SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY 
ANTHROPOLOGY. 
An Elephant-pipe in North America. — Mr. J. D. Putnam Las sent to the 
editors of tLe “ American Naturalist ” (see number for April, 1879) photo- 
graphs of two pipes from a mound in Muscadine County, Iowa, one of them 
representing a bear, the other an elephant. The latter is so like an elephant 
in the head, body, limbs, and trunk, that although it shows no tusks, there 
is said to be no doubt that the maker of it had seen an elephant, and tried 
to reproduce its likeness in this pipe. Coupled with the discovery of an 
“ elephant mound ” in Grant County, Wisconsin, the occurrence of this relic 
seems to point to the co-existence of man and the mammoth in North 
America. 
Simian Characters in Negro Brains. — Dr. A. J. Parker brought this subject 
before the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (October 8, 1878). 
In one negro brain out of thirteen that he had examined, he has ascertained 
the existence of an internal inferior pli de passage, which was as well de- 
veloped as in any of the Simiadse. In that brain the convolution in question 
measured a quarter of an inch in width, and completely separated the 
parieto-occipital or internal perpendicular from the calcarine fissure, so 
that this region presented the same appearance that it does in the Simiadse. 
The same convolution is uniformly present in all those animals, except in 
Ateles paniscus , according to Huxley, and in Hylohates, according to Bischoff. 
It has never before been found fully developed in man, and the absence of 
this small, bridging convolution has been regarded by some anatomists as a 
distinguishing characteristic of the human brain, as compared with that of 
the Anthropoid apes. In another brain of an adult female negro, one of 
twenty examined since the first discovery of this convolution, it was again 
met with, fully developed up to the surface, an eighth of an inch wide, and 
completely separating the two fissures above mentioned. This supposed 
simian convolution was therefore present in two brains out of thirty-three. 
Dr. Parker has also observed in the brain of an adult male negro the com- 
plete connection of the fissure of Rolando and the fissure of Sylvius. 
ASTRONOMY. 
Oxygen in the Sun. — Unquestionably the most important astronomical 
event during the last quarter has been the announcement by Professor 
