552 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. HI. No. 67. 



quantity of snow, say a foot, will last as 

 long on open ground as it will among trees. 

 As I have laid much stress upon this matter 

 of evaporation which some may think 

 hardly applies to snow, I will say that a 

 considerable body has been known to dis- 

 appear from our streets without making a 

 pa,rticle of mud, leaving the ground dusty, 

 showing that none of it melted, but that it 

 all vi^ent directly into the air. And this 

 will occur any time when the thermometer 

 does not go above 32 degrees within a short 

 time after a storm. The importance of pre- 

 senting as small a surface to the action of 

 such an air as that is very apparent, and it 

 is in storing up the snow in heaps and 

 packing it away in deep pockets that the 

 economy of nature is manifested. The 

 center of the bodj^ will not melt at any 

 time and it requires a very warm day to 

 get at the under side of a snow drift. The 

 grass will be growing all around it before 

 the ground underneath it gets warmed up 

 sufficiently to start a stream from it, but 

 let a tree stick its head up through the crust 

 and it will go quickly. I have j^et to see 

 the first body of perpetual snow lying 

 among trees. It will hardly do to say 

 that the timber lies below the line of per- 

 petual snow, for there are many banks 

 which only disappear entirely once in ten 

 years or so, when there comes a long dry 

 summer, which have trees growing higher 

 up on the same mountain side. 



In any case I do not wish to be under- 

 stood as favoring the destruction of the 

 forests of this or any other country. I 

 never cut down a tree in my life and never 

 saw one fall without feeling that I had lost 

 a friend. Whatever is proven there will 

 always be abundant reasons for preserving 

 extensive tracts of woodland everywhere 

 that trees will grow, and it is time the mat- 

 ter became one of public concern. 



R. L. Fulton. 



Keno, NEVAnA. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 THE QUESTION OF THE CELTS. 



This question has broken out afresh in 

 Europe, as is the case every few years. The 

 immediate cause was the publication of an 

 essay, by A. Bertrand and Salomon Eeinach, 

 entitled, 'Les celtes dans les Vallees du 

 Po et du Danube,' in which the authors 

 claim that the proto-historic culture, the 

 remains of which are found in the valley of 

 the Po, is akin to that of an approximate 

 age in the valley of the Danube, and that 

 both were the products of the ' Celts.' 



Prof. Virchow, in a lecture published in 

 the 'Correspondenz-Blatt ' of the German 

 Anthropological •Society, December, 1895, 

 reviewed their arguments, substantially 

 agreed with tliem, and further extended the 

 area of this so-called Celtic culture. 



By ' Celts ' the archteologists understand 

 a series of independent tribes who about 

 500 — IjOOOB. C. inhabited central and por- 

 tions of western Europe. Their language 

 was of that Aryan family which we now 

 know as Celtic, represented to-day by Irish, 

 Highland Scotch and Welsh. In stature 

 they were tall, their skulls narrow (doli- 

 chocephalic), their complexion ruddy, eyes 

 blue or gray, hair blonde or reddish. By 

 the Latins they were called Celti, Galli or 

 Galatse, all three words from the same root 

 liel, meaning violent or warlike. 



The anthropologists, however, headed by 

 Broca, applj' the term ' Celts ' to a small 

 dark race in central France, and this leads 

 to wild confusion. A long discussion, 

 aimed to clear up the subject, by Dr. Le- 

 fevre. Dr. Collignon, Mortillet and others, 

 has appeai-ed in the Bull, de la Societe d' 

 Anthropologic of Paris, 1895. It is worth 

 attentive reading by any one who desires 

 the latest on this vexed question. 



DANISH ANTIQUITIES. 



Peofessoe Japetus Steensteup, of Co- 

 penhagen, has lately issued two memoirs of 



