Path NSS ea ce TE a i i al ae or ia ai a ai, diei 
z aE aaa A Se at ES ia a SMS Sp eee is 
fa s 
1878.] ‘A nthropology. 485 
The latest advices from Paris bring word that instead of the 
“Seances plénières internationales,” there will be a congrès inter- 
national des sciences anthropologiques, beginning June 24th, and 
continuing three days. The latest advices report over three hun- 
red French exhibitors and nearly as many foreign. 
By some misdirection of the subscription we have been deprived 
of the Revue d’ Anthropologie for a year, but the numbers for 
January and April of the present year come to make amends for 
the loss. The January number opens with a paper by the editor 
upon the brain of the gorilla. The author admits that the pro- 
gress of research has taken this investigation somewhat away from 
anthropology. “ Les transformistes s'accordent généralement a 
reconnaitre que homme ne peut descendre d'aucun des anthro- 
poides connus, ni même d’aucun autre genre vivant.” The second 
paper is by A. Hovelacque upon the classification of languages 
in anthropology. The author first examines the geographical, 
physiological and psychological methods and rejects them. 
then seeks to divide languages by structure simply without any 
regard to relationship. “Two idioms may be monosyllabic, 
agglutinative or inflected, without having any bond of relation- 
ship. The Basque and the Japanese are both agglutinative, but 
their roots are entirely distinct. The natural classification of 
language does not accord in any way with the anthropological 
classifications which the present state of the science presents. 
Originally, language corresponded to race, that is to say certain 
races have given birth to linguistic systems similarly diverse, but 
the revolutions of time have broken up all that. The unfortunate 
maxim “ Like race, like language,” has retarded the progress of 
anthropology and linguistics. 
The article by Dr. E. Hamy, upon the First Inhabitants of 
Mexico, has already been noticed in the NATURALIST. 
. In the Revue Critique the work of Dr. Boudin upon Patho- 
logical Anthropology is extensively noticed. The author en- 
deavors to trace out the relation between race and diseases, such 
as pulmonary phthisis, variola, syphilis, malarial fevers, yellow 
fever, cholera, and the bite of serpents, and also the amount of 
ciation last summer upon the fossil races of Western Europe. 
The number closes with the Bibliographical Bulletin. The work 
is really the anthropologists’ vade mecum, and it is hoped will re- 
ceive the liberal patronage which it deserves. 
hose interested in the relation of the phonograph to phonology 
will find interesting articles upon the subject in Nature, almost 
