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Tate, of Alnwick-founding his opinion not on cranial developments alone, but on that of archæological evidence-considered them to be those of the original Celts. He (Mr. Blake) should like to have Dr. Thurnam's opinion as to the relation of the old skulls in river-beds to those described that evening. He was glad to hear that Dr. Thurnam deprecated the theory of a connection between the ancient Basques and the occupants of the north-east of Europe. Such notions were from time to time put forth; and he (Mr. Blake) had recently been reading the small and superficial Manual of Ethnology of Mr. Brace, professing to treat on the subject of ethnology, in which much stress was laid on a supposed connection between the Basques and the Laplanders. He should also like to have the opinion of Dr. Thurnam respecting the Guanches of the Canary Islands. For his own part, after examination of the few Guanches skulls at his disposal (a number, of course, far inferior to those of Basques which M. Broca had examined), he saw no connection between the Guanches and the Basques, and they appeared to be sui generis. As to the cases of supposed posthumous distortion in Peruvian skulls, which had been noticed by Mr. Bollaert, he must say that he had never seen such a case, and very much doubted if such had any foundation in actual observation. The distortions of all the skulls he had seen from Peru, which he had described in a paper laid before the Ethnological Society, had been produced artificially during life; and the result of the distortion was, that the brain-case had been much minimised, all such skulls being of a very low rank, if we took such a table of the cranial capacities of different races of man as that cited by Vogt, on more or less accurate data.

Dr. THURNAM, in reply to the questions put to him by Mr. Blake, said that his impression was, that the bone-cave skulls and the riverbed skulls described by Professor Busk, Mr. Carter Blake, Professor Huxley, and other observers, were dolichocephalic, and they had both been pointed out as having post-coronal depressions. With respect to the period to which the skulls belonged, his opinion was that, unless archæological evidence could be added to that of cranial developments, the question of age must be left very much in the dark. With respect to the skulls found in the Cheviots, he had no doubt that they were of the ancient British period and Celtic. As to the Guanches, he must say that he felt at a loss respecting them. The preponderating character of those skulls was dolichocephalic, and it was reasonable to suppose a connection between the former inhabitants of the Canary Islands and the neighbouring African population. The meeting was then adjourned to the 3rd of May.

TUESDAY, MAY 3rd, 1864.

DR. JAMES HUNT, PRESIDENT, IN THE CHAIR.

The minutes of the preceding meeting were read and confirmed. The names of the following twenty-five Fellows elected since the previous meeting were read :-R. Johnson, Esq.; Dr. T. Williams; C. Jervise, Esq.; J. E. Killick, Esq.; W. H. Mitchell, Esq.; H.

Johnson, Esq.; Sir J. R. Martin; W. N. Wilson, Esq.; Colonel S. O'Connor; Professor V. Wittich; Professor Müller; G. Wollaston, Esq.; G. Harris, Esq.; J. M'Donell, Esq.; W. Kelly, Esq.; W. G. E. Hobbs, Esq.; J. R. Langley, Esq.; E. J. Morshead, Esq.; W. Chambers, Esq.; Rev. A. Jessopp; J. P. Jones, Esq.; E. Lawrence, Esq.; C. Richardson, Esq.; M. Ricardo, Esq.; and St. George J. Mivart, Esq.

Mr. A. HIGGINS, the honorary foreign secretary, read a letter from M. Broca, the Secretary-General of the Anthropological Society of Paris, expressing his gratification at the translation of his work on Hybridity by the Anthropological Society of London, and at the able manner in which it had been edited by Mr. C. Carter Blake. Mr. Higgins also read the following communications from foreign corresponding members of the Society :

"Paris, April 7th, 1864.

"MR. PRESIDENT,-I beg to express to the Society which you direct with so much zeal and talent, my warm appreciation of the great honour which it has done me in publishing an English translation of my Researches on Hybridity in the Human Species. I know better than anyone how imperfect this little work is, and how incomplete as yet are the materials relating to this important question. In collecting those materials and making them the subject of some articles in the Journal de Physiologie, my object was rather to incite to further research than to produce a didactic treatise; and your Council has shewn extreme indulgence towards me in selecting this modest attempt to present to the English reader under the distinguished patronage of the Anthropological Society of London.

"But I specially desire to acknowledge the favour which your able Secretary, Mr. Carter Blake, has done me in consenting to devote to this translation his time, so precious for science, and his talents as a writer. Nothing could be more flattering to me than thus to see my name associated with his in a work which has, in passing under his accurate and elegant pen, acquired real literary merit.

"The copies of the translation which you have placed at my disposal, I intend distributing among the principal libraries in Paris. After acknowledging the receipt of the Society's recent publications: "The Society has commissioned me to thank you in its name for the receipt of these numerous and important publications, which give eloquent witness of the activity and prosperity of our sister society in London, and of the efficient manner in which you direct it. The reports of your meetings become fuller and more important every day ; and when we compare all you have done during your first year of existence with the little we had accomplished at the end of our first year, far from experiencing a feeling of jealousy, we rejoice to see the destinies of your Society confided to valiant hands. The paternal relation existing between the two societies prevents emulation, but not rivalry, and we are as glad of your success as we could be of our

own; well assured besides, that, as you have constantly shewn, this feeling is reciprocal.

"Allow me, Mr. President, to embrace this opportunity of offering you the expression of my personal sentiments of respect and high consideration.

(Signed)

"P. BROCA, Secretary-General."

Vienna Imperial Academy of Sciences.-Meeting, March 17th, 1864. Communicated by COUNT MARSCHALL VON BURGHOLZHAUSen, Corr. Mem. A.S.L.

"Dr. Aquinas Reid, general practitioner of Valparaiso, has recently transmitted to Dr. Scherzer, who presented them to the Novara Museum, a series of ethnographical objects. Among them is a complete and uncommonly well-preserved mummy from Atacama, whose head, flattened back by artificial pressure, is covered with a perukelike cap of net-work, made from an animal's hair, into which are artificially fixed long black hairs, identical in their distinctive characters with those of the actual American race. With this mummy, human crania, pottery, tools, and textile work have been found. Dr. Reid transmitted also a box with a wool-like vegetable substance (the leaflets at the basis of the frond of several species of ferns), used in South America-as they are also in Asia and in the Indian Archipelago, for stopping hæmorrhagia. These substances contain a large proportion of tannine, to whose styptic property they probably owe a great deal of their curative virtue. Dr. Seligmann has visited during past summer, the collection of human crania of Central South Germany and Switzerland, with the special purpose to ascertain the relations extant between the longitudinal Peruvian crania (Aymara or Titicacan race) and the similarly conformed crania found in Austria, Germany, France, and Switzerland, and generally known as Avarian. After having examined every one of the six Titicacan crania preserved in the collections visited by him, besides more than 1,000 of other races, Dr. Seligmann stated that an abnormity is peculiar to this race not to be found either in the so-called Avarian crania, nor in those of any other human race or tribe. It is the existence of exostoses, thickly besetting the right or left, or both sides, the anterior or the posterior, or both portions of the meatus auditorius externus, so as to diminish, transform, and even nearly obliterate its lumen. These exostoses have an osseous hardness, a broad basis, and a size from a grain of hemp-seed to a pea. Of the six crania submitted to examination, only one wanted these exostoses, larger than are generally those caused by morbid affection of the organs of hearing.

“The flattened crania of the Atacama and the other North and South American tribes all show (an already known) peculiarity in the shape of the porus externus, it being frequently slit-like, and its direction oblique from above and before to below and behind; but not one of them offers any trace of the exostoses characteristic of the Titicacan race. Dr. Seligmann is preparing a complete monograph of these and of the so-called Avarian crania."

Extract of a Letter from H.E. the President of the Argentine Republic, Don Bartolomé Mitré, to Mr. Bollaert.

Buenos Ayres, February 24, 1864.

"It is quite true, as Major Rickard has informed you, that I am occupied on a work relative to the Indians of this portion of America. A commission has been employed for some time in this interesting matter. The moment the work is completed, I shall have great pleasure in sending you a copy. I am much obliged for your kind offers to forward me what I may require on the subject of anthropology, particularly as regards the new school you belong to. I have read with great pleasure the contents of No. 2 you sent me of your Anthropological Society of London, in which I found much curious and interesting information, particularly as regards South America."

Mr. W. W. BOREHAM, F.A.S.L., exhibited a human skull found, with about twenty others, in cutting the Great Eastern Railway between the third and fourth barrows at Bartlow Hills, Essex. In the short communication which accompanied the skulls, Mr. Boreham stated that the skeletons were found, as nearly as he could ascertain, at the foot of the third hill, about two or three feet from the surface, and the situation is such that doubt may be entertained whether the hill was not raised after the bodies had been buried, and partly on the place of their interment.

Thanks were given to Mr. Boreham for his communication.

A paper was then read by W. BOLLAERT, Esq.: "On the Palæography of the New World." [This paper will be inserted in the Memoirs.]

The PRESIDENT said he felt sure the meeting would be happy to return their thanks to Mr. Bollaert for his very elaborate and interesting paper, and he regretted that some portions of it had been necessarily omitted in the reading on account of their length. It was a paper that required to be carefully read and studied, and he thought it would be better to adjourn the discussion of it to a future evening, when they should be able to do it more justice.

Mr. REDDIE observed respecting that part of the paper in which the author regarded language not as a natural gift to man but that it was invented by him, that he could not understand how that could be possible. It was very difficult to arrive at any proof on the subject, but experience affords no instance of the pure invention of even a word of any kind that was not borrowed directly or indirectly, or made from some existing word. We adopt words and modify them, but we know nothing of the pure invention of a word, and it was difficult to know how a word could originate without some antecedent. He should like Mr. Bollaert to explain logically what he meant.

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Mr. BOLLAERT said he had arrived at that opinion in common with most philologists, who believed that the different races of men had invented the languages they spoke. Those who had lived among Indians must have known that they had a very scanty power of language, and that they acquired such words as they have principally from the imitation of natural sounds. Thus the sound of falling

water they imitated, and they gave water that name. That he believed to be the beginning of the formation of all languages. The time when language was originally formed in that manner was a very different question. Another example he adduced was the word used by the Basques to signify the firing of a cannon, "s-tomba," which represented the first noise of the ignition of the priming and then the sound of the explosion. If there should be any further discussion of the subject he should be happy to go into it more fully.

Mr. BOUVERIE PUSEY inquired how far Mr. Bollaert considered the Creeks and Cherokee Indians were naturally adapted to receive European civilisation.

Mr. BOLLAERT replied that those tribes were not pure Indians. The following paper was then read :—

On the Precautions which ought to have been taken to ensure the Health of British Troops, had any been sent to Copenhagen. By T. BENDYSHE, M.A.

SOME time ago there appeared a possibility that a considerable number of British troops might suddenly have been embarked for Copenhagen. On the propriety of such a step, a member of this Society can have, as such, no opinion whatever. Or, rather, he can only regret that there should be the slightest chance of British life being, under any circumstances, sacrificed in a foreign quarrel. It is not, however, the sword of the enemy which has been generally most fatal to the military expeditions which nations have carried on at a distance from their native land. The differences of latitude, of climate, and of endemic disorders, have too often been utterly neglected by those who order these expeditions; and it is for these reasons that the Anthropological Society may fairly discuss the abstract question, of how any large body of Englishmen, placed under strict control in a foreign country, may return least diminished in numbers and strength to their own. "The only memorable disasters imputable to sickness which occurred in the last great war, were those which occurred in the expeditions to San Domingo and Walcheren. And though these were chiefly imputable to soil and climate, circumstances beyond human control, it is to be hoped that they will serve in all time to come, to enforce the necessity of statesmen rendering themselves acquainted with them in calculating the risks of war."* "We may readily admit that the French expedition to San Domingo at the beginning of this century, the descent of the English at Walcheren in 1809, in the height of the epidemical season, and the Russian campaign in the winter of 1812, might have turned out quite differently from what history shows them to have done, if proper attention had been given to the medical geography of the yellow fever, the marsh fevers, and the effects of congelation." It is lamentable to think that all the experience which

Blane (Sir Gilbert), Select Dissertations on several subjects of Medical Science, London, 1822, p. 108.

+ Boudin (J. Ch. M.), Traité de Géographie Médicale, Paris, 1857, tom. intro., p. xxxvi-vii.

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