94 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. hi. No. 55. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHBOPOLOQY. 



EELATION OF THE BEAIN AND SPINAL COED 



IN MAN. 



Some interesting facts were developed by 

 Prof. Eanke at the last meeting of the Ger- 

 man Anthropological Society, in relation to 

 the relative weights of the brain and spinal 

 cord in man. 



It is well known that man has not the 

 heaviest brain of any animal ; the whale 

 and elephant have heavier. Nor has he the 

 heaviest in proportion to his weight ; some 

 singing birds, various small apes, and the 

 mole have proportionately heavier brains. 

 "What Eanke brings out is that the weight 

 of the human brain is much greater in pro- 

 portion to the weight of the spinal cord 

 than in any other vertebrate ; and this, 

 therefore, constitutes an anatomical dis- 

 tinction of man, strongly contrasting him 

 with all other animal forms. 



The article of Prof Eanke may be found 

 in the 'Correspondenzblatt' of the Society. 



THE MAN FROM GALLEY HILL. 



So long ago as 1888 Mr. Eobert Elliott 

 exhumed some human remains from the 

 ' diluvial ' gravel at Galley Hill, North- 

 fleet, Kent, England, in immediate con- 

 tiguity to ' palfeolithic ' implements. The 

 remains were first described by Prof. New- 

 ton before the Geological Society of London, 

 last year. The skull is markedly doli- 

 chacephalic, its index being 64 ; the fore- 

 head is low and retreating, the supraorbital 

 ridges prominent; the chin is also retreat- 

 ing; the individual's height, calculated 

 from the femur, was about 1.60 meter. In 

 some respects, the remains were noticeably 

 similar to those found at Spy, Belgium. 



It must be said, however, that little 

 value can be attached to these relics. The 

 gravel deposit where they were found is 

 now destroyed; they may have been a later 

 burial in the gravel ; years have elaj^sed 

 since their exhumation during which time 



the finder concealed the discovery. Mr. 

 Elliott has no one but himself to blame if 

 men of science decline to accept the ac- 

 curacy of his observations at this date. 

 Let it be a warning to others to be more 

 careful and more liberal. 



D. G. Beinton. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



A gigantic OETHOCEEATITE FEOM THE AMEEI- 

 CAN CAEBONIFEEOUS. 



It is a well known fact that the straight- 

 shelled cephalapod was an abundant form of 

 life during Paleozoic times. This is attested 

 by the large number of species that have been 

 described, those of the Orthoceras group alone 

 numbering upwards of twelve hundred. The 

 culmination and greatest expansion of the group 

 was in the Silurian, and from that period it ap- 

 pears to have gradvially dwindled in number of 

 species, size and abundance, until at the close 

 of the Paleozoic the form was all but extinct. 

 In the American Silurian some of the shells at- 

 tained huge proportions ; but with the general 

 decline of the group the later ones have hereto- 

 fore seemed to rapidly become dwarfed until only 

 small unimportant individuals were recorded 

 after the Devonian. 



In the Carboniferous a few dimunitive species 

 have been described, none of them being more 

 than a few inches in length. In the Coal Meas- 

 ures of the Mississippi basin the remains found 

 were of rather rare occurrence, imperfectly pre- 

 served and of very small size. Seldom did the 

 shells exceed six inches in length, and half an 

 inch in diameter. 



Of late years, however, some unusually fine 

 material has been obtained in the black shales 

 of the Lower Coal IMeasures in the vicinity of 

 Des Moines, Iowa. Several of these shells were 

 so large as to excite considerable wonderment. 

 They were over two feet long and one inch in 

 diameter at the larger end. These were thought 

 to be giants of their kind and day. 



Recently there was found in one of the coal 

 mines at Fansler, in Guthrie County, Iowa, 

 about forty miles from Des Moines, an Ortho- 

 ceras shell of gigantic proportions, by the side 

 of which all the other Carboniferous species of 



