68 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 81. 



are too many owners and custodians of col- 

 lections who seem to think that specimens 

 should be locked up and concealed, rather 

 than exhibited and offered for examination. 



ON ENDO-CANNIBALISM. 



By this term is meant eating members 

 of one's own tribe, while ' exo-cannibahsm ' 

 signifies the consumption of the dead bodies 

 of strangers and enemies. Dr. E. S. Stein- 

 metz, of Holland, well known for his ex- 

 cellent treatise on the development of pun- 

 ishment, has a study of endo-cannibalism 

 in Vol. XXVI. of the Mittlieilungen of the 

 Anthropological Society of Vienna. He 

 collects a large array of facts about the 

 custom from numerous writers and from all 

 parts of the world. These he tabulates 

 with reference to motives, and then proceeds 

 to deduce conclusions. 



The question arises, was primitive man a 

 cannibal? It has already been answered 

 in the affirmative by various archaeologists, 

 and Dr. Steinmetz agrees with them. He 

 believes the usual disposition of the dead 

 body in early times was as a delicacy for 

 the table. This will easily explain why we 

 do not find, according to Mortillet, any 

 signs of tombs or burial places in palseolithic 

 ages. 



Of course, as the author observes, there 

 could have been no abhorrence of a corpse 

 when it was a favorite article of diet. That 

 sentiment came later, when the belief in a 

 soul and an after-life arose, and the fear 

 that the ghost would not like his body to be 

 so treated. The memoir will be found re- 

 plete with interesting suggestions. 



D. G. Beikton. 



University of PenisSylvania. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

 LORD KELVIN, 



At the banquet given to Lord Kelvin by the 

 Corporation and University of Glasgow ou the 

 evening of June 16th, he spoke (according to 

 the report in the London Times) as follows : 



I thank you with my whole heart for your 

 kindness to me this evening. You have come 

 here to commemorate the jubilee of my Univer- 

 sity professorship; and I am deeply sensible of 

 the warm sympathy with which you have re- 

 ceived the kind expressions of the Lord Provost 

 regarding myself in his review of my 50 years' 

 service and his most friendly appreciation of 

 practical results which have come from my 

 scientific work. I might perhaps rightly feel 

 pride in knowing that the University and City 

 of Glasgow have joined in conferring on me the 

 great honor of holding this jubilee, and that 

 so many friends and so many distinguished 

 men, friends and comrade-day-laborers in sci- 

 ence have come from near and far to assist in 

 its celebration, and that congratulations and 

 good wishes have poured in on me by letter and 

 telegram from all parts of the world, I do feel 

 profoundly grateful. But when I think how 

 infinitely little is all that I have done I cannot 

 feel pride ; I only see the great kindness of 

 my scientific comrades and of all my friends, 

 in crediting me for so much. One word charac- 

 terizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the 

 advancement of science that I have made i^er- 

 severingly during 55 years ; that word is failure. 

 I know no more of electric and magnetic force 

 or of the relation between ether, electricity, and 

 ponderable matter, or of chemical afiinity, than 

 I knew and tried to teach my students of natural 

 philosophy 50 years ago in my first session as 

 professor. Something of sadness must come 

 of failure ; but in the pursuit of science inborn 

 necessity to make the effort brings with it much 

 of the certaminis gaudia, and saves the naturalist 

 from being wholly miserable, perhaps even al- 

 lows him to be fairly haj)py, in his daily work. 

 And what splendid compensations for philo- 

 sophical failures we have had in the admirable 

 discoveries by observation and experiment on 

 the properties of matter, and in the exquisitely 

 beneficent applications of science to the use of 

 mankind with which these 50 years have so 

 abounded! You, my Lord Provost, have re- 

 marked that I have had the good fortune to 

 remain for 50 years in one post. I cordially 

 reply that for me they have been happy years. 

 I cannot forget that the happiness of Glasgow 

 University both for students and professors is 



