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Bulletins de la Société d' Anthropoiogie de Paris, 1871–72.—We find from these reports that the French palæontologists have been unusually active during the last eighteen months in continuing the exploration of the numerous bone-caverns of their country and in testing the accuracy of the older classifications of their remsins. M. Barabeau has been examining with great care the Dordogne district, which has become classic ground through the labours of Christie and Larlet. M. Saudon believes that the molars and maxilla recently found at Laugerie-Haute Cannot be referred to the true horse—although they may provisionally, like similar remains found by M. Riviére in Italy—be accepted as belonging to some form of equns, for he does not think that the horse existed in Europe in pee-historic times. M. Mortihlet, in obedience to the suggestions of M. Bertrand, Conservateur du Musée de S. Germain, has drawn up a chart of the palæolithie age in Gaul, the only work of the kind extant: in it are recorded 5 localities in which occur supposed traces of man in the tertiary; 43 alluvial deposits in the quaternary yielding human bones and industrial remains; and 278 caverns containing quaternary fauna with traces of pre-historic man. M. Mortiflet thinks that we are no longer justified in assunsing with E. Lartet that there was ever a special age of the bear or reindeer, all extinct animals having apparently lived through the whole palæolithic period. Amongst the numerous communications of M. Hamy, we may instance papers on the “Fossil Human Remains of d'Engihoul, near Liège;” “The Anthropology of Cambodia;” “The Quaternary Deposits of cut Silex recently discovered in the Pas de Calais;” “The Existence of Brachycephalic Negroes on the Western Coasts of Africa;” and “The Proportions of the Arm and Fore-arm to the different periods of Life.” M. Doullsh, from observations made at the close of 1871, in a bone cavern at Corgnac (Dordogne), believes that he has found incontrovertible proofs that man in the reindeer age had attained the art of polishing no less than of cutting stone.—M. Lagardelle coimunidates through M. Hamy, one of the Secretaries of the Society, some curious information in regard to the habitations of the degraded people known under the names of Colliberts, huttiers, &c., who for many ages occupied the marshy lands of Poitou, near the mouths of the Sèvre, and whose descendants were known till recently as nioleurs. This district was occupied by Gauls before the Norman Conquest, and after that event it became, from its inaccessible character, a place of refuge for fugitives. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Colliberts, whose special occupation was fishing, were dependent, as homines conditionales, on several religious houses, but were nevertheless left in a state of heathen, almost savage ignorance. Their huts were made of interlaced willow twigs, and their only means of locomotion before the formation of the network of canals, which have proved the chief agents in rescuing them from their isolation, were their long ash stilts and the so-called nioles, or light boats from which they took their name. The race is now merged in that of the contiguous terra firma.—M. Aiph. Milne-Edwards has prosecuted an extensive series of observations on “The Embryology of the Lemurians and the zoological affinities of those animals;” and he finds that the placental system differs so widely from that of the Simiæ, with which they have been supposed to present very close relationships, that he is of opinion the Lemurs should take an intermediate, but wholly distinct, place between monkeys and carnivorcs.—M. Thorel's medical notes of his observations while serving in the exploring expedition to Meekong, in 1870, afford curious information in regard to the immunity to certain miasmatic affections presented by the people of Cochin China and other parts of Indo-China.—M. Sanson has laid before the Society his views on the Characterisation of Species, which are diametrically opposed to the Darwinian theory of evolution. The earlier numbers of the Bulletins for 1872, contain an unusually large proportion of papers on purely anatomical, psychological, medico-legal and similar subjects.—M. Broca considers, in a special mongraph, the importance of nasal configuration as a true ethnological character.—M. A. Roujou traces the analogies of the human type with that of the more ancient mammals, and proceeding to the length of concise definition, he fixes the probable appearance of the first lemurians alan epoch very remote from the secondary, and of monkeys—properly so called—before the tertiary, at the beginning of which period he thinks it not improbable that they enhendered man.—The second and third numbers of vol. vii. of the Bulletins contain the exhaustive Treatise of M. Topinard on the indigenous races of Australia, with the valuable contributions and discussions in regard to the same subject by MM. Broca, Hamy, and Rochet. These numbers give us a general exposition of the progress and actual position of the science of Anthropology, and of the social advancement of our civihisation and its effect in obliterating ethnological characters and in elevating the lower type.
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Scientific Serials . Nature 8, 114 (1873). https://doi.org/10.1038/008114a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/008114a0