210 
THE MEDITERRANEAN NATURALIST 
Changing Climate. Prehistoric Man in Italy. 
That Europe is passing through' a cold period 
has been pointed out by M. Flammarion, the 
French astronomer. During the past six years 
the mean temperature of Paris has been about two 
degrees below the normal, and Great Britain, 
Belgium, Spain, Italy, Austria and Germany have 
also been growing cold. It is uncertain whether 
this is a local and temporary effect, or whether, 
the globe is undergoing general refrigeration. 
The change seems to have been in progress in 
France for a long time, the growth of the vine 
having been forced far southward since the thir- 
teenth century; and a similar cooling has been 
observed as far away as Rio Janeiro, where the 
annual temperature has been going down for some 
years. In Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Russia, 
on the other hand, the last four years have been 
slightly warmer than the average. 
The Hope of France. 
French science has to deal with a peculiar 
problem, how to prevent the depopulation of the 
country, which is now going on so rapidly that 
the deaths exceed the births by nearly 40,000 in 
a single year. Increasing the birth-rate having 
proven impracticable, the present hope is to 
diminish the death-rate. At a recent meeting of 
the new Society for the Protection of Children, 
Dr. Pochard referred to the fact that only eight 
years ago he was laughed at for predicting that 
the population would become stationery before 
the end of the century, and stated that 250,000 
infants die yearly, of whom at least 100,000 could 
be saved by intelligent care. Stringent laws have 
been already passed to aid in preventing this 
great waste of life. It is now illegal for any person 
to give children under one year of age any solid 
food except on medical advice, and nurses are | 
forbidden to use nursing bottles having rubber 
tubes. Efforts are being made also to induce 
Parisian mothers to nurse their own infants. 
In an interesting monograph by Sig. 4 . De Blasio 
entitled “Z : uomo preistorico in Italia considerate 
principalmente dal punto della visita craniologico 
1891 , some valuable information is afforded us 
regarding the mode of life, habits, and occupa- 
tions of the peoples of prehistoric Italy. 
Special mention is made of the characteristics of 
the various prehistoric human skulls that have 
been exhumed in various parts of the peninsula, 
but without referring to any of the side issues bear- 
ing on its paleontological aspects. 
The author considers the prehistoric era of Italy 
under the well known divisions of the Stone age, 
and the Bronze age. 
The Stone age he again subdivides into the 
orcheleotic epoch and the neolithic epoch and 
he then proceeds to consider in detail the various 
skulls, five in number, that have up to the pre- 
sent time been assigned to this period. The five 
specimens to which allusion is mad;, are as follows 
of each of which the author gives a brief but 
succint description. 
1. The cranium of Olmo illustrated by Cocchi 
1862. 
2. The cranium found in the travertine of Or- 
vieto, and now in the possession of the Marquis 
Gualterio. 
3. The cranium found among the sands that 
underlie the travertine near the island of Liri 
and which was described and figured by Xivo- 
lucci 1871. 
4. The two skulls found at Arpino near Capi- 
tina and described by the Author 1890-1891. 
5. The skull found at Mezzana which was de- 
scribed by Vogt and figured by Sastaldi 1866. 
The last of these is barehicefal, but the others 
with the exception of that of Orviet a. e dilococef.il. 
The specimen from Orviet is too fragmentary 
to admit of a specific determination, therefore its 
assignment to either of these epochs would be 
doubtful. 
In fact none of the skulls with the exception of 
those from Arpino are entire, and the absence of 
the facial bones will not therefore allow of it 
being determined as being ortogenated or proge- 
nated. 
