752 Meeting of the British Association. [Oct., 



most important branch of the Amazons, in which, according to native 

 report, there existed no impediment to navigation, resolved to attempt 

 its exploration himself. Besides the importance of the Purus as a 

 prospective channel of communication between the Atlantic (via the 

 Amazons) and the rich southern provinces of Peru, east of the Andes, 

 it has been for many years an object of great interest to geographers, 

 owing to the mystery connected with its source. Its head waters have 

 been presumed to be the river Madre de Dios, which flows from the 

 Andes, in Southern Peru, and is supposed to be the seat of retirement 

 of a large number of Inca Indians, who have effectively resisted all the 

 attempts of white men to descend on its waters. Mr. Chandless 

 ascended the Purus from its mouth a distance of 1,866 miles, and did 

 not reach its source, but found it dwindled to a rivulet, lying 2° to the 

 N.N.W. of the Madre de Dios. He met with tribes of Indians who 

 had never had intercourse even with the semi-civilized tribes, and has 

 constructed a complete map of the river from astronomical observations 

 and compass bearings. 



The Ethnological papers, as we have already hinted, were some 

 of them of a Philological cast, some Anatomical, others Geological 

 and Archaeological, others even Historical, and the residue only purely 

 Ethnological. The Philological series were : — 1. " On the Origin of 

 the Hungarians," by Dr. Vambery, an argumentive paper, proving, 

 from a careful comparison of the grammatical structure of languages 

 founded on the author's original observations, that the Hungarians are 

 descendants of the Turco-Tartar nations dwelling in the western part 

 of Central Asia ; 2. " On Language and Ethnology," by the Eev. Mr. 

 Farrar ; and 3, " On Negro-European Dialects of the Negroes of 

 Surinam and Curacao," by Mr. E. B. Tylor. This last was an inves- 

 tigation of the curious, degraded idiom, compounded of various 

 European languages, which has been developed amongst the isolated 

 Negro populations of the countries mentioned ; and from it the author 

 deduced the conclusion that Philology was not a reliable guide in the 

 affiliation of races. The papers of Anatomical aspect were, one " On 

 the Influence of Civilization upon the Cerebral Development of the 

 Different Paces of Men," by Mr. R. Dunn ; and another, " On certain 

 Simious Skulls, with especial Eeference to a Skull from Louth, in 

 Ireland," by Mr. C. Carter Blake. The last-mentioned related to a 

 modern skull, recently found at Louth, which bore a strong resem- 

 blance to the celebrated Neanderthal cranium ; and it was shown that 

 the contracted forehead, and other characters which had led some 

 writers hastily lo infer simious affinities in the Neanderthal skull, 

 were due, as in the Irish specimen (exhibited to the meeting), to 

 the premature closing of certain sutures. Of the Geological and 

 Archaeological papers in. this Section, our limited space will not allow 

 us to speak ; besides, they come more properly under the Geological 

 Section. 



H. W. B. 



