328 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 193. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 INITIATION CEREMONIES IN AUSTRALIA. 



The bo7'a is the ceremony in many Aus- 

 tralian hordes by which the boy is intro- 

 duced into manhood. It has been described 

 many times, by no one more sympathetic- 

 ally than by Mr. A. B. Howitt, who inherited 

 the literary talent of his distinguished par- 

 ents, William and Mary Howitt. 



No description of it, however, has here- 

 tofore been offered of its ceremonial as 

 practiced on the table land of New South 

 Wales and that neighborhood. This is pre- 

 sented by Mr. E. H. Mathews in the Pro- 

 ceedings of the American Philosophical So- 

 ciety for July, 1898 (No. 157). It there 

 bears the name burbung. He explains the 

 ritual with much minuteness, and adds a 

 map on which is defined the boundaries of 

 the several districts within which each type 

 of ceremony is in force. He adds an ap- 

 pendix on the nguttan, an abbreviated initia- 

 tion rite practiced by some tribes. 



THE TARASCAN LANGUAGE. 



The language known as Tarascan is 

 spoken by the natives of the State of 

 Michoacan. Its words are long, vocalic 

 and sonorous. Previous to the Conquest 

 the Tarascans were a semi-civilized people, 

 city -builders, agricultural and peacefully 

 inclined. 



An 'Arte' of their tongue written by 

 Pather Gilberti was printed in Mexico in 

 1558, and now belongs among the rarest of 

 Americana. Dr. Nicolas Leon, formerly 

 Director of the Michoacan Museum, has ac- 

 complished an acceptable work to students 

 of such subjects by editing a nearly fac- 

 simile edition of it (Mexico, 1898, pp. 3-14). 

 He deserves the greatest credit for its ac- 

 curacy. A limited number of copies have 

 been placed on sale with the house of 

 Hiersemann, Leipzig. 



ANTHROPOLOGICAL PESSIMISM. 



There has been a curious tendency dur- 



ing the last decade among European an- 

 thropologists toward scientific pessimism. 

 Numerous writers, such as Le Bon, La- 

 pouge, Eibot, Nordau, Vierkandt, Nadail- 

 lac, etc., have deplored the traits of modern 

 culture and seen in many of them signs of 

 degeneration. The white race is to be over- 

 whelmed, Europe is to lose its prestige, 

 modern society is to go to the bad. The 

 Latin race is to fall before the Teutonic, 

 the Teutonic before the Slavic, and so on. 

 M. Novicou, in a book reviewed in the 

 Centralblatt fur Anthropologie, calls a halt 

 to these lamentations. He argues that when 

 racial, national and social jealousies cease, 

 the species will be much better off; and 

 what these scientific ' calamity howlers ' are 

 grieving about is precisely this advance- 

 ment. (L^avenir de la race blanche, Paris, 

 1897.) 



D. G. Brinton. 

 Univkesity op Pennsylvania. 



NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 



A RECENT number of the Zeitschrift filr 

 physikalische Chemie contains two interesting 

 investigations. The influence of various 

 vapors on the luminosity of phosphorus 

 has been long known ; as that it is non-lu- 

 minous in pure oxygen unless the pressure 

 is reduced, that turpentine destroys the 

 luminosity, etc. Herr Centnerszwer has 

 experimented with a large number of sub- 

 stances. In the case of organic com- 

 pounds he finds that in homologous series 

 the influence increases with the number of 

 carbon atoms, and is approximately the 

 same for isomers. It increases with double 

 linking of carbon atoms ; is little affected 

 by replacement of hydrogen by chlorin or 

 bromin, but largely affected by iodin sub- 

 stitution. No clue is suggested to the cause 

 of the phenomena. 



The second article is by M. Tanatar on 

 the perborates. These are formed by the 

 electrolysis of a concentrated solution of 



