Apeil 3, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



509 



shown. A shin and skull of the fish-eating 

 rodent Icthyomys-Stolzmanni from Peru 

 was shown by the department of Mamma- 

 logy and Ornithology of the American 

 Museum of Natural History and was said 

 to be the second known specimen. Dr. T. 

 M. Cheeseman, in the department of Bac- 

 teriology, showed some preparations from 

 the Bacterial Laboratory of College of Phy- 

 sicians and Surgeons of Columbia, and 

 there was exhibited by Prof. Henry W. 

 Conn, of Wesley an University, some mor- 

 phological preparations of Bacillus ISTo. 41, 

 interesting for its power of ripening cream 

 for butter. Prof. George S. Huntington, of 

 the division of Anatomy, had an extensive 

 collection illustrating recent work in human 

 and comparative myology. In the section 

 of Paleontology, in charge of Dr. J. L. 

 Wortman, were exhibited a number of 

 specimens from Wyoming, Utah and 

 Dakota, collected by Messrs. Wortman and 

 Petersen during the past year. The de- 

 partment of Geology of Columbia Univer- 

 sity exhibited a number of specimens ob- 

 tained in their last summer's expedition. 



In the department of Ethnology and 

 Archaeology the recent valuable additions 

 that have been made to the collections of 

 the American Museum of Natural History 

 were exhibited. Prof. J. McK. Cattell, in 

 charge of the Department of Experimental 

 Psychology, exhibited a new apparatus for 

 determining photometric differences by the 

 time of perception. Some new apparatus 

 from the Yale University Psychological 

 Laboratory was exhibited by Dr. E. W. 

 Scripture, while Prof. C. B. Bliss, of New 

 York, showed a pendulum chronoscope. 

 Herbert T. Wade. 



Columbia Univeesity. 



CTJEBENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 THE INDIAN AS A FARMER. 



The general statement that the Indian of 

 the Eastern United States was when first 



discovered in the wild or hunting stage of 

 development, must be considerably modified 

 when we come to study his mode of life 

 with care. He was in many parts of the 

 laipid an agriculturist, a small farmer, and 

 was by no means dependent entirely on wild 

 game or natural products. 



This has been forcibly brought out by Mr. 

 Lucien Carr, in an article ' On the food of 

 certain American Indians and their method 

 of preparing it,' published in the Proceed- 

 ings of the American Antiquarian Society 

 for 1895. The author has examined the 

 literature bearing on the subject thoroughly 

 and his references are abundant and judi- 

 cious. Within the compass of thirty-eight 

 pages he has collected an amount of infor- 

 mation which the student will scarcely find 

 in larger volumes and much of which the 

 archaeologist, engaged in the examination of 

 shell heaps and village sites, will do well to 

 make himself acquainted with. His con- 

 clusion is that so far as the comforts and 

 conveniences of life are concerned, the 

 Indian was little behind the white pioneer 

 who dispossessed him. 



RACIAL PSYCHOLOGY. 



In his ' Anthropologic du Calvados,' re- 

 cently published at Caen, Dr. E. Collignon 

 calls attention to the statistics of the French 

 population compiled by Jacoby and others, 

 showing the relation of superior mental 

 ability to descent. The method pursued 

 was to make a catalogue for each depart- 

 ment of all the distinguished men born in 

 it for a century, without reference to the 

 grounds of their celebrity, and then to note 

 what proportion this bore to a million in- 

 habitants. The differences are remarkable, 

 varying from 690 in the department of the 

 Seine (including Paris) to 13 and 14 to the 

 million in Charente and Creuse. Normandy 

 showed 106 per million. 



When the several lines of activity were 

 analyzed in which these became eminent, 



