262 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XXI. No. 536 



that the opponents of Lombroso did not understand his assertions, 

 and that they confused the discussion by introducing speculative 

 questions as to the abstract nature of crime, quite out of place 

 in a study in natural history ; and much more to the same 

 effect. 



The other'paper is by the late Professor Meynert, and is printed 

 in the Mittheilungen of the Vienna Anthropological Society. It is 

 principally occupied with a refutation of Lombroso's assertion 

 that genius is a pathological development, or the result of such; 

 but also attacks his theory of crime as attributable to a degenera- 

 tion^of the brain and a reversion to an atavistic condition of the 

 race. Several serious errors in Lombroso's method of handling 

 statistics are pointed out; as, for instance, his neglect of the fact 

 that the depraved physique of the criminal is owing to his unhy- 

 gienic surroundings, and to attribute his criminality to such phy- 

 sique is to confuse concomitant with cause. Again, in comparing 

 criminals with wild beasts, he confounds the methods of natural 

 history with that of judicial procedure. 



A careful reading of the two articles will prove entertaining. 



A Chemical Test of the Antiquity of Bones. 



The effort was made by M. Adolphe Carnot last summer, in a 

 paper read before the Academie des Sciences, Paris, to establish 

 a chemical measure of the antiquity of bones. He claimed that 

 this is shown by the amount of fluorine they contain. Its rela- 

 tive proportion increases as the bones are older. Representing 

 the maximum by 1, modern bones show but .06, those from the 

 old quaternary strata .35, those from the tertiary .64. Hence, 

 when human and other bones are found in the same strata, and 

 the question whether they should be assigned to the same age 

 arises, analysis is claimed to offer a solution; and M. Emile 

 Riviere had recourse to it as the crucial test in the disputed age 

 of some human bones found along with those of extinct species 

 in the gravels near Billancourt, on the Seine; proving, he be- 

 lieved, that the human bones were intrusive and late. 



It seems to me, however, that this test, which I learn about 

 from an abstract in the Journal de I'AUiance Scientifique, March 

 15, is open to some serious risks. 



Not only do the inorganic constituents of bone differ largely 

 in the different osseous tissues of the same skeleton, but they 

 notoriously vary greatly at the different epochs of life. Accord- 

 ing to the analyses of Heintz, the fluoride of calcium in the av- 

 erage femur of an adult is about 3.5 of its inorganic constituents. 

 Where the proportion in ancient bones differs notably from that 

 in modern, how can we decide what part of it is owing to post 

 mortem changes conditioned on the quality of the soil, the 

 amount of percolation, the length of exposure before inhumation, 

 and the like incidents ? While it would be most desirable to have 

 at hand a positive chemical test of antiquity, we must hesitate 

 to accept as conclusive one which seems exposed to be influenced 

 by these precarious conditions. 



Cave-Hunting on the Mediterranean. 



Shortly after leaving the French frontier on the road which 

 leads from Marseilles to Genoa, the track penetrates by a tunnel 

 the Baousse Rousse, or Red Rocks, the sea front of which is per- 

 forated with natural caverns looking out on the blue Mediter- 

 ranean. They have furnished rich mines for the archaeologist, 

 as they were selected by the earliest of the human race who 

 dwelt there as favorite resting-places for both the living and the 

 dead. Fresh discoveries were made in one of the grottoes in 

 February, 1892, of which a note will be found in Science, July 36, 

 1893, giving the opinion of J. Vaughan Jennings. A still more 

 elaborate study was made by Dr. Verneau, which appears in L'An- 

 ihropologie, 1892, No. 5. His conclusions, briefly, are that the three 

 skeletons found aide by side were an interment dating from a 

 period intermediate between the quaternary and the neolithic 

 epochs; but it had been made in strata containing traces of an 

 older and different industry, which could properly be called 

 quaternary. 



Some escavations of MM. Fournier and Riviere, published in 

 Le Natnraliste, Feb. 15, 1893, revealed a station of the Magda- 

 lenian epo<:h in a rock-shelter at La Corbiere, near Marseilles, 



and probably as ancient a relic-bearing stratum as has been 

 found in that district. 



A curious fact about it was that at the remotest corner of the 

 small grotto was a skeleton, the bones in place, but with no 

 signs of interment, and no funerary objects. Evidently the 

 corpse had been left to decay where the man breathed his last. 

 Either he lived alone, or the others had deserted the grotto on 

 his death. The authors refer to another such instance in another 

 shelter. Probably in these, we see the signs of that horror of 

 death which is one of the earliest prompters of the religious in- 

 stinct. Tribes are known to history who deserted the dwelling 

 and the corpse within it, when the owner died. 



Researches in Early Aryan Ethnology. 



One of the most earnest students of the early Aryan tribes is 

 Professor Wilhelm Tomaschek, of the University of Vienna. In 

 a late number of the Mittheilungen of the Anthropological. Society 

 of that city he discusses wiHi profound erudition the relationship 

 of the ancient Illyrians and Thracians. 



In its first paragraphs he declares himself a believer that the 

 primitive Aryan speech developed itself in Eurojw, wholly unin- 

 fluenced by either Semitic, Coptic, or other affiliations. From 

 an extended comparison of the relics of ancient Illyrian and 

 Thracian — principally proper names — he reaches the conclu- 

 sion that the east European group of Aryan tongues should be 

 divided into two sub-groups, the one including the Thracian, 

 Phrygian, and Armenian, the analogies of which are with the 

 Celtic and Italic dialects of western Europe; the other compris- 

 ing the Slavic and fUyrian idioms, whose analogies are with the 

 Lithuanian of the Baltic. The modern Albanian is a true de- 

 scendant of the Illyrian, though it has suffered much decay, and 

 also presents a number of non- Aryan radicals, which, the author 

 ventures to suggest, survived from the pre Aryan Ligurian speech 

 of the locality. The Veneti of northern, and the lapyges of 

 southern Italy belonged without doubt to the Illyrian stock. The 

 Tliracian language itself, a pure Indo-Germanic tongue, became 

 entirely extinct ; but the author announces the near publication 

 of a work in which he has collected all known relics of it as pre- 

 served in epitaphs, inscriptions, and proper names. 



The Study of Folk-Tales. 



A valuable addition to the science of folk-lore is a work just 

 published by the English Folk lore Society, from the pen of Miss 

 Marian R. Cox. It is a volume of 535 pages, a monograph on 

 the tale of Cinderella, giving 345 variants, with abundant notes 

 and discussions of analogous narratives from all parts of the 

 world and all periods of history. 



An introduction is contributed to the work by Mr. Andrew 

 Lang, in which he endeavors to present what he now believes to 

 be the true explanation of such analogies, carefully refuting 

 various opinions on the subject which he is generally believed to 

 have endorsed. Mr. Lang was once president of the Folk-lore 

 Society, and though he has announced that he has given up that for 

 more lucrative pursuits, his opinions are much respected. He is 

 generally understood to have explained such analogies by the 

 convenient word " chance," and to have been the adherent, if 

 not the parent, of the " casual " theory in folk-lore. Certainly 

 he has denied all definite meaning and all real content in primi- 

 tive myths. He now modifies these positions by explaining the 

 analogies as based on "the universally human," or else on "com- 

 mon customs." He believes in transmission, " where the inci- 

 dents are numerous and the sequence exact"; which, indeed, is 

 the only resource for one who. like Mr. Lang, can see nothing in 

 native myths but "the obscene or puerile stories of savages." 



Fortunately, we are not driven to take refuge in such vague 

 phrases to explain the striking parallelisms gf human thought 

 and expression in tribes far apart in space and time. The scien- 

 tific explanation of them is based on two factors; first, the fixed 

 laws of the human imagination; and second, the objective 

 reality of the sequences which are symbolically set forth in the 

 narratives. The late story is often the ancient nature myth, 

 decked out by personification and poetry, but :Still true to those 

 sequences which objectively are ever and evf/rywhei'e realities. 



