gluteus, and Mr. J. S. Kingsley mentions a specimen in Williams College museum, in all of which there are two heads. Mr. J. S. Kingsley also mentions a five-legged frog (Rana palustris Le Conte) taken near Rochester, N. Y.; and Mr. J. Stauffer also mentions a similar specimen of the same species taken near Lancaster, Pa. In the Oölogist for August, 1879, mention is made of two specimens of ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus) one of which had ten and the other twelve toes. Mr. W. N. Lockington gives an account of a one-toed deer, and finally, Dr. E. Coues describes a race of one-toed hogs.

To the above I wish to add, that I have seen three specimens of our common blue-tailed lizard (Eumeces fasciatus S.) with forked tails. The specimens were all taken near New Harmony, Ind. Two are now in the collection of Mr. J. Sampson, of that place. The two prongs are near the same length, and as I remember, near three inches in length in all the examples seen. The two prongs form an acute angle of near 35°, and are attached to a short stub of the natural tail, which appears to have been broken off. I have also seen a number of specimens in which part of the tail was gone. Is it not probable that in the forkedtailed examples, this member was first broken off, and in the restoration this unnatural growth was assumed? While I am speaking of Eumeces fasciatus, I will mention the exceeding variableness of this species. From the small, blue-tailed, striped lizard, three inches in length, to the large, ruby-headed, copperbellied specimen, twenty inches in length and no stripes at all, every conceivable grade is found. A comparison of twentyeight specimens show ten well marked stages, each of which, taken alone, would make a good species.-J. Schneck, Mt. Carmel, Ill.

ZOOLOGICAL NOTES.-The Proceedings of the U. S. National Museum contain a number of descriptions of marine invertebrates, by Prof. A. E. Verrill; with notes on New England Isopoda, by Mr. Oscar Harger. The material was collected by the U. S. Fish Commission. In the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, Vol. 20, Mr. W. H. Patton gives a synopsis of the New England species of Colletes.In the Canadian Entomologist for November, Mr. W. H. Edwards describes the egg, larva and chrysalis of Argynnis idalia. It is stated that Prof. Comstock, Entomologist of the Department of Agriculture, is endeavoring to prepare a biological collection of insects on such a scale. and in such a manner as shall be a credit to the government. Special attention has been paid, the past year, to insects feeding on clover, the collection now containing over fifty species known to be destructive to this valuable crop.-—A catalogue of the beetles of Japan, by G. Lewis, enumerates 2227 species. These represent many European genera, and in many cases are specifically identical with European forms.We have received an

essay by Dr. Hermann Müller on protective mimicry in German insects, with some excellent cuts. Mr. H. J. Carter, having already published an article on the probable nature of the animal, of Stromatopora, and a second on its mode of growth, prints a third paper on the structure of this fossil, and shows its relation to the Hydractinia, in the Annals and Magazine for October. In the November number he discusses the nutritive and reproductive processes of sponges. Carter and Lieberkühn have shown that Infusoria and particles of Algæ are taken in as food by the cells of the ampullaceous sacs, whether the cells are ciliated or not, while Metschnikoff has shown that the cells of the parenchym (mesoderm) alsó are alimentary cells. Thus every part of the spong-parenchyma is capable of enclosing nutritious material and digesting it.

ANTHROPOLOGY.1

ANTHROPOLOGICAL NEWS.-We are pained to hear of the death of Mrs. Rev. Stephen Bowers, wife of the eminent archæologist of Santa Barbara, California. She was devoted to her husband's labors, accompanying him in all his expeditions, and was herself an intelligent collector.

We have received from the editors of the Journal of the Victoria Institute, four pamphlet copies of papers from that publication bearing the following titles: The Ethnology of the Pacific, by the Rev. S. J. Whitmee; The caves of South Devon and their teaching, by J. E. Howard; The contemporaneity of man with the extinct mammalia, as taught by recent cavern exploration, and its bearing upon the question of man's antiquity, by Thomas Karr Callard; The lapse of time since the Glacial epoch, determined by the date of the polished stone age, by J. C. Southall.

Prof. George M. Dawson is the author of a pamphlet, reprinted from the Canadian Naturalist, entitled, Sketches of the past and present condition of the Indians of Canada. The Indian population of the Dominion is set down at 100,000.

Dr. Gustav Brühl sends to the Smithsonian Institution a pamphlet of sixteen pages, entitled, Aztlan-Chicomoztoc, eine ethnologische Studien. New York, Cincinnati and St. Louis, printed by Berziger Brothers.

Two very interesting brochures from the pen of Prof. Boyd Dawkins have reached us. One of them treats of the range of the mammoth in space and time, and appeared in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society for February, 1879. The other is upon our earliest ancestors in Britain, constituting No. 6 of Science Lectures for the People, and was delivered in Manchester, Jan. 18, 1879.

The Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, Vol. XIV, contains a paper, by Prof. W. H. Flower, on the scapular index as a race character in man.

1 Edited by Prof. OTIS T. MASON, Columbian College, Washington, D. C.

The May number of the Journal of the Anthropological Institute contains the following papers: Some American illustrations of the evolution of new varieties of man, by Dr. Daniel Wilson; A revised nomenclature of the Inter-oceanic races of man, by Rev. S. J. Whitmee; Ethnological notes on the Motu, Koitapu and Koiari tribes of New Guinea, by Rev. W. G. Lawes; Notes on a skeleton found at Cissbury, April, 1878, by Prof. Geo. Rolleston; Illustrations of the mode of preserving the dead in Darnley island and in South Australia, by Prof. W. H. Flower. On page 402 is the address of the retiring president, giving an abstract of the work done during the year.

Dr. Wilson's paper in the Journal is devoted to a subject upon which he has bestowed a great deal of thought, the preservation of our aborigines, not by legislation but by a species of natural selection, through which a new race of men is being produced between the white race and the aborigines. The introduction of the black race and the Chinese increases the complexity of the problem and awakens some of the most curious questions in anthropology.

The communication of Mr. Whitmee is important, not only on account of his long familiarity with the Polynesian races, but also for the discussion which followed it. There are two broad and very distinct divisions of these people, the dark and the brown races; the dark occupying Australia, the Andaman islands, portions of the Indian archipelago and Western Polynesia; the brown being found in Madagascar, the Indian archipelago, Formosa, Northwestern and eastern Polynesia, together with New Zealand. Mr. Whitmee's division of these races is represented in the following table:

Mr. Wallace, who contributes the volume on Australasia and

Polynesia to Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travel, and Prof. Flower, objected to several of the new appellations given by Mr. Whitmee. The map illustrating this paper will be found in the February number of the Journal.

The seventh part of Anales del Museo Nacional de Mexico is entirely devoted to Archæology, and contains the following papers: Códize Mendozino: Ensayo de descrifacion geroglifica, by Sr. D. Manuel Orozeo y Berra; Cosmogonia Azteca, by Prof. G. Mendoza; La Piedra del Sol: segundio estudio, by Sr. D. Alfredo Chavero; El Congreso Internacional de Americanistas en Europa y el cobre entre los Aztecas, by Sr. D. Jesus Sánchez; Anales de Cuauhtitlan.

Vol. I, Part I, of the Memoirs of the Science Department, University of Tokio, Japan, is devoted to the Shell Mounds of Omori. The author, Prof. Edward S. Morse, having for years studied shell heaps in Maine and Massachusetts in company with Prof. Jeffries Wyman and Prof. F. W. Putnam, was well qualified for the examination of these remains, and has made good use of his opportunities.

These mounds possess those common characteristics which distinguish shell deposits throughout the world. They have, likewise, the following special marks: 1. The presence of enormous quantities of pottery, of many different shapes, and of an almost infinite variety of ornamentation. 2. By the great scarcity of stone implements, and the absence of arrow-heads, spear-points and other pointed implements of stone. Not an arrow-head, flake or chip has been found by the various parties that have been there in the interests of the university. 3. The men of the Omori period were also cannibals. 4. Peculiar clay tablets or amulets. The pottery is minutely described and illustrated by fifteen double lithographic plates. In form and marking it resembles in a striking manner the fragments in the Latimer collection, figured in the Smithsonian Report for 1876. The tablets are of the finest clay, light colored; two of them have designs in relief, with depressed areas; on the others the figures are cut on a flat surface. The author ventures a comparison with American tablets, but is not able to reach any desinite conclusion.

The opinion of cannibalism is founded on the same evidence as is offered by Prof. Wyman, but as savages break human bones for other reasons than a design to eat the flesh, the theory must take its chances with the rest. With much diffidence we would call Prof. Morse's attention to Le Moyne's plate 15, descriptive of the Indians occupying, in 1564, the very spot where Prof. Wyman found his evidences of cannibalism. "When a battle was fought the victors seized upon the enemy and mutilated their bodies in the most brutal manner. With cane knives the arms and legs were cut around and then severed from the body by blows upon the bones from wooden cleavers. The head was also cut around

with these knives, just above the ears, and the whole scalp jerked off. These were then rapidly smoked over a fire kindled in a small round hole, and borne off in triumph towards home, together with the arms and legs, suspended upon spears." Upon arriving at home they suspended these mangled limbs and trophies and danced around them in honor of their victory. Again, in arranging the Wilkes collection for the National Museum, I was struck with the great number of spear-points made of human bones. The question occurred to me then, and has been revived by Prof. Wyman, whether any magical effect would be attributed to spear-points made of the bones of a brave enemy. The absence of pointed bone in Omori would, of course, exclude the spear-point or implement theory. In conclusion, we consider Prof. Morse's memoir one of the most important contributions to archæology for the year 1879.

Numbers 3, 4 and 5 of Materiaux contain the following papers of interest to general students: Les pierres a bassin et les rochers a écuelles dans la Lozère, by G. de Maiafosse; A Review of Evans' Ancient Stone Implement in Great Britain; Palæo-ethnological bibliography for the year 1878, by L. Pigorini; The Tenevières of the Swiss lakes, by Dr. Forel; The latest archæological publications in the North, the Archæological Society of Finland, by E. Beauvois; Upon the origin of domestic animals, by G. De Mortilet; New anthropological publications in the German language; Study upon ring-money and its use among the Germans, by Dr. Much. The article by Dr. Forel upon the Tenevières of the Swiss lakes is a very important one indeed. In M. Desor's classic work upon the palafittes of Lake Neuchâtel, the author describes certain little submerged stone mounds, formed, apparently, by heaping rocks around the bases of piles. When the lakes subside, the mounds form true islets. Dr. Forel's article is to show that many of these are of geological formation, being the natural consequence of a talus forming at the foot of a bluff.

GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY.

THICKNESS OF the Ice SheET ON ITS SOUTHERN EDGE.—At the Saratoga meeting of the American Association for the Advance of Science, Professor J. C. Smock spoke of the surface limits of thickness of the Continental glacier in New Jersey. The existence of a great terminal moraine and a southern limit to the glacial drift in New Jersey and the adjacent States, were pointed out to the author in 1876, by Professor Geo. H. Cook. In that year the southern limit of the glacial drift was traced across the State from South Amboy to a point on the Delaware river, near Belvidere. Details were given of further investigations in tracing this line. The paper considered two questions:-What was the thickness of the ice-sheet along its southern margin; and what