Septembbe 2, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



297 



these objects from the drift of France. He 

 claims that they represent the most common 

 instruments of palteolithic man. They very 

 rarely show distinct secondary chipping or 

 the bulb of percussion ; for which reasons 

 his arguments do not seem to have con- 

 vinced the Society ; yet some of the speci- 

 mens he figures might well pass as human 

 handiwork, (ies veriktbles Instruments usiiels 

 de I'age de la Pierre. Paris, Imprimerie La- 

 rousse, 1897.) 



WAS BUDDHA A MONGOLIAN ? 



Fergusson and others have claimed that 

 the celebrated founder of Buddhism was of 

 Mongolian origin. With an astonishing 

 ignorance of ethnic traits, Fergusson sup- 

 ported this by the bold assertion that in 

 India Buddha is always represented with 

 wooly hair ! 



Professor E. W. Hopkins, of Yale, in his 

 ' Notes from India ' in the last (19th) vol- 

 ume of the ' Journal of the American Or- 

 iental Society,' takes occasion to report on 

 this point. Many ancient figures of Buddha 

 have the hair gathered up in little spiral, 

 conch-shaped curls. According to tradi- 

 tion Buddha had curly hair and wore it 

 short. From an examination of many 

 statues it was evidently wavy, but never 

 wooly. In some instances it is colored red. 

 The general evidence is that so far as hair 

 was concerned he preserved the type of the 

 white race, and was equally remote from 

 the Mongolian and the Negro. 



MEXICAN ANTIQUITIES. 



Professor Frederick Starr is preparing 

 a ' Manual of Mexican Archaeology,' which 

 is sure to be a complete and valuable work, 

 and one much needed at this time. 



He anticipates portions of it in Vol. VII. 

 of the ' Proceedings of the Davenport Acad- 

 emy of Natural Sciences,' by an article on 

 ' Notched Bones from Mexico,' in which he 

 explains those described by Dr. Lumholtz 

 to be musical instruments (as I also did in 



Science, May 27). Another article is on a 

 shell inscription from Tula. It shows a 

 fragment of Haliotis shell with four Mayan 

 characters engraved upon it. This leads 

 him to what he calls the ' startling ' conclu- 

 sion that there were trade relations between 

 Tula, at the time of its occupancy, and the 

 Mayan districts. But that fact is well 

 known from Sahagun's ' History ;' and the 

 Tula, some forty miles north of Mexico, 

 was surely not Tula the Magnificent, where 

 Quetzalcoatl ruled his million of warriors ! 

 D. G. Beinton. 

 Univeesity of Pennsylvania. 



NOTES ON INORGANIC CSEMISTBY. 

 The place of helium and argon in the 

 periodic system has already caused much 

 discussion, and now, that several other ele- 

 ments of similar nature have been discov- 

 ered, the conjectures as to what to do with 

 the whole group will be forthcoming doubt- 

 less in great profusion. Happily the me- 

 lange known as the Group VIII. in Mende- 

 leef's table offers a refuge equal to almost 

 any emergency that may arise. One ele- 

 ment might exist in this group with an 

 atomic weight somewhere from 1 to 7, 

 another 19 to 23, another or even three be- 

 tween 36 and 39, three more between 80 

 and 85, three more between 128 and 132, to 

 say nothing of possibilities of higher atomic 

 weight. It is even possible that three ele- 

 ments could exist in place of each of the 

 first two. From their position in the table, 

 nothing could be foretold as to the proper- 

 ties of elements filling these places, save 

 perhaps that their character would be 

 neither positive nor negative (i. e., without 

 chemical affinity ?) and that their valence 

 would be zero(i. e., forming no compounds?). 

 These new elements, as far as they have 

 been described, do singularly fulfil these 

 conditions, helium falling into the first place, 

 neon the second, argon and metargon the 

 the third and krypton the fourth. It is, 



