July 10, 1896.] 



SCIENGE. 



45 



ATLAS OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN. 



A PUBLICATION of uiore than usual inter- 

 est and importance is the large Atlas of the 

 Pacific Ocean, recently issued by the Deutsche 

 Seewarte, at Hamburg, under the direction 

 of Dr. Neumayer. The previous volumes 

 in the same series are an Atlas and a Hand- 

 book of Sailing Directions for the Atlantic 

 and for the Indian Oceans. Although 

 primarily intended for the use of ship cap- 

 tains, these publications should be studied 

 by all meteorologists. The data on which 

 the charts are based are the most complete 

 and most authentic obtainable. The charts 

 include among others the following : depths ; 

 ocean currents from January to March and 

 from July to September ; water surface 

 temperatures for February, May, August 

 and September ; isotherms and isobars for 

 the same months ; winds for winter and 

 summer ; wind districts ; relative frequency 

 of winds for January, April, July and Oc- 

 tober ; rainfall by districts; magnetic varia- 

 tion ; sailing routes. For the minute study 

 of the general meteorological conditions of 

 the Pacific Oceans there is nothing that can 

 approach these new German charts. The 

 Sailing Directions, to accompanj^ the Atlas, 

 are now in press. E. DeC. Ward. 



Harvard University. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 AMERICAN CRANIOLOGY. 



Prof. Hamy, the distinguished successor 

 to de Quatrefages, has an article in UAn- 

 tliropologie, for April on the Malayan and 

 the American races. Following older au- 

 thorities, he treats both as offshoots from 

 the Mongolian variety or subspecies. When 

 he comes to the difficult task of classifying 

 the refractory red men he relies wholly on 

 craniology and his results are, to say the 

 least, sweeping. He groups as one all the 

 mound builders, cliff" dwellers and Pueblo 

 Indians. The same group ' extends from 



the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the 

 Great Lakes to the Isthmus of Tehuante- 

 pec' They are all brachy cephalic, short 

 in stature, with narrow noses and promi- 

 nent cheek bones. It is needless to say 

 that the researches of Boas, Virchow, 

 Matthews and others lend no support to 

 this statement, and indeed contradict it. 

 Nor is Prof. Hamy's discussion of the 

 South American skull-forms in accordance 

 with the measurements adduced by Ehren- 

 reich and others. 



The skull is as variable among the Amer- 

 ican aborigines as it is among the Aryan 

 nations to-day, and no classification of 

 stocks can be founded upon it. The lin- 

 guistic classification is the closest to an ex- 

 act one that we can have for the race of 

 the new world, and has been accepted by 

 all modern American authorities. 



MAN AND THE MEGALONVX. 



The Megalonyx was a hugb sloth who 

 lived about these parts for some time af- 

 ter the Champlain depression of the pleis- 

 tocene. His remains abound in what are 

 are called the ' Megalonyx layers,' a hori- 

 zon which Gilbert has offered evidence to 

 place post-glacial. In these layers no trace 

 of man has yet been found ; but in April 

 last Mr. Henry C. Mercer, exploring for 

 the University of Pennsylvania, found in 

 a cave in Tennessee bones of this sloth, 

 fresh in appearance, and with remains of 

 attached tissue and ligaments, mingled 

 with fragments of reeds used as torches 

 by the Indians. Along with these were 

 other bones of living fauna, cave rats, por- 

 cupines, etc. Mr. Mercer has issued a brief 

 announcement of this discovery, with an il- 

 lustration of the bones. Copies can be had 

 by addressing him (University of Pennsyl" 

 vania, Philadelphia). 



This does not necessarily remove man to 

 remote antiquity. The sloth might have 

 survived to comparatively recent centuries 



