302 



SCIENCE. 



LN. S. Vol. V. No. 112- 



in which it came. In his nearly sixty years 

 of continuous public service he achieved a 

 distinction in his profession of which his 

 corps may well be proud, and all who have 

 enjoyed personal relations with him will 

 hold him in loving remembrance. M. 



ZOOLOGICAL NOTES. 



THE GENERIC NAMES ICTIS, ARCTOGALE AND 



ARCTOGALIDIA. 



In my Synopsis of the Weasels of North 

 America, published in North American 

 Fauna, No. 11, June, 1896, I adopted the 

 subgenus Ictis of Kaup, 1829, for the ordi- 

 nary weasels. This name, however, is un- 

 tenable for the weasels, being antedated by 

 Idis Schinz, 1824. Schinz, in his ' Natur- 

 geschichte und Abbildungen der Sauge- 

 thiere,' published at Zurich in 1824 (p. 110), 

 gave the name Ictis to the Binturong {Ictis 

 albifrons) , which of course renders it subse- 

 quent use for a different group impossible. 



The subgenus of weasels to which I ap- 

 plied the name Ictis Kaup takes the name 

 Arctogah Kaup, 1829, with Putorius erminea 

 as the type species. This use of Arctogale 

 by Kaup, as stated in my Synopsis of the 

 Weasels already referred to (p. 9) , precludes 

 its subsequent use by Peters and Gray 

 (1864), and later authors for the Palm 

 Civets, a genus of the family Viverridce, for 

 which latter genus I propose the new name 

 Arctogalidia, the type species as before being 

 A. trivirgata. 



C. Hart Merriam. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 ■WOMAN IN SOCIOLOGY. 



The Revue de Sociologie for 1896 (No. 7) 

 has a detailed report of the ' Congres femi- 

 niste ' held at Paris last summer, well worth 

 reading by those interested in the sociologi- 

 cal aspect of the ' woman question,' as pre- 

 sented by women themselves. 



The crucial question of marriage was dis- 



cussed amply, the general tendency being 

 to discard it altogether in favor of free 

 unions, which, it was argued, would gener- 

 ally be monogamic and lasting, in a ripened 

 society. 



The closely related question of prostitu- 

 tion was actively debated. Its legal regu- 

 lation was condemned for many reasons, 

 especially that men have no right to legis- 

 late as to what a woman shall do in that 

 respect. The prevailing view was " that a 

 woman should be absolutely free to sell her- 

 self or not, as she may choose," to quote the 

 words of one of the (female) speakers. 



Co-education proved a stumbling block, 

 strange as that may seem to us. It was 

 considered dangerous and likely to develop 

 mannish women. All agreed that full civil 

 and political rights should be given to wo- 

 men. 



ANCIENT MAN IN ENGLAND. 



The President of the Anthropological In- 

 stitute of Great Britain, Mr. E. W. Bra- 

 brook, published an article in Tlie Archaeolog- 

 ical Journal for September last, touching 

 upon the antiquity of the remains of man in 

 Kent. It will be remembered that the 

 stone relics from the chalk plateau of that 

 region were closely studied by the late Sir 

 Joseph Prestwich and others. They are 

 very rude and geologically apparently very 

 ancient, some claiming that they must be 

 pre-glacial. Mr. Brabrook is of opinion 

 that whenever it was that man first discov- 

 ered the art of chipping stone, it certainly 

 originated in Kent, ' and by all that we 

 can judge from, as early in Kent as any- 

 where.' 



This assertion is none too bold. It does 

 not mean that from Kent this simple art 

 spread over the world, but that in that 

 locality we can trace a real beginning of 

 human culture. Whether it can be fol- 

 lowed in an uninterrupted development 

 down to historic times, he considers more 

 doubtful. 



