Jl-NE 14, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



049 



clionlata ' and included thereuuder three 

 divisions, (1) Hemicuorda, or Balanoglos- 

 slch, Cephalodimds and Bhabdopkurkh ; (2) 

 UROCHORDA,or AscicUam, and (3) Cei'UAld- 

 CHOKDA, or Laticeleti. It is the present fasli- 

 ion to consider this afliliation as established, 

 but it has not been proven beyond cavil. 

 As a pi'ovisional hypothesis, however, it is 

 the best of those that have been proposed, 

 and there is no need to ofl'er here any ol)- 

 jeotions. Nevertheless, we should recall the 

 fact that the lancelets and all other so-called 

 • I'rotochordata ' must have very widely ili- 

 verged from their common ancestors and 

 that some of the characteristics of the first 

 are probably the result of degeneration. 

 AVhen, for example, we find a specialized 

 heart and auditory organs m Tunicates, as 

 well as in manj- true invertebrates (even 

 though they be not homologous), it is difii- 

 cult to resist the inference that their ab- 

 sence in the lancelets is due to loss rather 

 than to original failure of development. 

 But now, with the necessar}' precautions 

 and much hesitancj', we may assent to the 

 possibilit}' of the conclusions with which 

 ;Mr. Willej- closes liis work. 



" For the present we may conclude that 

 the proximate ancestor of the Vertebrates 

 was a free-swimming animal intermediate 

 between the Ascidian tadpole and Amphi- 

 o.i».<, possessing the dorsal mouth, hypophy- 

 sis, and restricted notochord of the former: 

 and the myotomes, ccelomic epithelium, and 

 straight alimentary canal of the latter. 

 The ultimate or primordial ancestor of the 

 Vertebrates [or Chordates] would, on the 

 contrary, be a worm-like animal whose or- 

 ganisation was aj)proximately on a level 

 with that of the bilateral ancestoi-s of the 

 Echinoderms." 



The length to which this notice has already 

 extended forbids attention to various other 

 features of Mr. Willcy's work. It must suf- 

 fice to add that the fourth and fifth sections 

 are devoted respectively to ' the Ascidians " 



(pp. 1S()-241) and 'the Protochordata in 

 their relation to the problem of vertebrate 

 descent ' (pp. 2-12-2lt3 j. For the.se we owe 

 further thanks, and for all we feel assured 

 future students of the groups in question will 

 be grateful. Theo. Gill. 



Smithsonian Institction. 



CCRREXT XOTES OX AXTHBOPOLOGY (IX.). 

 THE KITCAL CALENDAR OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 



I.N- the Glolm, Xo. 18, 1S95, Dr. E. Forste- 

 manu has one of his ingenious studies of the 

 Central Ainericiin Calendar, this time that 

 portion of it called bj' the Nahuas the 

 Tonalamatl. or Book of Daj's. This consisted 

 of a period of 2(50 days, and strenuous efibrts 

 have been made by Mrs. Zelia Nuttall and 

 other writers to treat it as a time-count, 

 that is, as an aliquot part of the computa- 

 tion of astronomical years and cycles. 



In this article Dr. Fiirstemann shows that 

 this certainly does not hold good for the 

 Tonalamatl as it constantly recurs in the 

 Mayan manii.scripts. In them it appeai-s to 

 ber introduced for exclusively diviuatory 

 purjtoses, a basis for predicting events re- 

 lating to persons or tribes, or else the 

 weather, wars, disasters, etc. Xot unfre- 

 quently a multiple of the period is embraced 

 in the forecast, and veiy genei-ally refer- 

 ence is made to the divinities assigned to 

 the subdivisions of the Tonalamatl. Or, 

 again, it is occasionally divided into its 

 fourths, fifths or tenths; and what is note- 

 worthy, the manuscripts present numerous 

 similarities in these respects, proving that 

 their WTiters were working on a like system 

 of horoscopy. 



I may add that the result of this investi- 

 gation corroborates the position that I took 

 in my ' Native Calendar of Central America 

 and Mexico' (Phila. 1893), in which I 

 maintained that the Tonalamatl was invented 

 for and practically exclusively applied to 

 divination, and not to the cyclical measure 

 of astronomical time. 



