September 



1892.] 



SCIENCE. 



^73 



seem to be aware, why these twenty-one vocabularies were col- 

 lected by a priest in 1788 ; but I have no hesitation in attributing 

 them to the desire to comply with the wishes of the empress of 

 the Russias, and am sure it could be readily shown. 



Their publication is praiseworthy, and carefully made; but it 

 does not offer any new material on Central- American dialects in 

 the sense of new stocks. Two of the Maya dialects, the so-called 

 Pupuluca and Subinha, are slightly different from those already 

 known; and the language termed "Lean y Mulia " is the same as 

 what we know from other sources under the more appropriate 

 name Xicaque. The vocabularies include the Chapaneo of Chiapas 

 and several Costa Rican dialects, though the majority are branches 

 of the Maya family. 



An Anatomical Criterion to Distinguish Male from Female 

 Skulls, 



It has long been most earnestly desired to discover some ana- 

 tomical feature which would enable us to distinguish the skulls 

 of the sexes. Two years ago Virchow declared that all alleged 

 modes of differentiation so far discovered were worthless. Very 

 lately Dr. Thiem-Cottbus, in the ' 'Arcbiv ftlr Klinische Chirurgie," 

 Band 37, describes what seems a satisfactory craniological cri- 

 terion of sex. 



The 03 tympanicum forms part of the posterior wall of the 

 glenoid cavity of the inferior maxillary, and also closes in front 

 and below the bony meatus of the ear. It arises perpendicularly 

 from the petrous portion of the temporal bone posteriorily, and 

 turns backward, in the woman at about half the height of the 

 mastoid process, but in man at a less height. In the male, the 

 bone developes a sharp edge, which divides to form the sheath of 

 the styloid process; but in woman this sharpened edge does not 

 exist, the bone is rounded into a tubercular form, and the fossa is 

 shallower and flatter. 



Thus, in the male this fossa-tympanico-stylo-mastoidea is small, 

 and the posterior wall of the glenoid cavity extends so deep that 

 it is not possible for the condyloid process to slip over it. In the 

 female, it is so much more spacious that this feature alone will 

 serve to distinguish the crania of one sex from the other; and it 

 also explains the surgical fact that luxation backward of the in- 

 ferior maxillary is observed only in women. 



An Etruscan Ritual Book. 



Before Rome was founded, the powerful federation of the 

 Etruscans had spread an advanced civilization over central Italy, 

 capping her hill-tops with fortifications, whose impregnable walls 

 still bid defiance to time. But by the beginning of our era, the 

 Etruscan people, and language and religion, had disappeared, 

 leaving no testimony but their tombs. From these some five 

 thousand inscriptions have been copied, but they tell us little. 

 Not a single word of the language has been identified beyond per- 

 adventure. 



The Etruscan religion profoundly modified that of Rome. They 

 were a literary people, and in very early times vs^rote numerous 

 religious books. These ai-e referred to by Livy as works of di- 

 vination, fatales libri, and by Cicero as books of ritual, Etrusco- 

 rum ritiiales libri, or as Etruscan documents, chartcB Etruscce; 

 and even in the latter's day, they were in use by the Roman 

 priesthood. 



It seems an incredible piece of good fortune that one such 

 Etruscan Ritual Book should turn up in fair preservation in the 

 year 1891; but such seems to be the case. Two or three centu- 

 ries, B.C., a mummifler of Alexandria bought a lot of waste paper 

 and old rags for use in his business, and employed some of it in 

 wrapping the corpse of a young lady. About 1849 her mummy 

 was brought to Austria, and last year in her wrappings this 

 Etruscan book was identified by Professor Krall. The Vienna 

 Academy of Sciences has undertaken its publication, and on it;s 

 appearance I shall return again to its curious history and char- 

 acter. 



Ethnography of the Finns. 



One of the most interesting questions in the ethnic history of 

 the north of Europe is that concerned with the origin and migra- 



tion of the Finns. They are ancient settlers, as they vere known 

 to the Romans of the time of Tacitus as dwellers on the Baltic 

 Sea. In language they are first cousins of the Magyars of Hun- 

 gary and also of the Samoyeds of Siberia. Indeed, some main- 

 tain that their name " Suomi " is from the same radical as 

 "Samoyed." 



Those resident in Finland proper rarely show any marked Mon- 

 golian appearance, as I can say from personal observation ; but 

 their strain is deeply Aryanized. A much less familiar branch 

 of them are the Sirieni or Syranen, who dwell in rorth-eastem 

 Russia, on both slopes of the Ural Mountains, extending east to 

 the valley of the river Ob, on which the town of Muji is one of 

 their principal resorts, in latitude 65" north. 



This group has been carefully studied by M. Stephen Sommier, 

 whose volume, " Sirieni, Ostiacchi e Samoiedi dell'Ob," appeared 

 a few years ago in Florence. From numerous anthropometrical 

 measurements he carried out, he satisfactorily showed that the 

 Sirieni are Germanized Finns, quite like their relatives on the 

 Baltic, and differing widely from the Ostiaks and Voguls to the 

 east. It is probable, indeed, that the Sirieni, who are much given 

 to trading and wandering, are an offshoot of the western branch 

 of the stock, rather than the eastern. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The sixth annual convention of the Association of American 

 Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations will meet in New 

 Orleans, La., on Nov. 15, as announced by the chairman of the 

 executive committee. Titles of papers should be sent to C. F. 

 Atkinson, Auburn, Ala., before Oct. 1. It is proposed to discuss 

 the different subjects assigned to station workers for the Colum- 

 bian exhibition. 



— A timely book is "The Career of Columbus," by Charles 

 Elton, M.P., announced by the Cassell Publishing Company. 



— Professor D. S. Margoliouth of Oxford has undertaken to 

 translate the great Arabic geographical dictionary. 



— G. P. Putnam's Sons are about to publish a new edition of 

 Professor F. W. Taussig's "Tariff History," enlarged by about 100 

 pages of new matter, including a discussion of the McKinley 

 Bill. 



— Francis P. Harper wiU publish shortly a new and important 

 edition of Lewis and Clarke's " Expedition over the Rocky Moun- 

 tains," on which Dr. Elliott Coues has been engaged for some 

 time. He is specially fitted for the task, and the index to this 

 faithful reprint of the Philadelphia edition of 1814 will be of great 

 scientific value. 



— Harper & Brothers will soon publish an interesting work by 

 Walter Besant, entitled " London," which wall not be a history of 

 the city as a body politic, but the story of the life of the people at 

 different periods from the earliest historical records to the times of 

 the Georges, and will be fully illustrated. 



— Edward Stern & Co., Philadelphia, will publish at once "In 

 Arctic Seas," by Dr. R. N. Keely, in which the author, who ac- 

 companied in the capacity of surgeon the West Greenland Expe- 

 dition last Slimmer, gives an account of the incidents of the voy- 

 age of the "Kite," conveying Lieutenant Peary's party to MoCor- 

 mick's Bay. 



— On Sept. 1, The Open Court (Chicago, 111.) began the publi- 

 cation of a series of articles by Mr. Charles S. Peirce, to be enti- 

 tled " The Critic of Arguments." (The word crih'chere means an 

 art, like logic.) This series will be devoted to a critical and his- 

 torical discussion of the methods of reasoning. Mr. Charles S. 

 Peirce is one of the most distinguished scholars and mathemati- 

 cians of which America boasts. But especially in the depart- 

 ment of modern logic has his work contributed, perhaps more 

 than that of any other living investigator, to the permanent ad- 

 vancement of science. The results of his thought are, however, 

 for the most part locked up in the proceedings and reports of 

 learned societies, and now for the firet time, in The Open Court, 

 are they to be presented in a less rigid and technical form, and 

 made accessible to all who place a value on right thinking. 



