J'tme 3, 1 88oJ NATURE 97 plain, and simple as conforming as nearly as may be to Soc. Ant. Scot., and in Prof. lloyd Dawkins' "Early Nan," the popular terms in use, and above all that t:1ere 'hould be nothing p. 338. to mislca<l an ignorant person. 1\ow I would ask what idea is In a large number of imtanccs cup and ring marks have been conveyed to an ordinary unscientific mind by the term "snow· found on the stones of cists, stone circle,, and mcrthirs, It >heel"? The name is perfectly correct if read in the light of :'II. th:reforc appear that they_ arc connected with sepulchral l'ocy's explanation ; but to an average or nte;;. Cup marks arc found Ill Scotland, Ireland, \Vales, it would certainly c:mvey the idea of a so-callecl Northumberland, Yorkshire, Cumberland, Lancashire, Switzer. "pallia cumu Ius," 1-mdy to discharge m.r.u, and would be used bnd, Sweden, and India ('ee Rivett Carnac's papers in :Journal ncwrdingly. of Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1878-g). I should be glad of "Wind cloud" appears aha distinctly misleading. To most evidence of their existence in Derbyshire and ebewhere i11 the minds it would, I belie,·e, imply a citnH or cirro-cumulu;, as South of England. J. Ar.LEX being the harliinger of wind. \\"e have two excellent names in 23, Maitland Street, Edinburgh common use-" scuJ" and "rack,"-either of which woulJ serve. Songs of Birds "Stratified cloud" is a very vague term, applicable to many ;·arieties besides "cirro-stratus." 1 CAN any mmical reader of NATt:RE for me the Ohjectiom might also fairly be raised against "Belt clout!," notes of the king lorry (Afrvsinectus srapu!atus)? ?.lay not the as comparee! with the familiar "Noah's ark" which Pocy him­ major and minor keys of the cuckoos noticed by Jolm Birming· self quotes elsewhere, and to the "Globular tempestuous cloud," ham be F.exual charo.ctcristics? The males are believed to exceed as a very cumbrous term, although n correct one. the females in number in the proportion of four or five to one, It is to be hoped that all the;e details will be fully di,ctmecl and, if this be so, the male note must be heard more often than before 1\I. Pocy's suggedons are either admitted into general the female. The "jerkiness of style" in the major cuckoo, a! use, or, on the other hand, too readily rejected. E. II. clescribed, suggests that the performer is a female. A. N. \Valtham,tow, Es;;ex C. HARDI:-;G.-The teeth belong to a young horse-not N OTF..-The reference., are to Howard's Essay IJ11 the 11/odi· 'V. jicatims of Clouds, third edition, Churchill, 1865, and to yet "in mark" (Equus cabal/us). Their geologic:tl horizon appears Pot;y's Comment on observe les 1\lttagu, Paris, 1879. uncertain, ancl they are as likely to be hi;toric or prehistoric as pleistocene. "Chipped Arrow· heads" CO:JfPARATIVE ANATOMY OF MA1'1n I:-; a number of NATURE (vol. xx. p. 483) which only lately reached u;; here I rca<! an interesting- account of Mr. Cushing's III. re;;earches into the manufacture of flint wcapom as practised by Modifications of the Ncxro type.-At several parts of the aboriginal tribes; and as I have had many opportunitic;; of equatorial region of Africa, from the Gulf of Guinea to the obsen·ing the method by which the Fucgians of Magellan's 'Vhite Nile, indications ha,'e been met with of a small race Straits fashion their arrow-beads, a few words on the matter of negroes, sometimes so small that the name of pygmy may may not be without interest to some of your readers. truly be applied to them, differing from the ordinary One of the indications of the increase of traffic through these negro in the short rounded torm of the head. These bear Straits which ha;; of late year;; taken place is that empty bottles some resemblance to the diminutive members of the are nnw to be found ab::mt the shores of those anchorages which are used by passing vessels ;ts stopping-places for the night; and oceanic black races who inhabit some par"ts oithe East bottle-gbss is cons.cquently the material used by the Fuegians of Indian Archipelago, especially the Andaman Islands, and the present day, to the exclusion of obsidian, quartz, or flint. to whom the name .Nexrito is now generally applied, and The following is the process :-A fragment somewhat approach· Dr. Hamy, who has collected together all the evidence ing to the shape of the intended arrow-he:Hl is grasped firmly in at present accessible as to their existence, has proposed the left hnnd, while in the right hand is held an old iron nail to distinguish them by the term Nq;ril/o. The Akkas of stuck into a short wooden handle. The fingers of the cJo,cd Schwcinfurth appear to belong to chis rac;e. In many right hanrl. arc turned upwards, and the point of the nail is districts they arc more or less mixed with the ordinary directed towards the operator',; breast. lie then preS'es with negroes, and their physical characters are therefore great force the blunt point of the nail obli<]uely against the edge obscured, but some skulls from the West Coast of Africa of the piece of glass, when a thin scale flies off towards him. in the collection of Dr. Barnard Davis bear a striking One of the edge having been bevelled in this way, the glass is resemblance to those of the Andamancsc, and ha\·e a turned round, and the opposite edge flaked off in a similar cephalic index of So or upwards. manner. Working the eclgcs alternately in this way, the glass is readily brought to the required sho.pc. The fashioning of the The greater part of Africa, between the equator and the point is the most difticult part of the process, the formation of most southern parts, where the Hottentots and Bushmen the barbs being easily effected. dwell, is. inhabited by negroes, who for linguistic reasons I have seen a native thus make a brge arrow-heaJ. out of a arc ::;rouped together, and separated from the more piece of brol<en pickle bottle in about half an hour. The glass northern tribes, and now generally known to ethno­ is never struck, but is fa-hioned entirely by presmre. After a logists by the name of Eantu. Their range seems to little practice I succeeded in fair imitations. have extended southwards in comparatively recent times, I find, moreover, that the iron tool above mentioned can be encroaching upon that of the original inhabitants. They dispensed with, and that the flaking may be effectecl hy pressing are a pastoral people, \\·arlike, energetic, and intelligent, with an angular flint or with a piece of bom, which were probably owning large herds of cattle, and living in dllages com­ the methods used by the Fuegians before they possessed any iron posed of a number of beehive-like huts. The southern implements. K. W. Bantu, who at present arc the best known, from their H.M. Surveying Ship Alert, Swallow Bay, Straits of vicinity to the British and Dutch settlements of South 1\1 agel !an, :\larch 21 Africa, are diddcd by Fritsch into r. The Ama-Xosa, who inhabit at present the south-cast portions of the Bantu Cup and Ring Stones territory, adjoining the sea, between the Cape Colony and I:-; reply to l\Ir. llfiddleton's letter I beg to say that the Ilkley Natal. To these the name Kajir, derived from an Arabic cup and ring stones have been carefully described and illustrated word applied to them as unbclic\·crs or heathens, is com­ in a paper read by me before the Brit. Assoc. (see monly given, but the name is sometimes used in a wider :Jouma! B. A. A. for 1879, p. 93). sense for the Bantu negroes generally. The Ama-Xosa Further information will be found in Sir Jas . Simpson's work include the well-known tribes of Gaikas and Galeika.s, on the subject, which forms the appendix to val. vi. of the Proc. with whom we were at war in 1Si7. 2. The Ama-Zulu, t lam not :\Ware w:1cther Ct•schit:llll'!t' IVuU:tn is an :>cccptcd term in • Abstr:tct Report of PrtJf. Flower's 1cctt1rcs :l.t the Royal of Germany. Iu the llcrnesc 4 very expressive name is uscJ, Surgc?ns, !\[arch 1 to 19, on Anato:ny of Gtstrd/IL· 1Volkc1l, only t?O \\'ell known to mountaineers. Continued frJm p. So. © 1880 Nature Publishing Group NATURE [.7 une 3, I 83o situated to the north of these, in Natal and Zululand. and nearly exterminated. Notwithstanding their gene- 3· The Bechuanas, occupying the central or inland· rally low condition of culture, they show remarkable country; and 4. The Ova-hereros, or Damaras, of the pictorial power, drawing animals especially with life-like western coast-lands. Each of these divisions is com- accuracy. The osteological characters of the Bushmen posed of numerous small tribes, frequently at war with are tolerably well illustrated in the museum both by each other, and constantly changing in relative impor- skeletons and crania. Their average height would tance and even locality. The growth of the Zulu nation appear to be from 4 feet 6 to 4 feet 8 inches, and there is is a striking example of the mutable character of native very little, if any, difference between the men and women African political combinations.