26 18 Ethnological. 



the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, specimens of the Silene Anglica, obtained near 

 Heslington, and of the interrupted club-moss (Lycopodium annotinum), from Bow 

 Fell, Cumberland: he also exhibited specimens of the marsh club-moss (L. inunda- 

 tum), and of the marsh gentian (Gentiana Pneumonanthe), from Skipwith Common. 

 Dr. Thurnam presented to the Philosophical Society, through the Club, some curious 

 specimens of iron pyrites, obtained from Huggate Dykes, and others from the Danes' 

 Graves, near Driffield, during some recent antiquarian excavations ; one of the spe- 

 cimens appeared to be the cast of a fossil sponge. After some conversation respecting 

 the age of the yew and the oak, and the generally north-easterly direction of the 

 prostrate trees in some of the submerged forests, particularly those in Hatfield Chase, 

 the meeting broke up. 



Men with Tails. — " African travellers have spoken of a tribe of negroes who pos- 

 sess that ornamental appendage so much admired by Lord Monboddo, a tail ; but 

 their statements have never, I believe, received implicit credence. It appears, how- 

 ever, that a race of men with tails really does exist in the interior of Africa. In a 

 recent sitting of the Academie des Sciences, M. du Couret related that in 1842 he 

 found, in the service of a friend at Mecca, one of these wretches, the lowest assuredly 

 of mankind. The creature had an exterior prolongation of the vertebral column to 

 the extent of three or four inches. He stated that he belonged to the tribe of the 

 Ghilanes, whose territory is situated far beyond the Sennar, who are thirty or forty 

 thousand in number, worship the sun, the moon, the stars, the serpent, and the 

 sources of a great river (supposed to be the Nile), to which last they immolate victims. 

 They eat plants, roots, fruits, and raw flesh, and like it bleeding, — are very partial to 

 human flesh, and eat the bodies of their enemies, of all ages and both sexes, whom 

 they may slay in battle ! They, however, prefer the flesh of women and children, as 

 more succulent. They rarely exceed five feet in height, are ill-proportioned, with 

 long, thin bodies, long arms, longer and flatter hands and feet than the rest of human 

 kind, have the lower jaw large and long, the forehead narrow and excessively retreat- 

 ing, the ears long and deformed, the eyes small, black, brilliant, the nose large and 

 flat, the mouth large, the lips thick, the teeth strong and sharp, the hair woolly, but 

 not abundant. The man examined by M. du Couret had been so long in slavery as 

 to have forgotten his native language ; but he stated that, notwithstanding he had 

 done all in his power to subdue the savage appetite, he was twice a week seized with 

 a rage for raw flesh, which his master satisfied by giving him an enormous lump of 

 mutton, and that if this were not done he felt that he could not refrain from slaying 

 and eating a woman or child. M. du Couret says that the natural dispositions of 

 this animal were good, that his fidelity to his master was striking, and that he was 

 not without intelligence ; but in the slave-markets of the East, where the race is not 

 known, they are considered anything that is detestable." — l Literary Gazette.' 



[Is not this a hoax ? Was such a paper as that described ever read before a sci- 

 entific body ? Information will be thankfully received. — Edward Newman.'] 



