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fluence of geographical conditions upon the various races of man, M. Bonté brings forward a large number of alleged instances of climatic action from Prichard, and M. de Quatrefages, in which those writers have endeavoured to show that a regular proportion exists between the heat of various climates, and the darkness of the skin of their inhabitants. He then adduces several of cases in which the darker tribes are found in the colder climates; whilst those who live in hotter localities are of much lighter colour. He then mentions the fact, that the inhabitants of large towns, who are necessarily less exposed to the sun than those of the country, are generally darker, as admitted by Prichard. The second theory which he discusses, is the influence upon the colour of the skin of a higher or lower, a damp or dry locality. With regard to the influence of food upon colour, M. Bonté only admits that a liberal supply will, by bringing the subject into a healthy state, perfect his natural colour, so that it will, he says, render the negro more black, the white man more white. We regret that we cannot follow this interesting paper through its details. The conclusion to which it arrives, is that "We have seen, as to the system of media, either facts positively denied as facts, or explained by reasons altogether independent of the action of media."

Correspondence.

THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL.

To the Editor of the Anthropological Review.

my able

SIR,-The enclosed letter, which I have just received from and energetic friend Dr. Pruner-Bey, will be of interest to your readers, if they think further arguments necessary to disprove the alleged affinity between the Neanderthal man and modern Australians. C. CARTER BLAKE.

April 22nd, 1864.

"28, Place de St. Victor, Paris, 19th April, 1864. "MOST EXCELLENT SIR,-I have twice to thank you, first of all for your kind attention to me personally, and in the second instance in the name of true science. With regard to this, I take the liberty to send you a copy taken from my memory, of what I had to submit to our Society here on the 7th of this month, about the man of Neanderthal. He is, what is of importance to me to establish before all, a Celt. 1. For, besides the large development of the frontal sinuses,

VOL. II.-NO. V.

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there is, so far as the exterior surface is concerned, nothing in this skull deviating from the old Celtic type. 2. He is a Celt, because the cast of the cranial cavity, being compared by myself with sixty casts belonging to the most different human races, agrees with that of the modern Irish Celt (of which there is a very fine specimen in my collection). 3. He is a Celt; for one particularity regarding the right angle formed by the neck of the head of the femur with the body of this bone, as it is observable on the femur of the Neanderthal man, has been found by me chiefly on femurs arrived from Boulogne-sur-mer', and found with very ancient and true Celtic skulls. Besides these cases, the same particularity is to be seen on the femur of the finest skeleton in the Museum, that of a Celtic woman of Great Britain.

"Tell, if you please, the gentlemen who still talk about Australians in comparison with the Neanderthal man:-1. That my friend Schaaffhausen has shown the futility of this by exactly established measurements. 2. That if there is, besides the true Australian type, recognisable at twenty paces to every one who has taken the trouble to go near to it, another one with more lengthened and elliptic skull, found in the northern part of Australia; this last type belongs to immigrants from the Nigritic islands, as for instance, from New Guinea, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, etc.

"Still, nobody who has measured simply the length, and breadth, as also the circumference of such Nigritic skulls, will ever again confound them with the long-headed Celt of Neanderthal; for here, as in almost all the ancient Celts, the circumference as well as the transversal diameter are much larger than in those very improperly so-called Australian skulls, which are distinguished even by the simplicity and form of their sutures (a thing apparently so insignificant as this) from old and new European skulls. It is not our fault, if gentlemen at Sydney are in a loss..

"Last of all, the most learned and acutely observing Professor King will allow me to observe to him in particular :

"1. That the elliptic form (segmental) of the occiput as well as of the coronal is truly characterising the Celtic type; that a triangular occipital squama is one of the many distinguishing characteristics of the old pre-Celtic brachycephalic skull, etc.

"2. That in consequence of the large development of the frontal sinuses, there is outside, of course, a receding forehead (internally it is quite different, as may be seen on the cast).

3. That the badly advised legion of copyists still put in circulation the error about the absence of frontal sinuses in Australian, Tasmanian, etc. skulls, generally. Truly they are absent in some, but present in others of the skulls I studied belonging to these races.

"Excuse, sir, the liberty I take in this involuntary relief to my feelings. I have no motive to offend anybody of our worthy colleagues; but, pardon me, sometimes I lose patience, even here in the metropolis of civility. I have the honour to call myself, sir,

"Your très-humble élève et serviteur,

"DE PRUNER-BEY."

ACTS XVII, 26.

SIR, Your correspondent in No. III. of the Anthropological Review, who gives the MS. readings of Acts xvii, 26, has omitted that of, perhaps, the oldest and best of them all.

The Codex Sinaiticus, omits haimatos. "It is," says Mr. Bradshaw, the keeper of the MSS. in the University Library of Cambridge, "a book written in uncial characters of the fourth, or at the latest, fifth century, according to all the authorities. As for the value of its readings, it takes its stand with the very best copies now remaining." I am, Sir, your obedient Servant, T. BENDYSHE.

88, Cambridge-street, Pimlico.

Miscellanea Anthropologica.

Meaning of the Term Anthropology. "Immediately the Anthropological Society was founded, an outcry was raised against its members for introducing a new word into the English language, which, said their opponents, had its meaning already expressed in the well-known word ethnology.' This feeling still exists, and therefore, we are glad to perceive that the learned president of the Anthropological Society has taken the subject of the controversy in hand. At a late meeting (January 5th), Dr. Hunt, in delivering the annual address, observed: If ethnology means the science of races, then it is assuming what has yet to be proved. Personally, I believe in the existence of races, and, consequently, that there is a science of 'ethnology;' but how objectionable the word must be to those who do not believe in races can be easily conceived. In the word 'anthropology' there is none of these gratuitous assumptions. It assumes nothing, and merely means, the science of man, or mankind. Some men in this country have expressed themselves adverse to the introduction of what they please to call a new word in the language, and also that 'anthropology' means exactly the same thing as 'ethnology.' Both statements are equally erroneous. Anthropology' is not a new word, nor does it mean at all the same thing as 'ethnology.' In Germany, France, and even in America, the word 'anthropology' has long been introduced, and with exactly the same meaning which we attach to it. Indeed, I think I may affirm, that there is not a scientific man of any eminence in Germany, France, or America, who now ever confuses the meaning of the two words-' anthropology' and 'ethnology.'"Popular Science Review.

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Not man, but man-like. We extract the following from a pamphlet published by Mr. William Thomson, of Melbourne, in reply to Professor Holford. A controversy has been raging in the antipodes, with the same bitterness and passion as these questions have been argued in England.

"How far the necessity for propitiating persons and prejudices is

answerable for these opinions is very apparent; and, just as the older anatomist has throughout had priority, so had he the greatest plausibility in these matters. Moderns must conciliate public opinionhe had only his patron. They bend the neck of science to the yoke of Demos, as he did to gentler graith, with a controlling power beyond and above both. Inscribing his book to the Lord Chancellor, Tyson archly observes of his pygmie that, 'The animal of which I have given the anatomy coming nearest to mankind, seems the nexus of the animal and rational, as your lordship and those of your high rank and order for knowledge and wisdom, approaching nearest to that kind of being which is next above us, connect the visible and unvisible world.' In this paragon of flattering dedications, the author adroitle conciliates a hearing for his theory by an illustration of it. Vain man is willing to be flattered by his improvability; but nothing must, 'with Roman severity, admonish the conqueror that he is but dust.' The evidences of a progressive enlightenment are not apparent in this direction: for, as in the Religio Medici, all are denounced as infidels and atheists who deny the reality of witches, so are those denounced who dare question the dogma of specific creations. In this branding process the Edinburgh Review and its Melbourne namesake, as the zenith and nadir of the literary world, hold up conspicuous lights. Their aurora, boreal and austral, are as things intermediate between telluric coruscations and the sun, and must be typical of an ascending scale, even among the illuminati. The president of the Anthropological Society of London, lately alluded to a prevalent belief upon the Continent that cultivators of science in England are 'priest-ridden, and afraid to give utterance to their scientific opinions through fear of public scandal.' Had he been resident among us, he would not have defended all his countrymen against this as a gross calumny. That the question of the origin of man, which owing to assumed vested interests, ignorance and superstition, had long been a forbidden subject of controversy, has now forced itself not only on the attention of men of science, but on that of the public generally,' may truly enough be said of the public at home; but here the dread of incurring the displeasure of hierarchs and sacerdots, or that imbecility which is tortured by the bugbear of singularity, still deters too many from more than furtive studies of these mysteries of Nature. However, no one can now be ridiculed as the advocate of doctrines discarded by every scientific man in Europe. True or false, they are at least not obsolete. Fashion, failing intelligence, will make them familiar, perhaps even in Melbourne, and the prediction made in The Argus, on the 3rd of August, 1858, that doctrines now confined to the studious and candid few, will eventually become the creed of the learned, and finally among the elementary principles of education, will be verified. 6 The day is long gone by when the probability of transmutation could be sneered down as the phantasm of a dreamer, or the product of the scepticism of an infidel. The possibility, nay, even the extreme likelihood, of such a law being eventually established is now rapidly becoming a tolerated doctrine in the creed of deepthinking, scientific men,' is the statement of one of Huxley's severest

critics*-of one who was a progressionist when Huxley supported views the reverse of what he now advocates. This recognition of truth will be a fresh proof of the supremity of human reason, and one of its highest triumphs. Then will man better look from Nature up to Nature's God'-better than by gazing through the distorting media of invented creeds and cunning formularies. The faggot ever was an uncertain beacon of the truth, but it shows up a new light. A worthy minister facetiously suggests that man is the only animal that uses a gridiron, which may be called a homely way of bringing an infidel opinion to the stake."

We purpose to allude to the whole questions here discussed at length at a future time, and the proximate publication of M. Gratiolet's work on the myology of the gorilla, will no doubt throw much light on the subject.

Anthropology and Geology. Mr. George E. Roberts, in an admirable pamphlet,t makes the following remarks respecting the present state of the science of man :

"So much light can be, and is being, thrown upon geological phenomena, by studying the forces of nature now operating in physical changes, and in the regulation of animal life, that any sketch of the position to which the science has attained must be incomplete if it ends at the period which, according to our present knowledge, marks the appearance of man.

"And here it may be remarked, that the mist which enshrouds the early physical history of the earth is so far recurrent, that the latest scene in the panorama (that which fills up the space between geological history and the point in time lit by the furthest-traced tradition) is one of equal uncertainty as regards the reliability of its data; and yet the cloud is not one arising from an elemental war which ended the pre-human kingdom, and prepared the ground for the erection of the new fabric by divesting it of its former occupants. There is no evidence of any grand convulsion of nature separating purely geological history from that chronicle of natural events which begins at the birth of man; 'no trace,' as Mr. Jukes has remarked, of any hard boundary-line between the human and the pre-human period of the earth's natural history; for the present is but a part of the past.'

"Man, as an integer of the life-problem, slowly worked out through the æons of the past in an unbroken continuity, is but a term of the sequence; and as such, philosophy forbids a search among the buried records for evidence of miraculous phenomena, or events contrary to natural courses which inaugurated and surrounded his appearance.

*

"As yet we are in the infancy of this inquiry. We are just beginning to discover that the first appearance of man upon the mundane stage (regarded in a non-miraculous light) cannot be deter

See Anthropological Review, vol. i, p. 169. ED.

+ Remarks upon the Present Condition of Geological Science. By George E. Roberts. (Von Voorst.)

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