June 15, 1883. 



SCIENCE. 



555 



absence of an anal fin. Its species, L. velifer, was 

 discovered in West Florida, and attains a length of 

 about a foot and a half. Among the other note- 

 worthy novelties, a new species of Porgy (Stenotomus 

 caprinus) is also described from two specimens found 

 in stomachs of the Red Snapper at Pensacola. — 

 (Proc. XJ. S. nat. mus., iv. 412.) T. G. [1096 



Characters of the centropomids. — The family 

 Centroponiidae has been diagnosed by Theo. Gill. 

 Its most marked distinctive characters seem to bo 

 the elongation of the postorbital portion of the 

 skull, ' a well differentiated posterior oblong, pen- 

 tagonal, or hastiforni area,' resulting from con- 

 striction of the parietals near their middle, and pecul- 

 iarities of the vertebrae and their apophyses. — {Proc. 

 U. S. nat. mus., iv. 484.) [1097 



The bottle-uosed -wrhale. — Capt. David Gray, 

 through tbe agency of Prof. Flower, has recently 

 made known, in a brief but interesting manner, the 

 results of some observations on the whales of the 

 genus Hyperoodon. It appears that the male bottle- 

 nosed whale undergoes great changes in form with 

 age, particularly as regards the head. The shape of 

 this part of the body in females and young males is 

 similar, the plane of the forehead making an acute 

 angle with the plane of the mouth. As the male 

 grows, however, the forehead becomes more and more 

 prominent, and in old age its anterior surface stands 

 at right angles with the plane of the mouth. Prof. 

 Flower makes use of these observations to reduce the 

 species hitherto recognized to a single one. — {Proc. 

 zool. soc. Lond., 1SS2, 726.) r. w. T. [1098 



Development of the intermaxillary bone. — 

 In an article published with great luxury of type 

 and illustration, Th. KoUiker gives the results of 

 his investigations on the intermaxillary bone, and 

 the development of harelip and cleft palate. The 

 memoir is one of special interest to the dentist and 

 surgeon. We may mention here the following con- 

 clusions: 1. Since the human embryo has a separate 

 intermaxillary, we may consider the sahie to be a 

 typical structure in facial clefts; 2. The intermax- 

 illary is composed of two bones; 3. The united bone 

 is destined to carry the four incisors, and many of 

 the irregularities of the teeth in position and num- 

 ber are due to the fact that they are developed inde- 

 pendently of the bones destined to carry them. For 

 further details we must refer to tbe original, which 

 only partially comes within the scope of this journal. 

 — {Mova. acta. acad. nat. cur., xliii. 325.) c. s. m. 



[1099 

 ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Bove on the Fuegians. — An interesting account 

 of the Fuegians has appeared at Genoa under the 

 auspices of the committee of the Italian antarctic 

 expedition. It is prepared by Bove, and illustrated 

 by a geographical chart of Tierra del Fuego and Pat- 

 agonia, and an ethnological chart showing the distri- 

 bution of the different races inhabiting the Land of 

 Fire. The latter are divided into two very distinct 

 stocks, separated by Admiralty Sound and Beagle 

 Channel. The Ona reside on the east and north of 

 these passages, on the largest of the Fuegian Islands, 

 and comprise about two thousand souls. To the 

 west and south are the Yamana ( Jagan), a race com- 

 prising about three thousand, and the Alkaluf, about 

 as many more. These people, perhaps of identical 

 origin, now form two well-differentiated races, who 

 are constantly at war. The Ona and Alkaluf have a 

 rough and guttural language, while that of the Ya- 



mana is soft, and rich in vowel-sounds. A very vivid 

 description of the character of the Fuegian country 

 and of its people is given by Bove, who describes their 

 distribution, physical cbaracteristics, habits, dress, 

 and wanderings; their birch-bark canoes, with which 

 they brave storms, and pursue the seals and even 

 whales ; the wretched position of the women, who are 

 practical slaves, living in polygamy, and yet unusually 

 fertile, though a majority of the children succumb to 

 exposure and insufiicient food; their marriage cus- 

 toms, and treatment of their families, which appear to 

 be chiefly remarkable for a stony selfishness unmiti- 

 gated by affection or pity on the part of the males ; 

 their Shamanism and blood-revenge, thelatter strictly 

 on Mosaic principles; their weapons, camps, and or- 

 naments; the treatment of the dead, linguistics and 

 the ameliorating influence of the faithful missionaries 

 in that desolate Tand. The language appears, like that 

 of many barbarous peoples, to be rich in words. Over 

 thirty thousand vocables are enumerated in the Ya- 

 mana tongue, besides agglutinations. They appear to 

 have no reverence for the dead. One fellow sold his 

 father's skull to Bove, and wished it a pleasant jour- 

 ney over the sea (cf. 1085). — w. H. D. [1100 



Aboriginal soapstone-quarries. — Not many 

 years ago the occurrence of copper, mica, and soap- 

 stone vessels in the Indian graves of our eastern 

 states pointed, it was supposed, to a vast aboriginal 

 commerce, embracing the whole continent in its net- 

 work of communications. The researches of prac- 

 tical archeologists, however, are constantly bringing 

 to light new sources of supply, that were formerly 

 worked much nearer to the mounds and graves 

 where their productions found their last resting- 

 place. The finding of many half-finished pots and 

 rude tools at Chula, in Virginia, was soon fol- 

 lowed by the discovery of several large soapstone- 

 quarries in the District of Columbia. To the subject 

 of this class of Indian work, Mr. J. D. McGuire 

 of Ellicott City, Md., has given much attention. 

 He has found soapstone-quarries in Maryland, and, 

 after considerable research, has discovered the meth- 

 ods of this aboriginal handicraft. — {Amer. nat., 

 June.) J. w. P. [1101 



Words for color. — Lazarus Geiger, in one of his 

 suggestive lectures, attempts to show that sense-per- 

 ceptions have had a very recent evolution by tracing 

 downward from the Homeric poems the terms em- 

 ployed to designate color. A very much more learned 

 discussion of the same subject is that by Prof. 

 Thomas E. Price, respecting the color-system of 

 Virgil. In this essay it is not maintained that the 

 words for color indicate the state of the color-sense, 

 but the adaptation of language to the color-percep- 

 tions of the eye. 



What idea had the ancients of color ? Certainly 

 they did not hold it to be a subjective sensation pro- 

 duced by three sets of nerves within the eye by three 

 kinds of waves differing in length. Rather, in the 

 Indo-Germanic languages, the color of a thing is the 

 cover or skin that overlies or hides the true sub- 

 stance. 



In nature, seen under ordinary daylight, there are 

 for the healthy human eye about eleven hundred dis- 

 tinguishable colors. For a hundred and two of these, 

 Roget has names ; but the number of color-names in 

 modern French is said to be not short of five hun- 

 dred. Alma Tadema reproduces his color-impres- 

 sions of the antique world by a palette of twelve 

 colors, while the palette of Virgil's vocabulary con- 

 tains twenty-seven terms of high colors, and fifteen 

 more for shades due to excess or deficiency of illu- 

 mination. 



