Oct. 5, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



355 



known as Sho-Bandai-san, and a third, larger again, 

 called Nekomatadake. The eruption had taken place in 

 the smaller central one of the three, and Sho-Bandai-san 

 has disappeared from the face of the earth. The explo- 

 sion was caused by steam ; there was neither fire nor 

 lava of any kind — it was, in fact, neither more nor less 

 than a colossal boiler explosion. The whole top and one 

 side of Sho-Bandai-san had been blown into the air in a 

 lateral direction, and the earth of the mountain was con- 

 verted by the escaping steam at the moment of the ex- 

 plosion into boiling mud, part of which was projected into 

 the air to fall a long distance off and then take the form 

 of an overflowing river, and part of which rushed down 



THE ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF THE 

 CANARY ISLANDS. 



A Paper read by Mr. J. Harris Stone, M.A., before 

 the Anthropological Section of the British 

 Association. 



A BOUT the time when printing was being introduced 

 ■iV. into England an old-time race of ancient people 

 was rapidly and cruelly being exterminated. "The 

 world forgetting, by the world forgot," they had lived in 

 seclusion till then, the date of their advent being just as 

 uncertain and ancient as their disappearance from among 

 the races of mankind is precise and modern. In the 



Part of the Crater, showing Masses of Rock resting on Mud. 



with inconceivable speed and resistless force, and poured 

 over the face of the country to a depth varying from 

 twenty to a hundred and fifty feet. Thirty square miles 

 of country were devastated and practically buried by 

 this eruption, a fact which places it, as I said, among the 

 most stupendous on record, 



Importation of Scientific Books and Apparatus 

 into the United States. — At the late meeting of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science, a 

 petition to Congress was adopted to place on the free 

 import-list books pertaining to the physical, natural, and 

 medical sciences and apparatus intended for the purposes 

 of scientific research or of education. 



whole history of the world there is, perhaps, no more 

 remarkable fact than that at that late date of the 

 Christian era when civilisation had so far advanced as 

 to include in its scope amongst other signs of refinement, 

 gunpowder and printing, there existed close to Europe, 

 on islands in the Atlantic, remnants of peoples of the 

 Stone, or may be even earlier ages. Yet such was the 

 case. Whether or not the ancient inhabitants of the 

 Canary Islands belonged to that extremely vague and 

 misty period the " Stone " age, is a problem which may 

 be left to others ; but beyond all doubt as late in time as 

 1402 there lived in those islands a race very far removed 

 in the upward scale from what we know as savage, a 

 race presenting to us features of intense interest, a 

 race till then virtually uncontaminated by external in- 



