

 quite out of recognition, were we ignorant of 

 the intervening steps. 



The reasons for which objects are decorated 

 the author considers to be mainly for the sake 

 of information (scenes, picture writing, etc.) for 

 the love of art itself, for the desire to display 

 wealth and for magic and religion. He gives, 

 among these, but a small field to ' art for art's 

 sake ' — if, indeed, any, among jirimitive people. 

 Yet he does not fail to recognize, what some 

 writers have overlooked, that the aesthetic sen- 

 timents are the real and only source of all art 

 products, no matter what else they subserve. 

 The work closes with a suggestive chapter on 



the 'scientific method of studying decorative art,' 

 which deserves the attentive study of all inter- 

 ested either in the history of art or in ethnology. 

 It would be difiicult to point to a more satisfac- 

 tory statement of the subject. 



D. G. Brinton. 



The Sill Caves of Yucatan. By Henry C. 



Mercer. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Co. 



1896. 1 vol., 8vo. Illustrated. Pp. 184. 



Price, $2.00. 



The sub-title to this book explains its aim 

 with sufficient fullness — ' A search for evidence 

 of man's antiquity in the caverns of Central 

 America: being an account of the Corwith ex- 

 pedition of the department of archaeology and 

 paleontology of the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania. ' Through the generosity of Mr. Corwith 

 this expedition was fitted out and its results 

 were destined to enrich the institution named. 

 A competent corps of explorers under the direc- 

 tion of Mr. Mercer proceeded to Yucatan last 

 February and examined a large number of caves 

 in the low range of mountains which trends from 

 northwest to southeast, about thirty miles south 

 of Merida. In this immediate vicinity are situ- 

 ated the famous ruined cities of Uxmal, Mani, 

 Mayapan and others. There, if anywhere, we 

 might reasonably expect to find traces of the 

 early art of the natives and the record of the 

 evolution of their culture, if it was developed 

 in the peninsula. 



This would be the more certain to be the case 

 on account of a peculiarity of the caves of Yuca- 

 tan. In many portions, during the dry season, 

 the only sources of the water supply are the 

 springs and basins in these caves ; therefore, 

 under present conditions, from the first arrival 

 of man he must have resorted to them daily for 

 months at certain periods. He could not fail 

 to have taken with him and to have left some 

 traces of his visits, stone implements, broken 

 pottery, bones, ashes and charcoal from his fires 

 and the like. 



Taking these facts as his guides, Mr. Mercer 

 ex!amined, with the most scrupulous care, layer 

 after layer in several of the most notable cav- 

 erns which were also sources of water supply. 

 The excavations were conducted under his per- 

 sonal superintendence and every sign of man's 



