788 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 205. 



These were the Pithecanthropus discussion, 

 late palseolithic finds in France and Eng- 

 land, the studylof folk-lore, the mythologies 

 of primitive peoples, the growth of religions 

 and the progress of the Ethnographic Sur- 

 vey of Great Britain. 



It is gratifying to see that in several pas- 

 sages he fully recognizes the uniformity of 

 action in the human mind, and pertinently 

 asks : " It does not surprise us that the 

 same complicated physical operations are 

 performed by far distant people without 

 any communication with each other ; why 

 should it be more surprising that mental 

 operations, often not so complex, should be 

 produced in the same order by people with- 

 out any such communication?" 



A NEOLITHIC LADY. 



We should hardly expect to have a hand- 

 some and accurate portrait bust of an upper- 

 class lady from Neolithic times. But the 

 marvels of science do not diminish. At 

 the last meeting — in August — of the Ger- 

 man Association of Physicians and Natural- 

 ists, Professor Kollmann, of Basel, exhibited 

 the bust of a female whose skull and por- 

 tions of whose skeleton had been exhumed 

 from a Neolithic grave in one of the caverns 

 of southern France. The principles of the 

 reconstruction, as well as modern examples 

 of the method, prove its accuracy. The 

 soft parts of the head and chest can be 

 restored without risk of error. 



This Neolithic dame was rather good- 

 looking, and presented the undoubted fea- 

 tures of the white race, demonstrating, as 

 Professor Kollmann insisted, that empires 

 may crumble and states decay, but the es- 

 sential features of each human race persist 

 indefinitely and unchanged. 



D. G. Brinton. 



TJniveesity of Pennsylvania. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

 The American Mathematical Society will 

 hold its annual meeting at Columbia University, 



on Wednesday, December 28th. The Chicago 

 Section of the Society will hold its fourth regu- 

 lar meeting at the University of Chicago, on 

 December 29th and 30th. 



The American Physiological Society will, as 

 we have already announced, hold its eleventh 

 annual meeting in New York, on Wednesday, 

 Thursday and Friday, December 28, 29 and SO, 

 1898. The first day's session will be held at 

 the College of Physicians and Surgeons, 437 

 West 59th Street ; the second day's session at 

 Schermerhorn Hall, Columbia University, West 

 116th Street, partly in conjunction with the 

 American Psychological Association ; the third 

 day's session at the University and Bellevue 

 Hospital Medical College, 26th Street and 1st 

 Avenue. 



De. C. Willaed Hayes and Mr. Arthur W. 

 Davis, experts of the Nicaragua Canal Com- 

 mission in geology and hydrography respect- 

 ively, have recently returned to Washington 

 after more than a year of field work. Eesults 

 of their scientific investigations are already 

 promised for meetings of scientific societies. 



De. J. Walter Fewkes, of the Bureau of 

 American Ethnology, is in the field, continuing 

 researches among the Hopi Indians. 



De. W J McGee, of the Bureau of American 

 Ethnology, and Professor W. H. Holmes, of 

 the United States National Museum, have re- 

 turned from an ethnologic and archseologic trip 

 through the southern Sierra region of California. 

 Important collections were obtained for the 

 Museum, and interesting observations were 

 made on the surviving California Indians, while 

 the much-discussed archseologic problems of the 

 region received special attention. Both have 

 promised contributions embracing the results of 

 their work to the winter meeting of the Section 

 of Anthropology of the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science to be held in 

 New York next month. 



The American Naturalist states that Dr. W. 

 McM. Wood worth has gone to the Samoan 

 Islands in the interest of the Harvard Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology. 



An MS. Geometry by Lobach^vski has been 

 found at Kazan and is of extraordinary interest 

 as being of much earlier date than anything 



