936 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 104. 



is known. The distribution of this genus, 

 as hitherto reported, is thus clearly antip- 

 odal, and its occurrence in our inland 

 waters is, therefore, of more than passing 

 interest. 



It is well known that many of our rotifers 

 are cosmopolitan. Thus, at least two-thirds 

 of the thirty- one species reported from 

 Wuhu as associated with Trochosphcera are 

 also found at Havana. Again, Notliolca 

 longispina, originally described by Prof. D. S. 

 Kellicott, from the Magara E,iver, has since 

 been found to have a wide distribution in 

 Europe; Rotifer mento and Anderson, dis- 

 covered at Calcutta in 1889, was found 

 by Dr. Jennings in 1893 in great abundance 

 in Lake St. Clair. It may then be that 

 Trochosphcera also is a cosmopolitan form. 



One circumstance, however, seems to mili- 

 tate against this view. Trochosphcera was not 

 reported from any one of our 505 collections 

 made from April 1, 1894, to May 13, 1896, in 

 the Illinois Eiver or its adjacent waters. A 

 re- examination of the river collections prior 

 to June, 1896, made especially for Trocho- 

 phcera, has been fruitless. Importation is 

 thus suggested to account for its sudden ap- 

 pearance this year in the river at Havana. 

 Eice straw and bamboo from the Orient 

 were not uncommon at the World's Fair in 

 Chicago in 1893, and it may be that they 

 smuggled in our visitor from China. Mr. 

 Thorpe, in a discussion this year before the 

 Eoyal Microscopical Society of London, 

 maintained that rotifers, in their distribu- 

 tion, seemed to follow the footsteps of man, 

 and that those found in foreign countries 

 which had been colonized were frequently 

 of the same kind as those of the countries 

 whence the immigrants originally came. 

 He had found, in Australia, for example, 

 " the most abundant material always in 

 ornamental waters in botanical gardens and 

 in the immediate precincts of civilization, 

 and the forms were such as left no doubt 

 that in some way or other they had been 



introduced by the agency of man, for, as 

 Dr. Hudson had remarked, a foot of salt 

 water was as great a barrier to rotifers as 

 an ocean." 



Other agencies than the movements of 

 man are beyond question active in the 

 distribution of these minute members of 

 the aquatic fauna. Their winter eggs are 

 blown about in dust, it may be for consid- 

 erable distances ; or they may take passage 

 on the feet or plumage of water-birds from 

 distant lands. It is therefore but the mer- 

 est conjecture to attribute the occurrence 

 of Trochosphcera at Havana to introduction 

 by man, especiallj'^ in view of the paucity 

 of information in regard to the minute 

 fauna of our inland waters. 



This preliminary note is published in the 

 hope that it may lead to a wider knowledge 

 of the distribution of this interesting mem- 

 ber of the river plankton. 



Charles A. Kofoid. 



Biological Station, 

 "Univeesity of Illinois. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 THE ENGLISH ' KOUND BARROW ' STOCK. 



Few questions in English archaeology 

 are more difficult, and at the same time 

 more important in the light their solution 

 would throw on proto-history, than that re- 

 lating to the people who built the ' round 

 barrows ' or graves. Their skulls are very 

 much alike, highly brachycephalic, the 

 parietal eminences projecting, the glabella 

 and chin prominent. 



Mr. C. S. Myers discusses them in an 

 article on some old skulls from Suffolk, in 

 the Journal of the Anthropological Insti- 

 tute, IsTovember, 1896. He says they were 

 certainly not the Belgian Celts, as some 

 have maintained. Possibly they were the 

 neolithic Danes. But this onlj^ removes the 

 difiiculty, because we do not know to what 

 stock these belonged. They might have 

 been a branch of the round-headed ' Celts ' 



