128 



■SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. I. No. 5. 



thropologie. Mr. McGuire returns to the 

 charge in the Januarj' number of the Na- 

 turalist, but hardly strengthens his position. 

 The discussion is not yet terminated. 

 ' Replies ' are announced; but at present, it 

 must be said that the deductive and infer- 

 ential method in archaeology appears to be 

 a dubious mode of procedure. 



THE VAJSTNIC LAI^'GUAGE. 



Most readers need not be told that the 

 Vannic language means that which was 

 once spoken in the region around Lake 

 Yan, in modern Armenia, by the people 

 who called themselves Kaldi. 



They came into contact with the Assjrri- 

 ans about 885 B. C, and adopted from them 

 the cuneiform writing, by means of which 

 they preserved then- records in their own 

 tongue. These have been zealously studied 

 and collected of recent years, but without 

 positive results. Professor Sayce maintains 

 that the Vannic was a G-eorgian dialect, and 

 has published from it various translations. 

 Last summer, before the Fi-ench Academy, 

 M. Oppert pronounced all these translations 

 illusory, denied that we know a single 

 word of the tongue, and laughed at the 

 names of the kings so seriously put forth 

 by Sayce. The latter, however, in the Jour- 

 nal of the Royal Asiatic Society for October 

 last, prints a bilingual inscription in good 

 Assji'ian and Vannic, where the texts cor- 

 respond almost line for line, and claims in 

 a number of examples to have proved by 

 this confrontation the correctness of his 

 earlier translations. He acknowledges that 

 our defective acquaintance mth the As- 

 syrian is a difi&cult obstacle to a complete 

 rendering. 



The evidence that the Vannic was akin to 

 the Georgian is, however, not increased by 

 this bilingual text. It still remains more 

 probable that it was either ancient Arme- 

 nian, or some other long extinct Aryan 

 dialect ; possiblj' near to the Thracian, for 



wliicli there is a little evidence in the simi- 

 laritj^ of proper names. The jioint is one 

 of considerable ethnographic importance. 



REGENT PUBLICATIONS ON CEANIOLOGY. 



Two important contributions on the Cra- 

 niology of the South American Indians have 

 recent!}^ appeared. 



The first is bj^ Dr. Ten Kate on the skulls 

 of the Araucanians of the Argentine Repub- 

 lic. His material was 119 crania in the 

 Museum of La Plata (where his paper was 

 published). He confii-ms the statement 

 quoted in my Amevican Race, p. 324, that 

 these Indians are markedlj' brachj^cephalic, 

 96 out of the 119 having a cephalic index 

 above 80. The proportion of artificially de- 

 formed specimens is large, numbering about 

 82 per cent. They present quite diverse 

 varieties of deformation. 



Two series from Southern Argentina, in 

 the valley of the Rio Negro, are described 

 with his cu.stomary minuteness by Dr. R. 

 Virchow in the Proceedings of the Berlin 

 Anthropological Society for 1894, pp. 386- 

 408. One series was ft-om the base of the 

 Cordillera, and evidently was of Ai'aucanian 

 origin ; the other, from near the Atlantic 

 coast, presented marked dolichocephaly and 

 probably came from Tzoneca burials. In 

 this article Dr. Virchow incorporates some 

 instructive observations on artificial cranial 

 deformities in America generally, making a 

 useful appendix to his remarks on that sub- 

 ject in his Crania Ethnica Americana. 



The Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 

 No. 969, just issued, is a translation of The 

 Varieties of the Human Species hj Giu- 

 seppe Sergi, Professor of Anthropology in 

 the University of Rome. His method of 

 classification is based upon the theories 

 of craniology of which he himself is the 

 author. Instead of niultiplj-ing, ad infini- 

 tum, the measurements of the skull as so 

 manj' craniologists affect, he classifies ac- 

 cording to broad outlines of cranial shape, 



