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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 122. 



fact of a wide and essential variation 

 rather than the accident of the existence of 

 a connecting link. 



One more example and I am done. The 

 ■cougar, or puma, is a perfectly distinct and 

 well marked kind of cat, noteworthy not 

 only for the sharpness with which its color 

 ^nd other points differentiate it from its 

 spotted relatives, but also for the extent of 

 its range. It seems to me it would be un- 

 wise because of any trivial differences to es- 

 tablish various species of cougars, separa- 

 ting the dilferent races by terms of the 

 same weight by which we separate, for 

 instance, any one of them from the totally 

 different jaguar. Here again the essential 

 point is the likeness the cougars bear to one 

 another, and their wide unlikeness to the 

 great spotted cats. The Latin name we give 

 them should indicate, by the employment 

 of the generic term, their resemblance to all 

 other cats, and by the employment of the 

 specific term their fundamental agreement 

 among themselves on points wherein they 

 differ from all other cats. Of course, it 

 would be possible to make the pumas into 

 one genus, with another for the leopards, 

 a,nother for the lions, etc., etc.; but this 

 again seems to me to be clumsy and, on the 

 whole, misleading. 



I quite realize that there is a certain 

 amount of presumption in a layman criti- 

 cising any conclusion reached by a trained 

 scientific expert of the standing of Dr. 

 Merriam. It must be remembered that my 

 criticism is directed only to the expediency 

 of the terminology by which he expresses 

 certain of his results, and not in the least 

 to the results themselves ; in fact, it is be- 

 cause I am so ardent an admirer of Dr. 

 Merriam's work that I wish to see it made, 

 without any sacrifice of accuracy, so com- 

 prehensible in its terms as to be easily 

 understood by the lay mind. 



Theodore Roosevelt. 



COBBENT NOTES ON ANTHBOPOLOGY. 

 contributions to ethno-botany. 



In the last number of the Internat. Arcliiv 

 fur Mhnographie, the editor. Dr. Schmeltz, 

 reviews the progress of ethno-botany, re- 

 ferring with special emphasis to Professor 

 Guppy's ' plant names of Polynesia ' (pub- 

 lished by the Victoria Institute, 1895). 

 Such studies cast a light upon the early 

 migration of tribes which cannot be obtained 

 from other sources. 



An interesting example is given in the 

 American Anthroiiologist, February, by Mr. 

 Walter Hough. It is upon ' The Hopi in 

 relation to their Plant Environment.' How 

 important their floral world, sparse as it is, 

 has been to this people may be judged from 

 the author's remark: " There is almost no 

 plant which the Hopi do not use in some 

 way, and there is none to which they have 

 not given a name." An ample list is added, 

 including the native name, the botanical 

 title and the use to which the plant is put. 



cannibalism in EUROPE. 



We rarely reflect how near in time mod- 

 ern civilization is to savagery. Less than 

 a thousand years ago the Picts of Great 

 Britain were man-eating barbarians. The 

 recent researches of Matiegka, in Bohemia, 

 prove that anthropophagy prevailed there 

 in the bronze age {Centralblatt fur Anthro- 

 pologie, January, 1897) . If we can trust 

 mediaeval authorities quoted by Dr. Krauss 

 in the Der Urquell, B. I., they held dis- 

 tinctly in memory the period when the 

 Wends and Slavs ' killed, cooked and ate ' 

 their aged relatives. 



But this is quite surpassed by the evi- 

 dence addicted by the same writer that the 

 southern Slavonians even, down to well 

 within the present century were familiar 

 with the custom of ceremonially eating the 

 flesh of their enemies. Indeed, one of their 

 songs, as late as 1820, refers to it as a 

 recognized procedure. To taste the broth 



