378 Chro?iicles of Science. [July, 



The last volume of the Transactions of the Ethnological Society 

 contains so large a number of papers that we can notice only a 

 selection from them. In Mr. Crawford's paper " On the Physical 

 and Mental Characteristics of the European and Asiatic Races of 

 Man," the author arrives at the conclusion that between these races 

 " there is a broad innate difference, physical, intellectual, and 

 moral; and that such difference has existed from the earliest 

 authentic records and is most probably coeval with the first creation 

 of man." The same author has a paper on the History of Written 

 Language, in which he brings forward his theoretical views on the 

 subject, some of which appear scarcely in unison with facts. He 

 endeavours to show that written characters were used in Asia long 

 before they were in Europe ; and he states that in the time of 

 Julius Caesar our ancestors were " as illiterate as are now the negroes 

 of Ashantee, or as were the cannibals of New Zealand when Cook 

 first described them." His argument appears to be that in Asia 

 every nation has its own written alphabet, and sometimes more than 

 one, except where that of some other nation has superseded the 

 original one, while in Europe the Greek and Eoman characters are 

 in universal use. Indeed, he states that " no race from the Euxine 

 to the Atlantic, or from Greece to Scandinavia, has ever invented 

 an alphabet." Does not Mr. Crawford know that the Eoman 

 alphabet superseded the Eunic in Scandinavia and England, that 

 the Ogham staves of Ireland are still older, and that other phonetic 

 writings have been discovered whose age and meaning are as yet 

 unknown ? 



Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Frederick Lubbock, in a paper 

 " On the true Assignation of the Bronze Weapons, &c, found in 

 Northern and Western Europe," defend with considerable success 

 the antiquity of the weapons of the Bronze age, in contravention of 

 Mr. Wright's theory that they are of Eoman origin. 



Mr. Wright has a paper " On the Intercourse of the Eomans 

 with Ireland," in which he shows that authentic discoveries of 

 Eoman coins have been made in five Irish counties, and all, with 

 one exception, in the province of Ulster. Professor Steenstrup and 

 Sir John Lubbock describe the Flint Implements recently dis- 

 covered near Pressigny-le-Grande ; Mr. Crawford has three papers 

 " On the History and Migration of Cultivated Plants in reference to 

 Ethnology;" and Mr. E. Dunn contributes an article entitled 

 " Archaeology and Ethnology : remarks on some of the bearings of 

 Archaeology upon certain Ethnological Problems and Eesearches ; " 

 but these and some other papers of interest we have no space to 

 discuss. 



A noteworthy paper by Dr. Faudel, "Sur la decouverte 

 d'ossements fossiles humains dans le lehm de la vallee du Ehin a 

 Eguisheim, pres Colmar (Haut Ehin)," has been published this 



