Abstract
Bulletins de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, tome ix., fasc. i, 1886.—The present number gives the usual annual recapitulation of the rules of the Society, the lists of members, addresses by the outgoing and incoming presidents, financial and other reports, c.—M. Moncelon laid before the Society a resume of the principal results of his observations on the half-castes of New Caledonia during his residence in the colony. He drew attention to the evils resulting from the practice commonly followed by the native mothers of half-castes, of going back with their children to their native tribes, amongst whom these half-whites grow up in slavery as savages.—On certain Hova and Sakalava skulls, by M. Trucy. Both of these cranial groups are dolichocephalic, with an index of about 74, which is nearly the same as that of the Arabs of Algiers and the pariahs of Bengal. The Hovas and Sakalavas appear to be more intelligent than any other tribes of Madagascar, but while the Sakalava queen, the ally of France, submitted with her husband to be made the subject of careful anthropometrical observations, she enjoined upon the French officers to punish with death any one who opened or rifled a grave. It was consequently only by artifice and extreme circumspection that M. Trucy was able to obtain crania or other human bones. In the discussion which followed, regarding the mixed characters of the Hova crania, MM. Topinard, Dally, and others entered warmly into the question of typical and other distinctions of race.—On the development, in the adult, of supernumerary digits, by M. Fauvelle This paper, which supplies some suggestive and not uninteresting matter, is based upon observations on the abnormal development in a full-grown axolotl of a fifth digit at the base of the fourth, and the gradual reparation, by multiplication of the parts, of various injuries to the other phalanges. Dr. Fauvelle considers at length the conditions on which the formation of supplementary parts in the adult may possibly depend, and whether we may not refer such abnormal manifestations of activity to a reversion in the cells of the connective-tissues to an embryonic condition, in which segmentation is possible. M. Avia, in confirming the views of Dr. Fauvelle as to the influence of heredity in the human species on the appearance of supernumerary organs, instanced the family of the Fodli, which for several centuries had exercised patriarchal supremacy over a tribe of the Arab Hyamites. In this family, whose members are not allowed to marry beyond the limits of their own kindred, polydactylism has become an established hereditary character, and is considered as an indispensable evidence of legitimacy, and right of succession. M. Avia has personally examined various Fodli, all of whom had twenty-four phalanges on their hands and feet.—On heredity, by Dr. Fauvelle. In this, as in the preceding paper, the author draws attention to the injury done to scientific inquiry, by the constantly increasing recklessness with which physiological and anatomical conditions, whose causes we are ignorant of, are indiscriminately referred to so-called “atavism.” It must be confessed, however, that the author himself in his exposition of the significance of the phenomena of heredity, as given in this paper, and in his more recent communication to the Society of his views regarding the real or assumed existence of atavism, exhibits the same want of accuracy and close odefinition which he condemns in others, and the vagueness of the opinions which he has enunciated with such dogmatic temerity excited a lively controversy, in which MM. Laborde and Sanson, and Mme. Cl. Royer, with other members, took part. —On primitive forms of numerations, by M. Letourneau. In this paper, and in the discussion which followed its reading, attention was drawn to the development, among some peoples, of a decimal system of numeration from the natural counting of the fingers, while according to Bachofen and others, the decimal method was preceded, in those earlier periods of civilisation in which the matriarchal principle was still in force, by the octomal system. Curious evidence of the prevalence of this practice of counting by 8 is afforded in Sanskrit, and in Greek and Latin, as well as in several modern European forms of speech, by the close affinity, if not identity, of the words signifying nine and new, as, e.g., the French “neuf,” thus showing that the numeral following eight was of more recent acceptation than the final term of the octomal form of numeration.
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Scientific Serials . Nature 34, 185–186 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/034185c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/034185c0