July 22, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



COBBEST NOTES ON ANTEBOPOLOOY. 

 LATER CRIMINOLOGY. 



A FEW years ago most of us had consid- 

 erable faith in Lombroso's ' criminal type.' 

 We looked at ear-lobes and finger-nails, 

 and thought we detected in them the ' stig- 

 mata of degeneration.' 



This illusion was lost when it was found 

 that in fact the criminal was about as well 

 formed as the jury or the Judge. The 

 ' criminal type' fell into oblivion. 



But the ' criminal mind ' remained. The 

 psychology of evil doers must have some- 

 thing in it radically different from that of 

 'respectable people.' We forgot the force 

 of the Eev. John Newton's saying, when 

 he saw a thief led to the gallows : " There 

 goes John Newton, but for the grace of 

 God." 



Now, however, such authorities as Nacke 

 and Baer and Dallemagne have pronounced 

 the whole edifice of ' criminal psychology ' 

 a phantom and a delusion. Criminals are 

 just like other people of their sex, age and 

 condition in life. They are tempted, fall 

 and are caught (especially the last), and 

 that is the only difference. 



Such is the summary of the case in 

 the Centralblatt fiir Anthropologic, 1898, 

 Heft II. 



THE DELUSION OF 'ATAVISM.' 



' Atavism,' or ' reversion,' in the dialect 

 of the evolutionist means a recurrence to a 

 more or less remote ancestral type, and in 

 theory it is brought about through the ' im- 

 mortality,' as it has been boldly called (by 

 Lapouge), of the germplasm (^Keimplasma) . 



Some years ago (1894) I urged in a pa- 

 per before the American Association that 

 most so-called reversions in the human 

 skeleton have other and better explanations. 

 Now comes a Dutch physician, Dr. Kohl- 

 brugge, and maintains that all alleged ata- 

 vistic anomalies are merely neutral varia- 

 tions due to ordinary causes (mal-nutrition, 



use, disuse, etc); and, as they vary from a 

 mean in one direction or the other, they as- 

 sume a deceptive appearance of regressive 

 or progressive variation, the former reach- 

 ing to what has fallaciously been considered 

 reversion and atavism. For this he brings 

 considerable evidence. This book is pub- 

 lished at Utrecht by Scrinerius, and is well 

 reviewed in the Centralblatt fiir Anthro- 

 pologie, 1898, Heft. 2. 



origin of the cliff dwellings. 



In the Bulletin of the American Geogra- 

 phical Society, No. 2, 1898, Mr. Cosmos 

 Mindeleff has a thoughtful article on the 

 origin of the cliff dwellings. 



He shows with satisfactory clearness that 

 they are ' the direct result of the peculiar 

 geographic environment.' Like the Pueb- 

 los, they are completely adapted to the 

 country in which they are found. Only the 

 ' kivas' or estufas may be regarded as a 

 transplanted feature. These are ' undoubt- 

 edly a survival from the time when the 

 people lived in circular lodges, like the Na- 

 vahoes of to-day.' Many of the sacred 

 ceremonies could be properly performed 

 only in a circular chamber. The cliff ruins 

 exhibit a long sequence of time, but not a 

 development. 



He concludes with the general maxim : 

 " The study of an Indian art is the study 

 of the conditions under which it was de- 

 veloped." 



In this connection I should mention a 

 carefully prepared article in the American 

 Anthropologist for May, by Walter Hough, 

 on ' Environmental Interrelations in Ari- 

 zona.' 



D. G. Brinton. 



Univeesity of Pennsylvania. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

 extension of the weather service. 

 The "Weather Bureau has decided to make 

 an important extension of its service by estab- 

 lishing ten or more stations on the Caribbean 



