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The Natural Ristory of Kerguelen island. 481 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF KERGUELEN ISLAND. THE reports of Dr. J. H. Kidder, naturalist of the Transit-of-Venus Expedition, on the natural history of Desolation or Kerguelen Island are of interest from two reasons; first, the extreme paucity of life upon this barren rock; and second, the large number of naturalists who have been called upon to report upon the few specimens collected; as many as eight specialists in zoology and four in botany, as well as a mineralogist, contributing their aid, while the naturalists of the English Transit-of-Venus Expedition, particularly Rev. A. E. Eaton, assisted by several English and a German entomologist, have also published papers on the entomology of the island. It will be remembered that the United States ship Swatara, with Dr. J. H. Kidder as naturalist, sailed from New York on the 8th of June, 1874, and landed, September toth, two astronomers and Dr. Kidder, of the navy, with photographers and two of the crew. Some of the more interesting results we shall present to our readers, often using the language of the reporters. This island is situated southeast of Madagascar, in latitude 500, longitude 65?, approximately. It is about ninety miles long by fifty in width, and is composed, as to its southern part at least, wholly of volcanic rock, showing no signs of stratification. The northern portion contains stratified rocks, deposits of coal of little value, and very ancient remains of silicified wood, indicating the former existence of trees of considerable size, and the submergence and subsequent upheaval of the land upon which they grew. The whalers say that a large glacier runs across the island, in a generally east and west direction, at about its centre. In the interior the land is mountainous, peaks with sharp volcanic outlines alternating with table-topped hills. Mount Ross, the highest peak (about five thousand feet), is always snowcovered and quite inaccessible. Near the sea, in December, the snow-line was found on Mount Crozier at about two thousand six hundred feet above the sea-level. Kerguelen Island is a region of almost constant precipitation, only twenty-seven days out of four months being recorded as without snow or rain, and a still smaller number of nights. The thermometer ranged not far from the freezing-point, the daily average being a little below it in September and October, and a little above it in November and December. Whalers say that in midwinter there is no marked increase in the severity of

The Homo erectus calvaria from Hexian, Anhui province, China is an important component of the fossil sample from East Asia. This specimen is the most complete Chinese H. erectus cranium found outside Zhoukoudian. Previous work has shown that the fossil crania from Zhoukoudian exhibit a unique metric pattern not seen in specimens from Africa or Indonesia. Multivariate statistics that assess the statistical significance of distances have not been used to compare the Hexian cranium to other relevant fossils, and this has hampered our appreciation of the pattern and magnitude of variation in the Chinese fossil record. This study involves the use of Mahalanobis distances to examine the variation present in a large sample of Homo erectus crania. Two separate examinations utilizing up to 7 measurements on 15 crania were performed to maximize the number of available specimens. Random expectation statistics were then used to test for significance between these fossils. Our results highlight clear metric dissimilarities between the Hexian calvaria and the fossils from Zhoukoudian. These metric patterns also separate Hexian from Zhoukoudian V, a skull with which it shares some more modern non-metric features. Our results indicate a greater degree of variation in the human fossil sample from China than has previously been recognized.

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