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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XX. No. 508 



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BOGDANOV ON THE PRIMITIVE RUSSIANS. 



BT JOHN BEDDOE, LL.D , P.R.S. 



The Anthropological Congress lately held at Moscow, however 

 much its attractions and its attendance may have been diminished 

 by the cholera scare, has at least produced one very notable and 

 interesting paper — that by the veteran Professor Anatole Bog- 

 danov, entitled "Quelle est la race la plus ancienne de la Russia 

 centralef" In it Bogdanov recalls the fact that twenty-five years 

 have elapsed since he published his first researches into the sub- 

 ject on which he now delivers a fairly matured opinion. During 

 a great part of the interval he has been laboring in this field and 

 collecting material, not from the centre only, but from all parts 

 of Russia, though at times he seems to have abandoned the effort 

 for a while in a kind of despair. 



His earlier researches led him to form the opinion that thekur- 

 gans (tumuli) of central Russia, believed to date from the ninth up 

 to even the fifteenth century, contained the remains of two races, 

 one dolichocephalic, tall and strongly made, with light-brown 

 hair, the other smaller, with short, broad head and dark-brown 

 hair. The former he found preponderated in the earlier kurgans, 

 and in the south-western part of the central provinces, the latter 

 at later dates and more to the north-east. In spite of the mode of 

 location, but in accordance with the apparent dates, those who 

 considered these facts mostly agreed that the dolichocephals were 

 of Finnish kindred, Merians probably, and that the shorter heads 

 belonged to the Slavs who invaded and incorporated them. 



Later discoveries and the products of a wider field do not, in 

 Bogdanov's opinion, confirm this view. The^e long skulls, which, 

 though the occiput projects considerably, have usually well-devel- 

 oped frontal regions, and are by no means of low type, are found 

 to prevail in the older interments throughout the west and south 

 as well as the centre of Russia, while short heads abound in the 

 north and east, in the ancient kurgans of the Uralian region and 

 in those of the Bashkir territory. Bogdanov inclines to the 

 opinion of Poesche, that the Slavs "descended in reality from a 

 dolichocephalic source. " And, seeing that the modern Slavs are 

 on the whole moderately brachycephalic, he thinks that the pre- 

 vailing form has somewhat changed through contact and crossing 

 with races having broader heads (meaning probably the Mongoloid 

 races which lie and have lain to the east of them), but also owing 

 to the operation of other (external) causes. " With the progress 

 of civiliaation," he says, "begins another series of infiuences, 

 which has played a great part in the history of peoples, and may 

 play a still greater one in the future, because the conditions of 

 civilization bring about necessarily in the course of time an in- 

 crease of brachycephalism. . . . Dolichocephalism declines more 

 and more in Europe, and the heads become larger and finer." 



Thus does Bogdanov range himself on the side of the short heads 

 in the curious controversy which is arising in Europe as to the 

 relative merits of the two leading forms of cranium, and to which 

 Obedenare, Laponge, and Von Ammon have contributed both 

 facts and opinions. I recollect asking Professor Rokitansky, five 

 and thirty years ago, whether the Czechs were not brachycephalic. 

 Rokitansky was himself a Bohemian, and he was evidently net- 

 tled by a question which he thought touched upon a weak point 

 in his fellow-countrymen. "Ah! well!" he said, "they are a 

 very clever people for all that." On the other hand, Messrs. 

 Jacobs and Spielmann, in their recent paper on the physical char- 

 acters of British Jews, almost apologized for the long-headedness 

 (in a physical sense) of the Sephardim, as a mark of inferiority ! 

 Since Topinard claimed the Aryan language as the original prop- 

 erty of the short-headed Kelto-Slavo-Gaicha family, their congen- 

 ers have taken heart, and threaten to push us long heads from our 

 stools of conceit. 



Whence came these aboriginal dolichocephals of Russia? " Not 

 from Asia or the Caucasus," says Bogdanov. " It is more likely 

 that they came from the Danube, where we find at present doli- 

 chocephaly predominant [in Bulgaria]. They probably followed 

 the Dnieper into White Russia, thence to Novgorod and into 

 Sweden. This was the northward stream. About the same time 

 there was probably an eastward current through Minsk to Yaro- 

 slav and Moscow, and a western one by Galicia, the Vistula, and 

 the Danube." 



ON "TYPE-SPECIMENS" AND " TYPE- FIGURES" IN 

 ENTOMOLOGY. 



BY W. F. KIRBY, LONDON, ENG. 



A "TYPE specimen" is the specimen of an insect from which 

 the original describer drew up the first description of a species; 

 and it is often of great importance to settle disputed points of no- 

 menclature, where any doubt exists respecting the actual identifi- 

 cation of a species; for if we are certain that we have the original 

 specimen before us, no further dispute is possible. A "type- 

 figure " is the figure quoted by the original describer as illustrating 

 his species, or is a figure supposed to represent the species pub- 

 lished by a later author. 



This appears plain enough; but in practice it is not always sat- 

 isfactory. The specimens de-scribed by the older authors, such as 

 Linne and Fabricius, are not always in existence, and in other cases 

 it is not always certain that the specimens in various old collec- 

 tions supposed to represent the tyjies of these authors are actually 

 the real specimens which they described. Again, Linne frequently 

 quoted several figures of differeot species as illustrating one of his 

 species; and, in several other cases, ^le seems to have described 

 quite different species in his successive works. Under these cir- 

 cumstances it does not follow that a specimen, even if ticketed by 

 Linne himself, is necessarily the species which he originally de- 

 scribed. Some of the later authors, too, such as Miiller and 

 Hontheim, have figured insects as species of Linne, and applied 

 wrong Linnean names to their figures in the most reckless manner. 



In the case of Fabricius, we already meet with far more careful 

 and conscientious work; and when Fabricius describes an insect 

 from a known locality, there is often very little doubt about what 

 he really intended. But his names, too, were frequently misap- 

 plied by his contemporaries; and it is only lately that several in- 

 sects which he described from India, but which his contemporaries 

 mistook to refer to European species more or less resembling them, 

 have been correctly identified. Gross eiTors. too, have been com- 

 mitted by certain recent authors who have found specimens of 

 insects supposed to have been named by Fabricius in old collec- 

 tions, and have jumped to the conclusion that they were his 

 original types, though neither the locality nor the description 

 may have applied to them at all. This does not apply to collec- 

 tions indubitably referred to by Fabricius, such as the Banksian 

 and Hunterian, which may usually be regarded as authoritative. 



Again, some authors have cared more for the condition of their 

 specimens than for scientific accuracy, and may in some cases 

 have actually got rid of their own types and replaced them with 

 better specimens, possibly of a different species more or less re- 



