862 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 207. 



like the temperance question, depending 

 more upon public sentiment than upon law, 

 since laws are inoperative without public 

 approval to enforce them. So long as fash- 

 ion demands feathers and there are birds to 

 supplj' them, so long will feathers be worn, 

 and it is to be doubted if laws directed 

 against the wearing of feathers would be 

 held constitutional. Attention was justly 

 called to the collecting fad which possesses 

 so many of our younger ornithologists, and 

 which in its worst phases is not a whit bet- 

 ter than the collecting of jiostage stamps, 

 only to see how many may be obtained. 

 The mere possession of any number of bird 

 skins and bird eggs no more makes an 

 ornithologist than the owning of paints and 

 brushes constitutes an artist, j'et it is evi- 

 dent from the abundant catalogues of deal- 

 ers in bird skins and eggs that there is far 

 greater demand for these than the needs of 

 ornithology warrant. From a scientific 

 standpoint Dr. Jonathan Dwight's observa- 

 tions on the moulting of birds and Mr. 

 William Palmer's on the earlj^ stages of 

 feathers were the most important presented, 

 dealing as they did with subjects concern- 

 ing which we have much to learn, and 

 which have important bearings on the phy- 

 logeny and classification of birds. While 

 these subjects have both been worked at in 

 a more or less desultory way, we need a 

 large number of carefully accumulated facts 

 on both points. Mr. Palmer presented a 

 genealogical tree and scheme of classifica- 

 tion based on the condition of the neossop- 

 tiles, or first feathers, but this is to be re- 

 garded as purely tentative. While birds 

 must be classified by the resultant of a num- 

 ber of characters, and not by any one or 

 two, yet Dr. Gadow has pointed out the 

 value of taxonomic arrangements based on 

 a single character, since each will contribute 

 something good ; therefore, it is to be hoped 

 that Mr. Palmer will continue his work. 



F. A. L. 



GUBBENT NOTES ON ANTHBOPOLOGY. 

 ORIGIN OF NEOLITHIC AET IN FRANCE. 



M. Gabriel Carrieee has an article in 

 i' Anthropologie, August, 1898, on the pal- 

 ethnology of southern France, in the course 

 of which he makes some important general 

 statements. The same population, ethni- 

 cally, continued after the neolithic period 

 through the bronze age. The introduction 

 of metal was not accompanied bj^ conquest 

 and a change of physical type. The con- 

 structors of the dolmens and other mega- 

 lithic monuments developed their own cul- 

 ture, and their remains have not yielded a 

 single object to which one should attribute 

 an oriental origin, or class with the art 

 products of Hissarlik, Mj'cence or Egypt. 



This conclusion is fully in the line of 

 many recent researches in western Europe, 

 which dispel the old notion that its primitive 

 culture was introduced by Phenician, Greek 

 or Egyptian navigators. 



PALEOLITHIC stations IN RUSSIA. 



Deposits which can be referred to the 

 Palseolithic period are excessivelj' rare in 

 Eussia ; indeed, some archajologists deny 

 that any have been found. One rather 

 promising site is on the right bank of the 

 i'iver Dnieper, close to the city of Kiew. 

 In a gravel deposit there, directlj' overlying 

 the tertiary clay, and at a depth of 19 

 meters below the surface, M. Chvojka un- 

 earthed bones of the mammoth and cave 

 bear, along with flint chips, charcoal and 

 dressed stones of rude form. While the 

 finder believed the deposit of inter-glacial 

 origin. Professor Armachevskj', of the 

 University of Kiew, places it post-glacial ; 

 and the types of stone implements, accord- 

 ing to M. Volkov, who reports the facts, are 

 not extremely ancient, but point rather to 

 the period of transition from the palaeolithic 

 to the neolithic, of which latter period well- 

 marked remains exist in the same locality. 

 This station, therefore, is not certainly very 



