FOEEST AND STREAM. 



309 



Stocking the Upper Potomac— On Tuesday morning 

 last, Mr. G. W. Delawder received at Oakland eighty-three 

 thousand salmon, sent to hirn by Fisb Commissioner Fer- 

 guson, to be placed in the head waters of the North Branch 

 of the' Potomac. This fact would carry pleasure with it to 

 every body living within a dozen miles of the said North 

 Branch, were it not for another fact. Some years ago black 

 bass were introduced into these waters, and every body pis- 

 catorially inclined congratulated himself on the sport which 

 lie would in a few years have in taking that game flab from 

 the waters. But, alas! what has been the result? The bass 

 have devoured the greater part of the fish native to the 

 waters, and in the search for food, and by reason of their 

 migratory nature, they have now nearly all gone down over 

 tha dams, and cannot get back again. That the stock- 

 ing of these waters with bass was a fine thing for those 

 people living on*the lower waters of the Potomac is beyond 

 dispute, but it has proven a failure for those above, and 

 until fish ladders are placed on the river, or some other ar- 

 rangement made by which the fish can be made to come up 

 stream again after going down, it is a matter of little im- 

 portance whether the North Branch is or is not stocked with 

 salmon or any other species of the finny tribe not native to 

 the waters. The fish commissioners are implored to look 

 into this matter and remedy the evil. — Exchange. 

 ^«-*> 



Vermont.— Gov. Fairbanks has appointed Rev. W. H. 

 Lord the Fish Commissioner of Vermont. During the last 

 eighteen months the State Fish Commissioners Have put 

 gOOO land-locked salmon into the Wiuooski river at Essex. 

 Fifty thousand salmon have been put into Lewis creek, 

 Fenisburg, and 5,000 each in Franklin and Fairfield ponds, 

 Franklin county. The total distribution of fish from May, 

 1875, to November, 1876, has been as follows: 20 pike, 300 

 Potomac bass; 363 black bass, and 140,000 salmon— distrib- 

 uted in some thirty different places. — Manchester (N. H.) 

 Mirror. 



$fltuml j§istarg. 



— ♦ — i — 



ADDRESS OF A. R. WALLACE BEFORE 

 THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 



E1SE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN VIEWS AS TO THE ANTIQUITY 

 AND ORIGIN OP MAN. 



Continued. 



AS my own knowledge of, and interest in, Anthropology, 

 is confined to the great outlines rather than to 

 the special details of the science, I propose to give a very 

 brief and general sketch of the modern doctrine as to the 

 Antiquity and Origin of Man, and to suggest certain points 

 of ditticulty which have not, I think, yet received sufficient 

 attention. 



Many now present remember the time (for it is a little 

 more than twenty years ago) when the antiquity of man 

 as now understood was universally discredited. Not only 

 theologians but even geologists, tben taught us that man 

 belonged altogether to the existing state of things; that the 

 extinct animals of the Tertiary period had finally disap- 

 peared, and that the earth's surface had assumed its present 

 condition before the human race first came into existence. 

 So prepossessed were even scientific men with this idea, 

 which yet rested on purely negative evidence, and could 

 not be supported by any arguments of scientific value, that 

 numerous facts which had been presented at intervals for 

 half a century, all tending to prove the existence of man at 

 very remote epochs, were silently ignored ; and more than 

 this, the detailed statements of three distinct and careful 

 observers were rejected by a great scientific society as too 

 improbable for publication, only because they proved (if 

 they were true) the co-existence of man with extinct ani- 

 mals! 



But this state of belief in opposition to facts, could not 

 long continue. In 1859 a few of our most eminent geolo- 

 gists examined for themselves into the alleged occurrence 

 of hint implements in the gravels of the North of France, 

 which had been made public fourteen years before, and 

 found them strictly correct. The caverns of Devonshire 

 were about the same time carefully examined by equally 

 eminent observeis, and were found fully to bear out the 

 statement of those who had published their results eighteen 

 yeais before. Flint implements began to be found in all 

 suitable localities in the South of England, when carefully 

 searched for, often in gravels of equal antiquity with those 

 of France. Caverns, giving evidence of human occupa- 

 tion at various remote periods, were exploder in Belgium 

 and the South of France— lake dwellings were examined in 

 Switzerland— refuse heaps in Denmark— and thus a whole 

 series of remains have been discovered, carrying back the 

 history of mankind from the earliest historic periods to a 

 Jong distant past. The antiquity of the races thus discov- 

 erea cat * only be generally determined by the successively 

 earlier stages through which we can trace them. As we go 

 back metals soon disappear, and we find only tools and 

 weapons of stone and of bone. The stone weapons get 

 ruder and ruder; pottery and then the bone implements 

 cease to occur; and in the earliest stage we find only 

 dipped flints, of rude design though still of unmistakable 

 human workmanship. la like manner the domestic ani. 

 ftals disappear as we go backward; and though the dog 

 eems to have been the earliest, it is doutful whether the 

 makers of the modern implements of the gravels possessed 



fen this, still more important as a measure of time are 

 the changes of the earth's surface— of the distribution of 

 mimals— and of climate— which have occurred during the 

 human period. At a comparatively recent epoch in the 

 *ecord of prehistoric times, we find that the Baltic was far 



Iter than it is now, and produced abundance of oysters; 

 a &d that Denmark was covered by pine forests inhabited 



y Capercailzies ? such as now" only occur farther north in 



Norway. A little earlier we find that reindeer were common 

 even in the South of France, and still earlier this animal 

 was accompanied by the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, 

 by the arctic glutton, and by huge bears and lions of ex- 

 tinct species. The presence of such animals implies a 

 change of climate, and both in the caves and gravels we 

 find proofs of a much colder climate than now prevails in 

 Western Europe. Still more remarkable are the changes 

 of the earth's surface which have been effected during 

 man's occupation of it. Many extensive valleys in Eng- 

 land and France are believed by the best observers to have 

 been deepened at least a hundred feet; caverns now far out 

 of the reach of any stream, must for a long succession of 

 years have had streams flowing through them, at least in 

 times of floods— and this often implies that vast masses of 

 solid rock have since been worn away. In Sardinia land 

 has risen at least 800 feet since men lived there w T ho made 

 pottery and probably used fishing nets; while in Kent's 

 Cavern remains of man are found buried beneath two 

 separate beds of stalagmite, each having a distinct texture, 

 and each covering a deposit of cave-eaith having well 

 marked differential characters, while each contains a dis- 

 tinct assemblage of extinct animals. 



Such, briefly, are the results of the evidence that has 

 been rapidly accumulating for about fifteen years as to the 

 antiquity of man; and it has been confirmed by so many 

 discoveries of a like nature in all parts of the globe, and 

 especially by the comparison of the tools and weapons of 

 prehistoric man with those of modern savages, so that the 

 use of even the modest flint implements has become quite 

 intelligible— that w T e can hardly wonder at the vast revolu- 

 tion effected in public opinion. Not only is the belief in 

 man's vast and still unknown antiquity universal among 

 men of s* ience, but it is hardly disputed by any well in. 

 formed theologian; and the present generation of science 

 students must, we should think, be somewhat puzzled to 

 understand what there was in the earlier discoveries that 

 should have aroused such general opposition and been met 

 with such universal increduility. 



But the question of the mere Antiquity of Man, almost 

 sank into insignificance at a very early period of the inquiry, 

 in comparison with the far more momentous and more ex- 

 citing problem of the development of man from some lower 

 animal form, which the theories of Mr. Darwin and Mr. 

 Herbert Spencer soon showed to be inseparably bound up 

 with it. This has been, and to some extent still is the sub- 

 ject of fierce couflict; but the controversy as to the fact of 

 such development is now almost at an end, since one of the 

 most talented representatives of Catholic theology, and an 

 anatomist of high standing— Professor Mivart— fully 

 adopted it as regards physical structure, reserving his oppo- 

 sition for those parts of his theory which would deduce 

 man's whole intellectual and moral nature from the same 

 source and by a similar mode of development. 



Never, perhaps, in the whole history of science or philo- 

 sophy, has so great a revolution in thought and opinion 

 been effected as in the twelve years from 1859 to 1871, the 

 respective dates of publication of Mr. Darwin's "Origin of 

 Species" and ' 'Descent of Man." Up to the commence- 

 ment of this period the belief in the independent creation 

 or origin of the species of animals and plants, and the very 

 recent appearance of man upon the earth were practically 

 universal. Long before the end of it these two beliefs had 

 utterly disappeared, not only in the scientific world, but 

 almost equally so among the literary and educated classes 

 generally. The belief in the independent origin of man 

 held its ground somewhat longer, but the publication of 

 Mr. Darwin's great work gave even that it's death blow, for 

 hardly any one capable of judging of the evidence now 

 doubts the derivative nature of man's bodily structure as a 

 whole, though many believe that his mind and even some 

 of his physical characteristics maybe due to the action of 

 other forces than have acted in the case of the lower ani- 

 mals. 



We need hardly be surprised under these circumstances, 

 if there has been a tendency among men of science to pass 

 from one extreme to the other, from a profession (so few 

 years ago) of total ignorance as to the mode of origin of 

 all living things, to claim to almost complete knowledge 

 of the whole progress of the universe, from the first speck 

 of living protoplasm up to the highest development of the 

 human intellect. Yet this is really what we have seen in 

 the last sixteen years. Formerly difficulties were exagger- 

 ated and it was asserted that we had not sufficient knowl- 

 edge to venture on any generalizations on the subject. 

 Now difficulties are set aside, and it is held that our theories 

 are so well established and so far-reaching that they explain 

 and comprehend all nature. It is not long ago (as I have 

 already reminded you) since facts were contemptuously 

 ignored beeause they favored our now popular views; at 

 the present day it seems to me that facts which oppose 

 them hardly receive d*e consideration. And as opposition 

 is the best incentive to progress, and it is not well even for 

 the best theories to have it all their own way, I propose to 

 direct your attention to a few such facts, and to the conclu- 

 sion that seems fairly deducible from them. 

 _______ — .*►.♦. 



The Australian Region has always been noted 

 as furnishing to naturalists more than its share of zoologi- 

 cal surprises, and it seems that its wonders are not yet 

 exhausted. Within a short time two discoveries have been 

 made in that section of the globe which are of the ut- 

 most importance to zoologists. These discoveries, an- 

 nounced in a recent number of Nature, are pregnant with 

 suggestions of the unknown forms which we may hope 

 that Australasia will yet reveal. 



The Arfitk Mountains of New Guinea have afforded to 



a collector employed by an Italian nobleman a new and 

 very large species of Echidna, and the importance of this 

 fact will at once be appreciated when we consider that the 

 Monotremes have hitherto been supposed to be wholly con- 

 fined to the mainland of Australia. 



In the vicinity of Peale's Island has been found a new 

 Amphioxus, which is regarded by some as being generic- 

 ally distinct from the only one hitherto known. It is not 

 impossible that a careful stu ly of this new foi m may fur- 

 nish to zoologists a clue to what is now one of the most 

 difficult problems with which they have to deal. 

 **»-*. . 



Notes. — Loxia curvirostra var. americana has appeared 

 in considerable numbers in some sections of southern Con- 

 necticut Black bears have been unusually abundant in 



Lewis County, New York, this fall and winter. Ten or a 



dozen have already been killed there The snow which 



fell last week brought with it the first Plectrophanes nivalis 



of the season. 



, -*•*» 



THE MAMMALS OF WYOMING. 



WE take pleasure in laying before our readers the fol- 

 lowing list of the mammals found near Fort Sand- 

 ers, Wyoming, reported by Col . A. G. Brackelt, U. S. A., 

 with*the dates of their collection in 1875. This catalogue 

 will be of much interest to those who are but little ac- 

 quainted with the fauua of the Rocky Mountains, while to 

 such as have collected among their rugged fastnesses it 

 will be useful for comparison with their own lists: — 



ApTil 12th — Skunk. Mephitis metiphica. 



April loth.— Prairie gopher, tiperrnophilus Richardsonii. 



May 7th — Striped prairie squirrel . Spermophilus tridecem- 

 lineatus. 



May 13th— Prairie hare. Lepus cnnipestris. 



May 13th — Gray rabbit. Lepus xylvidicus. 



May 18th— Muskrat. Fiber zibethicus. 



May 24th — Chipping, striped oj ground squirrel, Chip- 

 munk. Tamias btriaius. 



May 21th — Yellow-footed marmot. Arctomys flaviventer. 



May 24lh — Say's striped squirrel. Spermophtius lateralis. 



August 2d — Prairie dog. Oynomys ludovicLinus. 



August 11th — Antelope, Prong Horn or Cabree. Antilo- 

 capra americana. 



August 15th— Grizzly bear. Ursus horribilis. Killed by 

 Lieut. Fowler's party. 



August 16th — Mountain sheep; Bighorn; Argali. Ovis 

 montana. 



August 17th — American elk. Germs canadensis. 



August 18th — Black-taiJed deer. Oervus columbianus. 



August 18th — White-tailed deer. Oervus leucurus. 



September 2d— Covote or prairie wolf. Uanis latrans. 

 September 22d — American badger. Taxidea americana. 



October 4th — Yellow-haired porcupine. Erethizon epix- 

 anthus. 



■ <+++ 



A QUERY. 



Tiffin, Ohio, Dec. 5th, 1876. 

 Editor Forest and Stream: — 



While haulrng fodder to day there was a small bird about 

 the size of a robin, of a light blue color with black stripes 

 on its head, which would come and pick up the mice with- 

 in a lew feet of me. It would use its mouth to 

 kill and carry off its prey instead of its claws, as a hawk 

 would have done. If it had any distance to carry i's 

 burden, it would change back and forth from mouth to 

 claws. In your next issue let me know the name of the 

 bird if you can tell it from the above description. It is not 

 what we call the pigeon or mouse hawk here. 



Buckshot. 



From the very brief description given by our cor- 

 respondent, we should imagine that the bird which he saw 

 was probably a blue jay (Cyanurus crisiatus), a species 

 which is much more tame and confiding in the West, than 

 it is with us. An ornithological friend at our elbow sug- 

 gests that it may have been one of the shrikes {Collurio) t 

 but in our opinion there is nothing in the desciiption to 

 warrant that supposition. Neither of the shrikes could 

 properly be called "light blue," and besides the black- 

 ish wings and tail of those birds would undoubtedly have 

 been noticed and mentioned had one of them been the 

 mouser referred to.— Ed. 



WHAT IS IT? 



Magog, Nov. 23, 1876. 

 Editor Forest and Stream: — 



As you have once visited this locality and have seen the 

 size and depth, and the scenery and beauties of Lake Mem- 

 phramagog, I will not describe them. That there is a ser- 

 pent or some monster that lives in this lake, I have no 

 doubt, some of the facts are as follows: During the early 

 part of October three reliable persons were driving a flock 

 of sheep to Magog along a road which passes very near what 

 is called Sand Beach. Two of the men were on loot, the 

 other some way back on the Bay in a wagon. On reaching 

 the Beach the men on foot saw this serpent lying on the 

 sand not two rods from the road. He appeared to be sun- 

 ning himself and was in about one foot of water. Almost 

 as soon as they saw him he raised his head high up in the 

 air and started for deep water. Just as he started the other 

 man came up and asked the first two what they were look- 

 ing at, they pointed and he soon saw what it was. The 

 men all gave it as their opinion that it was a serpent of 

 some kind. They could see thirty feet of his length and 

 his size through appeared to be about eighteen inches. His 

 head resembled that of a horse. They were so near him 

 that it does not seem as if they could be mistaken. His 

 skin, they say was not smooth but rough or scaly. 

 The men watched him till he had got neariy opposite the 

 steamboat wharf about one half mile from where they 

 were. 



Some years ago this same monster was seen a number of 

 times by different peisons, and all the accounts of him cor- 

 respond very closely. All stated that they saw about 30 

 feet of him. He has never before been seen so far down 

 the lake. 



Another circumstance which may have some connection 



