REVIEWS. 
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they have prominent cheek bones ; but I did not notice any peculiarity in 
tbeir hands or feet, or in the position of the toes, or in the relative length 
of their arms to the rest of their bodies; but their legs appeared to be rather 
short in proportion to their trunks ; the palms of their hands seemed quite 
white. The hair of their heads grows in very short curly tufts. This is the 
more remarkable, as the Ashangos and neighbouring tribes have rather long 
bushy hair on their heads, which enables them to dress it in various ways. 
The young man examined had an unusual quantity of hair also on his legs 
and breast, growing in short curly tufts, similar to the hair of the head.” 
In his description of the white and other ants, the author displays that 
lack of minute observation which nothing but a long experience in the study 
of organisms can give. For example, it appears to us that some of the 
creatures which he puts along with the white ants (Neuropterous insects) 
are genuine Hymenoptera ; and again, his descriptions, save in so far as they 
relate to the character of the habitation, and the larger external features of 
the insect, are useless as means of zoological diagnosis. Much excuse for 
this lies in the circumstance that the author’s specimens were all lost in his 
retreat from Monoau Kombo, and therefore that he was obliged to describe 
from memory alone the objects he had seen. He describes five or six 
different kinds of ant, some of them being unquestionably Termites. His 
account of the Mushroom-hived Termes is interesting. Speaking of the 
habitation of this species he says : — 
“ These singular hives, shaped like gigantic mushrooms, are scattered by 
tens of thousands over the prairie of Otando. The top is from twelve to 
eighteen inches in diameter, and the column about five inches ; the total 
height is from ten to fifteen inches. They are not all uniformly built, but 
differ in the roundness or sharpness of their summits. The hive is not so 
firmly planted in the ground but that it may be knocked down by a well- 
planted kick. When felled, the base of the pillar is found to have rested 
on the ground, leaving a circular hollow, in the middle of which is a ball 
of earth full of cells, which enters the centre of the base of the pillar, and 
the cells are eagerly defended by a multitude of the soldier class of the ants, 
which I took to be males, all striving to bite the intruder with their pincer- 
like jaws. On breaking open the ball — which, when handled, divided itself 
into three parts — I always found it full of young white ants, in different 
stages of growth, and also of eggs.” 
M. Du Chaillu’s further description of his observations of this ant colony 
will prove most attractive reading to lovers of natural history, but the details 
are too extensive for introduction into these pages. Professor Owen’s portion 
of the present work has some importance, although it establishes no law which 
has not already been deduced. He describes, in pure but not simple anato- 
mical fashion, three skulls, one being that of a native of Fernand Yaz, and 
the two others being those of people of the Fan tribe, that strange group 
of cannibal Africans, of which M. Du Chaillu has more than once given an 
account. There is one statement of Professor Owen’s which is of consider- 
able interest : it relates to the dolicho-cephalic * character of these skulls. 
Speaking of this term as applied to the skulls brought over by the author, 
he says that it does not imply a “greater length of cranium than in Indian 
and European skulls, which would be called brachy-cephalic,t but merely a 
* Long-headed. 
t Broad-headed. 
