July 24, 1885.] 



SCIENCE. 



73 



which is the only instrument that permits the draw- 

 ing of a curve from a series of heads by taking for 

 each ray the mean in the series. The mean curve for 

 each series shows that all the frontal rays of distin- 

 guished men are much greater than in the assassin, 

 and that in a savage race, the Neo-hebrides, taken 

 for comparison from four heads, the frontal develop- 

 ment is even less than among assassins. 



These last two curves cross the first in the parietal 

 part, in the neighborhood of the bregma ; and the pos- 

 terior development of assassin and savages is greater 

 in all points than that of distinguished men. In all 

 the distinguished men the occipital rays were less de- 

 veloped than in the other series, though this differ- 

 ence is less marked. The maximum rays, represented 

 in the diagram by dotted lines, are in distinguished 



Assassins«»ppltc!es\ 

 Neo-hebridai's 



AVERAGE MEASUREMENTS OF THREE CLASSES OE HEADS. 



men at the 35° line, while in the other two classes 

 it is found at the back of the head, between the 

 80° and 85° ray. This rule is not so infallible that 

 we can pick out men, and say this is a distinguished 

 man, this an ordinary man, and this a criminal, sim- 

 ply by the shape of the head; but it can be said that 

 seventy-five in a hundred learned men have the supe- 

 rior character, while at least ninety-five in a hundred 

 assassins have the inferior character. A third part 

 of Dr. Bajenoff's work deals with the cranial pro- 

 jection (total, posterior, anterior, and facial) and 

 the facial angle. These confirm his first experi- 

 ments. Among distinguished persons the anterior 

 cranial portions are the best developed, while among 

 savages and assassins the facial and posterior projec- 

 tions exceed the others. 



ORIGIN OF THE CEREALS.^ 



Rece]!«^t numbers of Naturen contain interesting 

 papers, by Professor Schiibeler, on the original habitat 

 of some of the cereals, and the subsequent cultivation 

 in the Scandinavian lands and Iceland of barley and 

 rye more especially. It would appear that barley 

 was cultivated before other cereals in Scandinavia; 

 1 From Nature of June 4. 



and that the generic term ' corn ' was applied among 

 Northmen to this grain only from the oldest times ; 

 and that in the Norwegian laws of the seventeenth 

 and eighteenth centuries, wherever reference was 

 made to the ' Kornskat' (or standard by which land 

 in the northern lands was, and still is, rated in ac- 

 cordance with the corn it is capable of yielding), the 

 term was understood to apply to barley. Proof of 

 the high latitude to which the cultivation was carried 

 in early ages is afforded by the Egil's Saga, where 

 mention is made of a barn in Helgeland (65° north 

 latitude) used for the storing of corn, and which was 

 so large that tables could be spread within it for the 

 entertainment of eight hundred guests. In Iceland 

 barley was cultivated from the time of its coloniza- 

 tion, in 870, till the middle of the fourteenth century, 

 or, according to Jon Storrason, as 

 lately as 1400. From that period down 

 to our own times, barley has not been 

 grown in Iceland with any systematic 

 attention, the islanders being depend- 

 ent on the home country for their sup- 

 plies of corn. In the last century, 

 liowever, various attempts were made, 

 both by the Danish government and 

 private individuals, to obtain home- 

 grown corn in Iceland; and the suc- 

 cess with which these endeavors were 

 attended gives additional importance 

 to the systematic undertaking which 

 has been set on foot by Dr. Schubeler 

 and others, within the last thise years, 

 for the introduction into the island of 

 the hardier cereals, vegetables, and 

 fruits. As many as three hundred and 

 eighty-two samples of seeds of ornamental and useful 

 plants, most of which were collected from the neigh- 

 borhood of Christiania, are now being cultivated at 

 Reykjavik under the special direction of the local gov- 

 ernment doctor, Herr Schierbeck, who succeeded in 

 1883 in cutting barley ninety-eight days after the sow- 

 ing of the seed, which had come from Alten (70° north 

 latitude). And here it may be observed that this seems 

 the polar limit in Norway for any thing like good 

 barley-crops. The seed is generally sown at the end 

 of May, and in favorable seasons it may be cut at the 

 end of August, the growth of the stalk being often 

 two inches and a half in twenty-four hours. Nortb 

 of 60° or 61°, barley cannot be successfully grown in 

 Norway at more than from eighteen hundred to two 

 thousand feet above the sea-level. In Sweden the 

 polar limit is about 68° or 66° ; but even there, as in 

 Finland, night frosts prove very destructive to the 

 young barley. In some of the f jeld valleys of Nor- 

 way, on the other hand, barley may, in favorable 

 seasons, be cut eight or nine weeks after its sowing; 

 and thus two crops may be reaped in one summer. 

 According, even, to a tradition current in Thelemark- 

 en, a farm there owes its name, Triset, to the three 

 crops reaped in the land in one year. Rye early came 

 into use as a bread-stuff in Scandinavia, and in 1490 

 the Norwegian council of state issued an ordinance 

 making it obligatory on every peasant to laj^ down a 



