November 13, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



717 



than the quiet words of helpfulness and 

 friendship. There was put in my hands 

 recently by the wife of our former member, 

 still greatly mourned and missed, Prof. 

 George H. Williams, a massive medal of 

 pure gold and beautiful workmanship, newly 

 struck by James Hall, of Albany, to con- 

 serve the memory of the long- continued 

 friendship and public support of a distin- 

 guished and influential publicist and patron 

 of science, Daniel Wood, of Syracuse, who 

 died many years ago. I do not need to say 

 that Mrs. Williams, who is in deep senti- 

 ment still a member of the guild of geol- 

 ogists, values this unique monument to her 

 father's memory. Four such medals were 

 struck to the memory of four public men of 

 this great State, each of whom was in turn 

 two and three generations ago the Maecenas 

 of this struggling scholar and the patron of 

 his public work. We may call these medals 

 the monuments of the old-fashioned and 

 enduring gratitude of a warm heart ; they 

 explain the strong friendship of his friends, 

 and are more significant than the transient 

 dust of conflict. The monument of the 

 man himself is builded in the rocks of IS'ew 

 York, a monument more enduring than 

 bronze or gold. 



And now I declare closed the proceed- 

 ings of this afternoon, which, spread upon 

 the archives of this ancient and enduring 

 Society, will furnish a many-sided and 

 appreciative estimate of a great scientific 

 personage. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 MALTHUSIANISM IN ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Our French colleagues are nothing unless 

 practical. They cannot see the use of la- 

 boriously developing theories of sociology, 

 and fighting them over in learned societies, 

 unless the product is utilized for the public. 



This tendency gave rise, at a recent 

 meeting of the Paris Anthropological So- 

 ciety, to a scene that, allowing for diflerence 



in longitude, was not very unlike that 

 which ' Truthful James ' describes in the 

 scientific society ' on the Stanislaw.' 



M. Paul Robin, a declared ' neo-Malthu- 

 sian,' commented sharply on a paper of M. 

 Guyot on the diminishing population of 

 France, the burden of which was, ' Faites 

 des enfants.' M. Eobin urged that im- 

 provident generation is destructive to indi- 

 vidual and social development, unworthy 

 of scientific endorsement and ruinous to 

 true happiness. M. Dumont, another mem- 

 ber, used some hard words, such as ' a homi- 

 side ' and ' a degenerate,' with obvious ap- 

 plication to M. Robin, who in turn took up 

 the cudgels with alacrity and requested 

 these terms to be noted. ' Degenerates,' he 

 claimed, were brought about by parental 

 indifference to the size of the families en- 

 gendered by the passions. Self-restraint, 

 here as elsewhere, is noble ; and the limita- 

 tion of families by artifical met^ns, if the 

 end in view is desirable, should be consid- 

 ered legitimate. 



It is interesting to observe that anthro- 

 pologic students recognize that their science 

 is one eminently practical and ' actual.' 



CRANIA PROM FLORIDA. 



Dr. Harrison Allen's 'Crania from the 

 Mounds of the St. John's River, Florida,' 

 just published in the Journal of the Acad- 

 emy of ]N"atural Sciences, Philadelphia (4to, 

 pp. 85, Plates XXII.) , is the most thorough 

 piece of work on American Craniology 

 which has appeared since Dr. Matthews' 

 studies on the Rio Salado remains. 



It is broader than its title, for it not only 

 describes the skulls collected by Mr. Clar- 

 ence B. Moore from prehistoric Indian 

 graves in Florida, but it enters into minute 

 comparisons of these with others from re- 

 mote parts of ISTorth America, and outlines 

 the science of craniology as taught by the 

 author, and explains the terms which he 

 has selected to express its new departures. 



