3IO 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 353 



sidered a fraud, and so punished. Such products may be seized, 

 confiscated, and rendered unfit for use, by the competent authori- 

 ties. 



Executive Provisions. 



The police administrations are charged with the supervision and 

 the execution of these laws, having power to make and enforce the 

 necessary regulations. 



There is generally a State commission of control, composed of 

 three or more experts, appointed with the necessary police powers, 

 to whom this subject is intrusted. They have under their direc- 

 tions the inspectors, veterinarians, and chemists necessary for the 

 proper execution of the laws and regulations. The co-operation of 

 the local police officials, whenever necessary, is obligatory. 



The commission meet at least twice a year for the transaction of- 

 business. They must also make at least two inspections a year of 

 all factories and warehouses for food. 



The inspection and supervision of all establishments intended 

 for the public preparation, manufacture, or sale of foods must be 

 performed by the inspecting officials employed by the commission. 

 The inspections of these establishments must take place at least 

 twice a year, and without previous notification to the owners. 

 Reports of such inspection are made in writing to the commis- 

 sion. 



The inspecting officials have the right to enter any establishment 

 within their jurisdiction during the usual business hours or when 

 such places are open to the public, and to take for examination 

 such samples as are necessary. 



When the examination of samples cannot take place on the spot, 

 but demands a chemical, microscopical, or similar examination, two 

 samples must be taken, and placed under seal, by the inspecting 

 official, in the presence of the owners or their representatives, who 

 likewise may affix their own seals thereto. One of these samples 

 is forwarded to the commission with a report, and a request for 

 the proper examination thereof, and the other is retained by the 

 inspecting official. On demand of the owner, another similarly 

 sealed sample may be retained by him. 



When there is reason to believe that a food is adulterated or un- 

 wholesome, the inspecting official may order it detained until a 

 proper examination can be made. 



If the sample proves, on examination, to be adulterated or un- 

 wholesome, the cost of said examination is paid by the offender ; 

 but otherwise the State pays the cost of the samples taken and of 

 the examination. 



All unwholesome foods are to be confiscated and destroyed 

 without compensation to the owner. 



Private individuals may have samples of food examined by the 

 experts of the commission on complying with prescribed regula- 

 tions and by paying a moderate charge, or free of charge in many 

 countries. EDGAR RICHARDS. 



THE ANCIENT ETRUSCANS.' 



The problem of the ethnologic position of the ancient Etruscans 

 must be considered as yet unsolved. In spite of the prolonged 

 labors of Corssen and Deecke, the theory that attached the Etrusci 

 to the Indo-European stock rests- on such feeble foundations that 

 it is rejected by some of the ablest specialists in this branch ; while 

 the Turanian or Ugric origin, so vehemently advocated by Dr. Isaac 

 Taylor, Mr. Robert Brown, jun., and others, is now dismissed as 

 untenable by all the continental Etruscologists. 



As for those other hypotheses which connect the inhabitants of 

 Etruria with the ancient Copts, with the Israelites, with the Lydi- 

 ans, with the Armenians, with the Hittites, with the Celts, with 

 the Basques, and what not, they never had enough in their favor 

 seriously to attract the attention of scholars. 



One defect in these theories has been that they were all based 

 on one ethnic element only. Their authors seem unaware that in 

 the present condition of ethnologic science it is insufficient to de- 

 duce conclusions from the language only, or the arts only, or the 

 legends or the physical features only, of a nation : all these must 



1 Abstract of a paper by Daniel G. Brinton, M.D., read before the A 

 Philosophical Society, Oct. i8, 1889. 



be taken into account where the problem is complex, and the ver- 

 dict of each must be carefully weighed. 



My attention was especially called to this problem while spend- 

 ing some months in Italy early in the present year, where I had 

 the opportunity of seeing the many museums of Etruscan anti- 

 quities which are so intelligently preserved and displayed iii that 

 country. 



I had reached the Italian shores by the most ancient travelled 

 route from the coast of Africa ; that, indeed, which was taken by 

 the pious /Eneas himself, sailing fi'om Carthage by way of the Isle 

 of Pantellaria to Marsala, the ancient Lilybosum. 



On a clear day one is rarely out of sight of land on this crossing, 

 for no sooner do the bold headlands on either side of ancient Car- 

 thage sink in the south-west than the volcanic cone of Pantellaria 

 rises in sight ; and when that is lost to view, the mountainous coast 

 of southern Sicily is soon perceived. The distance between the 

 two islands is not quite sixty English miles, — an interval of space 

 which was not enough to offer any serious barrier to even very 

 early ploughmen of the Mediterranean main. 



I dwell on these geographic details with a purpose, as you will 

 see later ; and I mention the fact of my journey in Africa, as it was 

 the observations I made there which first led me to the conclusions 

 I am about to present in this paper. Part of my time had been 

 passed on the borders of what is called " la Grande Kabylie," — 

 that portion of the province of Algiers which is inhabited by the 

 Kabyles, the most direct descendants of the ancient Libyans. 



They are a strange people, these Kabyles, both ip customs and 

 physical aspect. Natives of Africa time out of mind, many of them 

 present the purest type of the blonde races, — blue or gray eyes, 

 tawny beard, fair complexion, curly light or reddish hair, muscular 

 in build, and often tall in stature. When I came to look at the 

 many evidently portrait busts on the toiiibs of the ancient Etrus- 

 cans, there was something in the features, in the shape of head and 

 face, which reminded me of these Kabyles. Slight as it was, it in- 

 duced me to compare the two peoples in other details, and it is the 

 result of this comparison which I now submit to be weighed and 

 judged by those competent in such matters. 



Etruscan remains are found in Italy from the Gulf of Salerno 

 to the River Po, and from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Adriatic. 

 One inscription, indeed, has been unearthed at Verona, perhaps 

 one near Chiavenna ; and even at Chur I was shown one, in the 

 Rhffitian Museum, which the curator averred had been dug 

 up near that city. Certain it is, however, that the right bank 

 of the Po was substantially the northern lim.it of Etruscan cul- 

 ture. 



They were essentially city-builders and city-dwellers ; and at the 

 height of their power, which we may put about five or six hundred 

 years before the Christian er^, they appear to have had three fed- 

 erations, of twelve cities each, within the limits I have named. This 

 statement might easily lead to an excessive idea of their num- 

 bers ; but it is well ascertained that the Etruscans constituted by 

 no means the bulk gi the population. They were only the ruling 

 class, a slave-holding aristocracy ; while the large majority of the 

 inhabitants belonged to native Italian tribes, as the Umbri, the 

 Osci, the Ligures, and others. 



All the ancient writers recognize the Etruscans as intruders on 

 Italian soil, and they themsefves are said fully to have acknowl- 

 edged this, and indeed to have had certain legends as to the time 

 and place of their first permanent settlement on the peninsula. It 

 is only in utter defiance of these semi-historic reports that Virchow 

 and others bring them down from the Alps, across the plains of 

 Lombardy, through the defiles of the Apennines, and at length to 

 the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Neither the classical historians 

 nor the Etruscans themselves knew a vestige of such a tradition. 

 The erudite Otfried MuUer, who has collected every thing to be 

 found in Greek and Latin literature concerning them, states that 

 it is the unanimous testimony of antiquity that the earliest Etrus- 

 cans reached the western shore of Italy, crossing the sea from the 

 south ; and he adds that it is undeniable (iinlerigbar) that such 

 was the belief of the Etruscans themselves. We know that by 

 tradition and religious customs they assigned as their first perma- 

 nent settlement the city of Tarquinii, the modern Corneto, on the 

 shore of the Mediterranean, twelve miles north of Civita Vecchia. 



