one of these shells in finely prepared wax, we get the colors as well as the form of the specimen. Myrrhine vases were sold at 70, 100, and 300 talents. The talent was about 540 francs. We may find among minerals many stones which, being cut, will make excellent gems. There is the euclase, a weak emerald in color, but not so hard as a real emerald. The amphigène is as pretty as the white sapphire. The prehnite is a tolerably good céladon. It is somewhat remarkable that researches in mineralogy have led to nothing new in the way of precious stones. This illustrates a remark of Humboldt that mineral nature is the same fromone end of the world to the other, which cannot be said of either the vegetable or the animal kingdom.

There is no hope, then, of our finding anything beyond diamonds, rubies, sapphires, topazes, emeralds, and amethysts. The only resource is the laboratory. To obtain new gems man must not count upon nature but upon his genius.

In terminating the list of precious stones let us say a word about the white pebble or rock-crystal. This is nothing but flinty sand, crystallized and variously colored. Almost all false gems, so called, are made from rock-crystal or quartz. Thus rock-crystals, cut like the diamond, as Rhine diamonds and Alençon diamonds, are called false diamonds. It is only violet quartz which makes the true amethyst. Recently an attempt has been made, with considerable success, to imitate the yellow topaz with rock-crystal of the same color. There is developed in the stone a very rich, velvety, orange color. As to all the reflections, the tints, the degrees of transparence, or of opalescence-in fine, of all the forms which quartz, a veritable proteus, can assume, a volume would hardly suffice to detail them. Formerly rock-crystal was used for chandeliers and many other articles for which glass is now substituted. The ancients were cognizant of the power balls of rock-crystal possess to concentrate the sun's rays and of setting fire to bodies. Physicians also used them to cauterize certain wounds, in accord with the adage, "After medicine, the knife; after the knife, fire; after fire, nothing." These balls can likewise be employed as microscopes, especially when they are small. Minute nature might have been studied as well by the ancients as in our day had they been so inclined.

I have not mentioned turquoises, of which there are two kinds, both without transparency, One of these is made from the teeth of the mastodon and colored with copper, a green céladon. It is a kind of fossil ivory. The other is a true mineral of the same greenish blue color, and is a great deal admired; it costs about forty francs the caret. The turquoise is perfectly imitated by porcelain. This stone, without transparency, can scarcely be reckoned among gems; it is rather a kind of natural enamel. We have also omitted feldspar, which contains an alkaline principle, and which yields stones having a mother-of-pearl luster, but without colors. However, when feldspar is

of a golden-yellow tint, covered with little reddish spots, it is cut like a gem, but is at the present time very little known; it is called aventurine. After the consideration of crystallized minerals in nature, we should attempt the imitation of them in the laboratory. I do not mean such imitation as paste and color produces. I refer to the reproduction as nature gives the gems to us, and propose the making of real precious stones, such as has been attempted in the case of the diamond. I have already said that Ebelman, at Sevres, has crystallized aluminium and silex thus making a true spinella. M. Despretz, in the experiments by which he has volatilized charcoal and the diamond, has also melted aluminium and silex. He has obtained from these substances little hollow spheres, lined inside with crystals, like the cavities which are found in mines containing crystals of various kinds. In all the experiments of Despretz, the exceedingly intense heat which he produced by electricity only served to dissipate the particles of the diamond without producing any crystallization. It is therefore evident that the diamond is not an igneous production. Its origin is probably electric; but what was the epoch of its first production from ordinary carbon, and where did its crystallization begin?

According to M. Boutigny, the carbon of the earth comes from showers of hydrogen, united with carbon, which watered as it were the earth when it was too hot to receive ordinary rains. We have not yet seen the bearing of this hypothesis on the crystallization of the diamond. I have already said that sulphur and carbon, in uniting together, produce a liquid as limpid as water or pure alcohol. Now, with this it might be well to try the following experiment: Having filled a strong iron bottle with the liquid, and having covered it with an iron stopper, firmly screwed into the neck, I would place it in an oven at 200 or 300 degrees centigrade of heat. At this temperature the iron of the bottle and the sulphur would possibly react upon each other and enter into combination. Now, the sulphur, uniting with the iron, would leave the carbon free, which might thus slowly arrange itself in the crystalline form. I merely propose this experiment, which might require a long-continued heat of uniform temperature, to illustrate the play of chemical affinity. It is possible the effect would be analogous to that which takes place when a porous body is plunged into a saline solution, which absorbs the water and leaves the salt crystallized on its surface. We should inform those who may be tempted to try this experiment, that the fluid within the bottle would acquire by heat an immense repulsive force, sufficient to break almost any vessel inclosing it, especially one of iron, after the metal has been acted on by sulphur. The old alchemists frequently met with serious accidents in their attempts to transmute mercury by overheating it in closed iron vessels.

We have just said that there is very little chance that nature will furnish us with any new minerals. We must therefore depend on the results of the laboratory, and examine every substance whose hardness,

polish, transparence, and crystallization render them suitable for gems. We may afterward discover the method of coloring them, which would not seem a very difficult task, from the fact that the coloring-matter is always a foreign substance, and that, in many cases, gems have already been artificially colored. Ebelman, by evaporating ether from silica, has obtained beautiful specimens of paste, exactly resembling opal.. Though man may never be able to discover all the processes of nature in the production of objects of curiosity or practical utility, yet he is every day inducing her to disclose some of the secrets of her operations, either as she reveals them spontaneously in the changes of the earth or is forced to repeat them under the coercion of her own agents-heat, light, and electricity.

ETHNOLOGY.

ON THE LANGUAGE OF THE ABORIGINAL INDIANS OF AMERICA.

BY GEORGE Gibbs.

Among the questions submitted for consideration at the meeting of the American Philological Convention in July, 1869, was the following: "What more efficient measures can be taken to preserve from destruction the languages of the aboriginal Indians of America?" This communication embodies the substance of my individual views, as then offered, and I now take the liberty of presenting them to your consideration in the belief that the Smithsonian Institution possesses the only appliances adequate to the task.

The introduction to this topic might suggest an account of what has already been done in the collection of materials on those languages; but this would involve a multitude of details, chiefly the names of books, to criticise which would be out of place. A very full catalogue of all dictionaries, vocabularies, grammars, and grammatical notices prior to the year 1858, was compiled by Dr. Hermann E. Ludewig, and published in London by the Messrs. Trübner, with corrections by the late Professor Turner. From this it appears that, with the exception of a comparatively small number of languages, out of over thirty distinct families enumerated by Mr. Gallatin, and not including those of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, or the Mexican States, there are no grammars or dictionaries worthy of those names. Of the rest of those north of the present Mexican line nearly all that we have consist of mere word vocabularies, such as have served for the comparisons by which the various families have been distinguished. These are for the most part confined to the forms adopted by Mr. Gallatin, and are either of sixty or at most one hundred and eighty words, too few to allow any but very close affinities to be recognized, and many of the words ill adapted even to that object. Without disparaging labors of this kind, a very necessary preliminary to further examination, it is certain that they do not fill the requirements of philological science at the present day. The collections already published, and those in manuscript in the possession of the Smithsonian Institution, soon to be put to press, cover nearly the whole of the American and British possessions, with the exception of a few New Mexican pueblos and some scattered and unascertained tribes. With the publication of these last, what may be considered as the primary classification of the Indian tribes in those territories, on the basis of linguistic affinity, is about complete. To go beyond this some new standard is required.

I would suggest, in the first place, the preparation of a far more copi ous vocabulary, to be based on the ideas exhibited in the languages already known. The words should be arranged not alphabetically but according to subjects, as the only mode consistent with intelligent inquiry, and as permitting the distribution of special or local words; for instance, objects familiar to one nation and not to another. Such a vocabulary should consist of not less than fifteen hundred words, and an even greater number would be advisable. In selecting these words, particular reference should be had also to such as are radical or contain radicals, and plain instructions be given by which the collector, if he has leisure and inclination, may dissect them.

Secondly. A large number of well-digested phrases, based upon these words, calculated to draw out the different forms of speech, and from which the grammatical structure of the language can be deduced.

Thirdly. The preparation of a succinct and popular statement of the most striking peculiarities of some of the different languages as derived from grammars already published and of well-known authority. No one who has ever attempted, for the first time, to acquire an Indian language but has been foiled, over and again, by a want of knowledge how to direct his inquiries; and the most intelligent student has labored for a long time without success, where a slight clew would have guided him. Although there are certain characteristics which pervade almost all American languages, they yet differ greatly from one another in the degree in which these are marked, and often in the method in which they show themselves. Some languages, also, have evidently reached a far higher degree of culture, so to speak, than others. In fact, there is as much difference in the grammar and syntax of differ ent Indian languages as in those of the Indo-Germanic stock. In many of them a modification of the numerals takes place according to the nature of the object counted, sometimes indicating whether the object is animate or inanimate, at others various other qualities, as form, &c.; and the number of these modifications varies from two in the Selish (one applied to the first, the other to the second class) to over forty in the Cakchiquel. In the Otchipwé, or Chippeway, language, on the other hand, where the nouns are all divided into animate and inanimate, there are a variety of changes in the cardinals, but none on that principle; while in their place there are certain numeral verbs which are animate or inanimate according to the objeet expressed. In the Cherokee this principle is not found either in the nouns or numerals, nor are the latter modified at all; but the modifications, which are numerous, including animate and inanimate, are confined to the verbs, many of which change according to the quality of the object in which the action terminates. For example, the verb "to take" is in English simple, no matter what is the nature of the thing taken, but in Cherokee there is one form signifying to take a pliable object, another to take a long object, others to take a liquid, an upright, or a living object, and the particles indi