Some anthropologists hold that the Neanderthal race is represented by the Brünn and Piedmont races of the upper Paleolithic, others that they were exterminated by the arrival in western Europe of a new race from Asia about 25,000 years ago. This progressive race of Homo sapiens, the same species as ourselves, appears to have come from Asia Minor through Tunis into Spain, and perhaps along the northern shores of the Mediterranean as well. Their successive cultures are known as the Aurignacian, Solutrian, Magdalenian and Azilian, and the development of their industry and art has been traced with the most detailed precision. They were hunters, and followed in the trail of the wild ass, Elasmothere, steppe horse and various other Asiatic immigrants. Associated with fourteen Cro Magnons skeletons in the Grotto on the Riviera near Mentone are two negroid skeletons. (I will not stop to describe this negroid Grimaldi type.) The fourth Glacial period had not yet closed when the Cro-Magnons apeared in Europe, but the climate was dryer-the summer temperate, but the winters severe. Most of the stations where their remains have been discovered were in caves or rock shelters, but several open camps have been discovered, as at Solutré which was probably a summer assembling of hunters. This remarkable race was tall, the average height 6 ft. 12 inches, with large chest, relatively long legs, remarkable lengthening of the forearm and shin, wide short face, prominent cheek bones, narrow pointed chin, narrow skull, aquiline nose and shallow orbits. They were vigorous and fleet-footed, practiced ceremonial burial, had much improved implements including the bow and arrow and stone lamps, with brains 1,500 to 1,880 cc. They show an appreciation of animals and have been called the Greeks of the old stone age because of their art, which included drawing, engraving, paintings and bas reliefs on cavern walls and floors, and the carving of soapstone, bone and ivory. Their history shows fluctuations in art and industry, in particular their flint workmanship declined with the introduction of bone implements. During the climatic fluctuations concerned with the oscillations of the shrinking glaciers and concomitant geographic changes, both their culture and physical vigor show a decline. Their history covers a period of from 10,000 to 15,000 years, and during this time there probably was some intermixture of other blood. Disharmonic skulls, i. e., broad face and narrow skull, are still found in the Dordogne and at a few other localities and near by is the primitive agglutinative language of the Basques. Some conclude that these represent late survivals of the Cro-Magnon race. They were followed by fishing races and the first broad headed types, the Maglemose culture (possibly Teutonic) around the Baltic, the Mediterranean (known as the Tardenoisian), and 118 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY the Alpine (Furfooz Grenelle) along the Danube (painted pebbles). This was from 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, and the so-called Campignian culture of this time is transitional to the Neolithic or New Stone Age of polished stone. The rest of the history belongs more to Anthropology and Archeology. The Robenhausian culture of the Swiss and other lake dwellings about 7000 B. C. shows permanent dwellings, domestication of animals and cultivation of crops with use of pottery: the Copper Age extended from 3000 to 2000 B. C.; the Bronze Age in Europe from about 2000 to 1000 B. C., in Orient 4000 to 1800 B. C.; the Iron Age (earlier or Hallstatt culture) in Europe from 1000 to 500 B. C., in the Orient from 1800 to 1000; and the latter Iron Age from 500 B. C. to Roman times in Europe.1 Note the cumulative rapidity of the advance as compared with slowness of change in earlier stages. Although very much remains to be discovered we know enough to assure the layman that man has had a long evolutionary history extending over tens if not hundreds of thousands of years. Does this knowledge breed cynicism and irresponsibility. What answer does science give on this point? Since late Paleolithic time, i. e., toward the close of the Old Stone age, 25,000 years ago, man's evolution biologically has been slight and to some extent retrograde. Skull bones and teeth have changed but little. It was during this period of slight physical change that our race has made the most astonishing progress, and the hope is natural that there is no limit to the betterment of the race by the exercise of wisdom, altruism and idealism-the spiritual graces if you choose so to call them. 1 Figures from Obermaier. SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS1 By Professor WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER LECTURE II. PART 2. WASPS SOLITARY AND SOCIAL Authorities on the classification of the social wasps now divide them into five subfamilies, namely the Stenogastrinæ, which are confined to the Indomalayan and Australian Regions, the Ropalidiinæ, confined to the tropics of the Old World, the Polistinæ, which are cosmopolitan, the Epiponinæ, possibly comprising two independent lines of descent from Eumenes-like and Odyneruslike ancestors respectively and constituting a large group, mostly confined to tropical America, with a few species in the Ethiopian, Endomalayan, Australian and North American regions, and the Vespine, which are recorded from all the continents except South America and the greater portion of Africa south of the Sahara. These five families may be briefly characterized before considering some of the peculiarities of social organization common to most or all of them. (1). The Stenogastrinæ evidently represent a group of great interest, because they form a transition from the solitary to the social wasps, but unfortunately our knowledge of their habits is very incomplete. F. X. Williams has recently published observations on four Philippine species, and though his account is fragmentary, it nevertheless reveals some peculiar conditions. He shows that the single genus of the subfamily, Stenogaster, includes both solitary and social forms and that all of them exhibit a mixture of primitive and specialized traits. The species all live in dark, shady forests and make very delicate, fragile nests with particles of decayed wood or earth. S. depressigaster (Figs. 30 E and F) hangs its long, slender, cylindrical nests to a pendent hair-like fungus or fern. The structure consists of tubular, intertwined galleries and cells, with their openings directed downwards. The colony comprises only a few individuals probably the mother wasp and her recently emerged daughters. The eggs are attached to the bottoms of the cells as in all social wasps and the larvæ are fed from day to day with a gelatinous paste, which Williams believes may be of vegetable origin. In the cells the older larvæ and the pupa hang head downwards. Another social species, S. vari 1 Lowell Lectures. 120 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY pictus, constructs a very different nest, consisting of cells made of sandy mud mixed perhaps with particles of decayed wood and attached side by side in groups to the surfaces of rocks and treetrunks (Fig. 30 G). In this case also the cell-openings are directed downward. A nest may consist of thirty or more cells in several Nests of Stenogastrine wasps from the Philippines. A. Stenogaster micans var. luzonensis, female. B. Completed nest of same; C. Nest with only the basal portion completed; D. Nest of Stenogaster sp., with umbrella-like "guards"; E. Nest of S. depressigaster; F. diagram of same showing arrangement of cells and passage-ways. The numbers indicate the cells. The tops of the passage-ways are shown in two planes by series of parallel lines. G. Nest of S. varipictus on the bark of a tree. (After F. X. Williams). Suspended and naked comb of a very primitive African Epiponine wasp, Belonogaster junceus, with young cells above and old cells containing larvæ below; natural size. Most of the wasps have been removed but two are seen bringing food-pellets to the larvæ. (Photograph by E. Roubaud). rows. There are only a few wasps in a colony, and when the larvæ : are full-grown the cells are sealed up by the mother as in the solitary wasps. But after the young have emerged the cells may be used again as in many of the social species. Williams describes and figures the nests of two solitary species, one an undetermined form, the other identified as S. micans var. luzonensis. The nest of the former (Fig. 30 D) is suspended, like that of depressigaster, from some thin vegetable fibre and appears to consist of particles of decayed wood. It is a beautiful, elongate structure of seven tubular, ribbed cells, arranged in a zigzag series with their openings below and two peculiar umbrella-like discs around the supporting fibre. These discs "remind one a good deal of the metal plates fastened to the mooring lines of vessels and serving as rat guards. Their function in the case of the nest may be an imperfect protection from the ants, or perhaps they may serve as umbrellas, though neither they nor the cells are strictly rain proof." They may possibly be rudiments of the nest envelopes which are so elaborately |