At the same time, while the cause of the seasons as a whole is the obliquity of the earth's axis, with the resulting inclination of either pole toward the sun alternately, we must not forget that the seasons and the climate in each particular country depend in part upon many minor contributory causes. It is not merely nearness to or distance from the equator that counts; we have to consider also relative distribution of land and water, elevation, prevalent winds, exposure, condensation, and many other elements of a complex problem. In Ecuador, for example, whose very name means the equator, the plain is always in scorching summer, the mountains are always in perpetual spring. The monsoons, again, produce in other countries some curious results: they depend themselves on the change of relative temperature in sea and land at different seasons; and they break upon the Himalayas with this odd and unexpected effect, that the snow line on the southern side of that vast range goes very far down, owing to the immense rainfall (or rather snowfall) and the consequent spread of snow fields and glaciers; while on the northern side it descends but a very little way, owing to the extreme desert drought and the great summer heat of the central Asiatic table-land. We have thus the apparent paradox that millions of Tibetans occupy towns and cultivate farms to the north at a height from three to four thousand feet above the snow line on the southern slope of the same mountains.
Looking at the matter broadly, then, and taking for granted the now generally accepted modern view that the great oceans and great continents have been relatively fixed (though liable to minor fluctuations and variations of outline) throughout all geological time, and that the earth's crust has not shifted from pole to equator or vice versa, we arrive at last at the following probable conclusions: There have always been seasons more or less marked, and these have been more or less organically answered by corresponding changes or cycles of change in plants and animals. Rain and drought have in many cases more to do with such changes than variations of temperature. The seasons, again, are less marked in the tropics than in temperate and circumpolar climates. Nevertheless, even near the equator, they exert and have always exerted certain organic influences-have resulted in annual cycles in the life of species. Even before the coming on of the Glacial epoch, the seasons were probably somewhat more marked in the temperate and polar regions than in the tropics, the longer day in summer and the greater directness of impact of the rays making the summer months always warmer. But for various reasons, among which we may presumably rank the absence in early ages of high land at the poles and of an accumulated polar ice cap, together with the existence of warm sea currents from the tropics to the poles, the winters of preglacial ages seem to have been relatively mild, perhaps (if we may judge by the types of plant life) milder than those of South Carolina and Georgia in our own period. No cold winds of importance seem then to have blown with blighting effect from glaciated or snow-clad districts. (Mars in our own time appears to enjoy winters somewhat of this character, though a little colder, with a temporary snow cap.) The seasons as we know them in temperate and arctic climates, however, seem to be largely the result of the glacial epoch, and its persistent legacy the arctic and antarctic ice caps. If we could once manage to get rid of those, it is possible that our planet might again enjoy in all its zones the mild and genial preglacial winters.
These are rough notes, I know; mere adumbrations of a probable truth: but adequately to develop the subject would require a very big volume. My object here is simply to suggest that in many inquiries, both into human and animal or vegetable life, we must never take the existence of seasons as we know them for granted, except in very recent times. The year, for organic beings, means essentially the seasons; and the seasons may mean and have meant many separate things, as time and place vary—heat and cold, food and scarcity, foliage and leaflessness, drought and wet; longer or shorter days, the midnight sun and the winter darkness; hibernation and wakefulness; the egg, the cocoon, the seed, the plant, the flower, the fruit; dormancy or vitality. According as human life started at the poles or the equator, for instance, it would view in the beginning many things differently. All I wish to point out now is merely this, that we must bear such possibilities ever in mind; and that we must never take it for granted in any problem, human or biological, that the seasons were always just what we know them, or that the year to any organic being meant anything more than the seasonal cycle then and there prevalent.—Longman's Magazine.
In the excavations of the ancient cemetery of Antinoe, near Lyons, France, a "party dress" of the time of the Emperor Adrian, very fine silks, jewels, etc., have been discovered. One sarcophagus held the remains of a woman musician with a rose chemise, a cythara, pearls, castanets, etc.; in another was a child's costume with its little laced shoes, its vest ornamented with flowers appliqués, and its robe of gauffered crape. It appears that the women of sixteen hundred years ago dyed their hair with henna, and twisted ribbons round their heads. Nothing changes.
M. A. Thieullen, publishing the results of fifteen years' studies among the flint implements of the French beds, draws the conclusions that the elaborate palæolithic flint axe and hammer and the typical neolithic implements were luxuries used by the more distinguished members or for the more important purposes of the flint-implement-using community, while the ruder implements which are found in enormous numbers were the objects of general and daily use throughout all the flint-using ages, whether palæolithic or neolithic.
[BRAIN WEIGHTS AND INTELLECTUAL CAPACITY.]
By JOSEPH SIMMS, M. D.
Having been for thirty years a lecturer on man and his character as evinced by his form, features, head, and gestures, and having made observations on the subject in all parts of North America, in continental Europe and Great Britain, and parts of Asia, Africa, and Australia, I should not be deemed presumptuous when I present a few facts regarding the relations of mind and the size and forms of heads and weights of brains. It has been observed by many persons versed in the branches relating to the subject that men with the largest brains are not those of most talent, power, or intellect; but many such have been only ordinary or inferior men, or even idiots; while some men of most powerful and comprehensive minds have had unusually small brains. Esquirol's assertion that no size or form of head or brain is incident to idiocy or to superior talent is borne out by my observations.