Dr. R. Oestreich is now privat docent in Anatomy in the University of Berlin.

Dr. Szymonowicz is privat docent in Histology in the University of Cracow.

Dr. Gruner, of Jena, goes on an expedition to Togo, German West Africa.

Prof. Ph. C. Sappey, the well known anatomist, died in Paris, March 13th.

A. Duvivier, student of Coleoptera, died in Brussels, Jan. 14, 1896. F. Ludy, coleopterologist, died March 1st.

Recent explorations in Babylonia have given us much information as to the characters and customs of the oldest civilized people of whom we have any knowledge. The earlier explorations were conducted by M. de Sarzec, French consul at Bagdad, and the report of his work was issued in a magnificent folio in joint authorship with the distinguished anthropologist of Paris, M. Leon Heuzey, beginning in 1889. A little later the department of Archeology and Paleontology of the University of Pennsylvania sent out Messrs. J. P. Peters and J. H. Haynes to make excavations further south in the Euphrates plain. They selected Nippur or Nufar as the point of research, and work has been continued there from 1888 to the present year. The climate of this place is very trying, and the character of the people dangerous, but Mr. Haynes on whom much of the actual labor fell, obtained an amount of material which in quantity and quality equals that obtained by the museums of London and Paris.

The Philadelphia material has been investigated by Dr. Herman Hilprecht, Professor of Assyrian and comparative Semitic Philology in the University of Pennsylvania, and he

has published two memoirs of great interest in the transactions of the American Philosophical Society, the second of which was issued in the present year. From this memoir and the previous one of De Sarzec and Heuzey I compile a few facts regarding the physical characters and habits of the earliest inhabitants of Chaldea, the Sumerians or Accadians. The information on these points is obtained largely from statues and picturecarvings on tablets of a dark limestone, found by De Sarzec at Tel-lo, and by Haynes at Nippur. The figures of animals of known species are so characteristic as to prove that the artists possessed a true eye for form. We may infer that their delineations of man are equally accurate, and that the conspicuous characters which they exhibit are trustworthy delineations. The general resemblance between the features depicted show that we have to do with an interesting and peculiar race.

In the numbers of the NATURALIST for January and February, 1893, Mrs. A. Bodington gave our readers a sketch of the Sumerian question. She followed the belief which had gained currency at one time, that these people were of Mongolian origin. Others have suggested that they were African. The drawings and statues described by Heuzey and Hilprecht show that these ideas were quite unfounded. I reproduce one of the latter from Hilprecht (Plate XVI, 1. c.), which is known as the stele of Ur-Inlil. Ur-Inlil was the high priest (or padesi) of Nippur, and he is represented as making an offering to some god on the upper half of the drawing. On the lower half a goat and a sheep are followed by two men, one of whom carries a vessel on his head, the other carries a stick (Plate XII). Another tablet from Nippur displays the same kind of men, and they are also represented on eleven tablets figured by De Sarzec and Heuzey from Tel-lo.

That these represent a race advanced in civilization is clear. They built temples and palaces on huge plateaus constructed of brick. They carved statues and vessels and made pottery. Especially they left records of their history on numerous cylinders and tablets of clay of which many have been preserved. They formed organized armies armed with spears, bows, and shields. What relation did these people bear to the people