564 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 825 



Mackenzie basin within two and a haK cen- 

 turies, the presumption being that they have 

 occupied the plains for a long period, whence 

 their want of individuality can not be ex- 

 plained as due to disorganization attendant 

 to the hasty assimilation of a new culture. 

 Sufficient comparative data have been intro- 

 duced under the various headings to show the 

 relative position of the Blackfoot in the 

 northern plains group and, in turn, the rela- 

 tive position of this group in the area at 

 large. It appears that the material culture of 

 the northern plains tribes was relatively least 

 influenced by the tribes of the plateaus on the 

 west, but profoundly aifected by acquisitions 

 from the south and the east. Thus, while tra- 

 dition gives the Blackfoot and Assiniboine 

 women of former times a costume like that of 

 the Cree and Salteaux, within the historical 

 period they have used the well-known form of 

 the Kiowa, Ute, Arapaho and Dakota: again, 

 the tipi of the Blackfoot, like that of the 

 Crow, is of the type known to some Dene 

 tribes and also the Salteaux, in contrast with 

 the type used by the Arapaho, Dakota, et al. 

 Throughout the paper a number of problems 

 in the distribution of cultural traits have 

 been defined for which additional data are 

 needed, especially from the Cree and .Central 

 Algonkin tribes. 



In closing, it seems in order to state that 

 field-work among the Cree, Salteaux, Crow, 

 Hidatsa, Mandan and Dakota has been suffi- 

 ciently advanced to announce papers upon 

 these tribes as the next issues of the series. 

 Clark Wissler 



THE DISCOVERY OF FOSSIL MAMMALS IN 

 CUBA AND THEIR GREAT GEOGRAPH- 

 ICAL IMPORTANCE 



From the standpoint of geographical evolu- 

 tion there was no more important announce- 

 ment at the meeting of the Geological Con- 

 gress at Stockholm than that of the discovery 

 of a large mammalian fauna in the Pleisto- 

 cene caves of central Cuba, by Professor de la 

 Torre, of the University of Havana. Hitherto 

 the known mammals of Cuba consisted of four 

 living and one extinct species of rodents, and 



one species of edentates, according to Amer- 

 ica's great naturalist, the late Professor E. D. 

 Cope (whose conclusions were necessarily 

 adopted by the writer as long ago as 1894). 

 Messrs. Vaughan and Hayes, although not 

 workers in vertebrate paleontology, in writing 

 of Cuba discredited the occurrence of even 

 these few fossils, as reported by other ob- 

 servers, and, furthermore, reported as want- 

 ing, any Jurassic formation in Cuba, although 

 such had been found at an earlier date. 



Professor de la Torre's collection embraces 

 a large Pleistocene fauna of rodents, edentates 

 and other vertebrates, as also excellent speci- 

 mens of Jurassic fossils. Some of these were 

 exhibited at Stockholm and others are at pres- 

 ent at the American Museum of Natural His- 

 tory, New York. These Pleistocene mammals, 

 or other immediate ancestors, must have 

 reached the island of Cuba by land tongues, 

 now submerged to 6,000 feet, except those by 

 way of Florida (of which Cuba is the exten- 

 sion of the continental mass), which are now 

 only 2,100 feet below sea-level. These sub- 

 merged land tongues are themselves incised by 

 canons, which were once land features, and 

 show the recent submergence of the whole 

 Antillean region, which hypothesis was also 

 accepted by Cope. The migrations of these 

 animals confirms a late great continental ele- 

 vation, which can not be ignored in any theory 

 relating to the origin of the glacial period. 

 From the biological point of view, these fossil 

 remains are of extraordinary value, and Pro- 

 fessor de la Torre is to be congratulated on 

 his remarkable discovery. 



Apropos, it may be stated that the writer 

 has also himself obtained from a cavern near 

 the boundary line, on the French and Dutch 

 Island of St. Martin, the remains of Amhly- 

 rhiza, a Pleistocene rodent as large as a deer; 

 notice of which has not hitherto been pub- 

 lished. This rodent reached the northeastern 

 Antilles from South America (Cope) by land 

 tongues between the islands, now submerged, 

 in one case to 4,000 feet. 



The physiographic evidence of a similar late 

 great elevation of Europe, based upon now 

 submerged canons, has also been shovra. by 



