42 H. ROLLESTON.-Cerebral Hemispheres of Australian Male. owing to the fact that the collateral fissure is rather broken up. The uncinate gyrus is distinctly larger than normal, it measured a quarter of an inch more than that of a well developed European brain. Anteriorly the uncinate gyrus is divided (as on the right side) into an internal and an external portion by a blind sulcus (marked, fig. 3) directed antero-posteriorly. This sulcus (25 mm. long, 6 mm. deep) is not so big as the corresponding one on the right side. The inferior temporo-occipital gyrus is well defined laterally by the inferior temporo-sphenoidal sulcus. Depths of Fissures and Sulci. The fissures and sulci were measured in several places. The number put down is an average. It may be well to say that the term fissure is reserved for the so-called complete sulci, viz., the Sylvian, parieto-occipital, calcarine, collateral, and hippocampal. All the rest are sulci. Fig. 1. 2. 3. Middle temporo-sphenoidal Explanation of Plate II. Lateral view of left hemisphere of brain of adult male Australian. For explanation of sulci marked a and b in figs. 1 and 2, see text. Lateral view of posterior portion of right hemisphere of the same brain. Tentorial surface of left hemisphere of the same brain. 4. Tentorial surface of right hemisphere. Reference letters to figs. 3 and 4; c, calcarine fissure; d, cuneate lobe; e, internal parieto-occipital fissure; x, an anomalous sulcus described in the text. The following paper was then read : On a FOSSIL HUMAN SKULL from LAGOA SANTa, Brazil. By SÖREN HANSEN. Abstract. THE author gives good reason for believing that the skull in question, now in the Geological Department of the Natural History Section of the British Museum, having formed part of a collection purchased in 1844 from M. Chaussen, was originally in the possession of Lund, and is one of a large series obtained by that explorer in the cave known as Lapa di Lagoa di Sumadouro, the remainder of which are in the Copenhagen Museum. As the contents of this cave are much mixed, the age of any individual specimen found in it can not be determined with precision, but the author believes that this skull was contemporaneous with the now extinct mammalian fauna of the country. It has the same elongated form and general characters of the other Lagoa Santa skulls, characters which are repeated in the Botokudos, more nearly than in any other existing race. MARCH 8TH, 1887. FRANCIS GALTON, Esq., F.R.S., President, in the Chair. The Minutes of the last ordinary meeting were read and signed. The following presents were announced, and thanks voted to the respective donors: FOR THE LIBRARY. From the AUTHOR.-Social History of the Races of Mankind. Second Division. Papuo and Malayo Melanesians. By A. Featherman. Annual Address to the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, February 2, 1887. By the President, E. T. Atkinson, B.A. From the GEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY OF CANADA.Annual Report, 1885. From the ESSEX FIELD CLUB.-Transactions. Vol. iv, Part 2. The Essex Naturalist. Nos. 1, 2. From the ASSOCIATION. Journal of the East India Association. Vol. xix, No. 2. From the SOCIETY.—Journal of the Society of Arts. Nos. 1788-9. Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. 1886. Nos. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Nos. 271, 272. The following paper was read by the author: STONE CIRCLES, near ABERDEEN. By A. L. LEWIS, F.C.A., M.A.I. [WITH PLATE III.] THE comparatively flat part of Scotland, which forms its most easterly angle, and is chiefly included in the county of Aberdeen, has, up to a recent period, contained a great number of stone circles, no less than twelve having existed within the memory of man in the one parish of Old Deer, in the corner of the angle already mentioned, about twenty miles north from Aberdeen, and within a dozen miles of the sea. Many, however, which remained so recently as to be marked on the ordnance map, have now disappeared; amongst them one which formerly stood on the Burgh Muir of Inverurie, about sixteen miles north-west from Aberdeen.1 There is a fine circle remaining at Tyrebaggar Hill, two miles from Dyce junction, and six or eight north-west from Aberdeen; it is 57 feet in diameter, and consists of eleven upright stones varying in height from 2 to 9 feet, standing on a bank of earth and stones, 2 feet high, and 3 or 4 wide at the narrowest part; the two tallest stones are on the south side of the circle, and between them is a stone, 10 feet or more long, 6 high, and 2 thick, which leans inwards, but had planted round it a number of small stones, 2 or 3 feet long, and a foot or so square, as if to hold it in its place. The group formed by this stone with its little supporters and the two high stones, one on each side of it, is obviously the principal feature of the circle, and a line taken almost due north from its centre cuts through the centre of the 1 I mention this to prevent others from making a useless journey. S circle and between two small stones set on the inner face of the bank to a single stone which is the most northerly of those forming the circle; of the other upright stones, three stand at irregular intervals forming the west side of the circle, gradually diminishing in size towards the north, and three in somewhat similar positions forming the east side; but, besides these latter three, there are, in the eastern half of the circumference, two other small stones, standing close together in such a position that a line taken from the front of the centre of the principal stone due north-east would pass between them; there is a tumulus about 375 feet away in this direction, but not, it would seem, in the exact line. Mr. McCombie Stewart, the stationmaster at Dyce, who should be consulted by any one visiting Dyce for scientific purposes, informed me that there was formerly a hole in the middle of the circle, which might be suggestive of the former existence of a kist; he also told me that there was supposed to be iron in the largest stones, and this seems very probable, for, on working my rough plans out at home, I found a disagreement in the compass-bearings. In this emergency I applied to Mr. McCombie Stewart, sending him a plan and asking him to verify my compass-bearings and some other particulars. He was so kind as not only to do this, but to get one of the Engineers of the railway to make an exact plan of the circle, showing the bearing of each stone from the centre. I am happy to be able to say, as showing the accuracy of my own methods, that my plan superposed upon his gave practically the same results. In the letter accompanying the plan, Mr. McCombie Stewart, who is qualified to speak as a geologist, says, "We were unable to account for the peculiar ringing sound of the altar stone, unless it be caused by the flat shape of the stone, having its side firmly fixed in the ground, and the projecting part having a certain vibration-or if it were from the hard heathen substance of an iron nature-but one thing is certain, the stone is not of the same nature as those belonging to the neighbouring quarry." I may here mention that Mr. John Stuart' says of a similar circle at Ardoyne, Aberdeenshire (now nearly destroyed), that the oblong stone and the two upright stones flanking it were of Bennachie granite, while the rest of the stones were of gneiss. Here are two more instances of the custom of selecting stones from some other locality for the principal stones of a circle. Returning to the Dyce circle I ought to mention that there are two or three small stones (say 3 feet x 2 feet × 2 feet) in a plantation to the south-east, but whether thrown down from the 1 "Sculptured Stones of Scotland" (Spalding Club). circle or not, I cannot say. A cairn in the field to the northeast was, Mr. McCombie Stewart says, removed in 1886. Mr. Christian Maclagan, in his "Hill-forts, Stone Circles, &c., of Ancient Scotland," published in large quarto at Edinburgh in 1875, gives a plan of the Dyce circle, which shows an inner circle of small stones close together, of which the two that I have mentioned were doubtless a part. He also shows three stones outside the larger circle, as though forming part of an outer concentric circle, they are probably those which I have mentioned as being in a plantation to the south-east, but I do not think there was any circle surrounding that which now exists. Mr. Maclagan's book appears to have been published at considerable expense to support a view of which he probably has a monopoly, namely, that all stone circles are the last remains of circular buildings of unmortared masonry of the broch type, and that the banks of small stones in which the upright ones are set and held fast are only the remains of foundations. He also thinks that the oblong stones have in every case been laid flat on the short pillars surrounding them, and have been the lintels of entrances, and he delineates a "restoration of a circle at Aquhorthies, near Inverurie, showing the oblong stone in this position with a huge mass of uncemented masonry resting upon it. There can, however, be little doubt that all these oblong stones were originally set upright on edge, and that where they lean or are flat it is because they have slipped. Mr. Maclagan speaks of them as "south-west stones," whereas they are not at the south-west, but at the south of the circlesperhaps he forgot the westerly variation of the compass. Mr. Maclagan considers his theory to apply to Stonehenge, which he figures "restored" with an enormous tower embedding and surmounting it, and to Avebury, the great circle of which, 1,300 feet in diameter, he takes to have been the last remains of an immense circular wall, larger than the bank which still surrounds the site, and which is as large as a railway embankment. The utter improbability of the entire disappearance (especially in places where stones are a nuisance) of such tremendous quantities as Mr. Maclagan suggests the former existence of might, but for his nationality, lead us to suppose that in propounding his theory he was perpetrating a practical joke almost as heavy as his masses of masonry would have been had they ever existed; at the same time, it may be admitted that some very small circles may possibly have had some such origin as he suggests. It is a great but common mistake to assume that all circular arrangements of stones must necessarily have had the same origin and use. About six miles south from Aberdeen and two west from |