1. A vast desert with great promise for the future.

2. The cradle land of history? 3. Strange monuments of an ancient race.

4.

WH

Evidence of a submerged continent.

WHAT is the significance of the results achieved by the Third Asiatic Expedition, which crossed the Gobi Desert of Mongolia? First, an almost unknown region of continental proportions in the heart of Asia, without roads, almost without trails, supposed to be a vast, sandy desert, has been traversed and shown to be a very different type of country from what had hitherto been supposed. It is a country much like Wyoming and other western states and with equal promise for future development. But the greatest of the achievements of the Expedition, because they open up a wholly new field, are the extraordinary discoveries in the geology and the extinct animals of Mongolia.

2. The fossil record of the animals that inhabited Central Asia in former geologic periods has been a complete blank. Practically no fossils had ever been discovered there, although there were many reasons for concluding that Central Asia was the original home of the majority of the higher races of animals, including the ancestors of man, and that they spread thence to the outlying continents in the course of geologic time. The domesticated animals of modern civilization find their nearest wild relatives in Asia. Man, having domesticated the animals, naturally would take them with him when he

migrated, and the character of these animals is a very good piece of evidence as to where the races came from. Wild horses are found in Asia and nowhere else. There are no wild cattle today that are very closely related to domestic cattle: yet in Pleistocene times there were species of wild cattle in Asia very similar to domestic cattle. Sheep and goats, dogs and cats find their nearest relatives there. Just how long ago the Gobi region, with its hundreds of thousands of years as a country inhabited by human and sub-human types, became comparatively deserted, is not known.

In a

The Third Asiatic Expedition has brought in complete skeletons, skulls and very large and varied collections. The dinosaurs are the most spectacular of these extinct animals. These great land reptiles took the place in the Age of Reptiles that the quadrupeds do in our modern world. general way, they looked like huge, long-legged lizards, but there was a great variety of them, many of them walking on their hind legs, others on all fours, some carnivorous, others vegetarian, some armored and others unarmored. Almost equally remarkable was another specimen secured, belonging to the Age of Mammals and said to be the largest animal that ever lived. Certainly it must have equalled, if it did not exceed, the largest elephants in bulk. It was very different in form, more on the lines of the rhinocerous, except that it stood on long legs. Asia, D., '22.

MYSTERIOUS EASTER ISLAND 3. When Easter Island, that lonely dot in the Pacific, 2,300 miles west of Chile, was discovered in 1772 it

was removed by 1,500 miles from the nearest inhabited land. Since then various scientific men have been continually theorizing regarding tha relics of a lost people found on the island in considerable numbers. These consist chiefly of huge platforms and gigantic sculptures, many of which were left unfinished. The images vary in size from 5 to 38 feet in height, and are cut out of a solid gray lava which is found in the extinct crater of Hoti Iti. In the crater are many unfinished images still undetached from the face of the pit as though some great catastrophe had overtaken the ancient men while at work, killing them instantly, or forcing them to leave, never to return. One unfinished carving is 68 feet in length and 10 feet wide. The platforms are rectangular, built of squared stone, in some cases 300 feet long, 20 to 30 feet wide, and about as high. Upon the platforms many images lie overthrown. Like all the work of ancient peoples, the stones are cleverly joined and held together without the use of cement.

4. The eminent explorer, Clement Wragge, discussing these relics, writes: "The people who built the wonderful statues and cut the marvelous inscriptions on Easter Island had nothing to do with the Polynesians, but are allied to those peoples dwelling in Central and South America long ages ago."

Dr. Paul Schliemann, the archaeologist, who has given much attention to this subject, writing in the London Budget, tells us: "I am as satisfied as I am that I exist, that in prehistoric ages, a great continent inhabited by a civilized race existed in the Pacific. The American Indians are descendants of this race."

A noted Canadian traveler, Frank Burnet, Sr., maker of the world's greatest South Sea collection, is another who has for many years been interested in the mystery of Easter Island. Like the men already mentioned, Mr. Burnet has been impressed by the theory of a once existing continent near, or perhaps joining, South America, of which

Easter Island and some others in the South Seas are evidently survi vals of the tremendous cataclysm which ages ago carried this empire beneath the sea, leaving only thesO abruptly deserted monuments 2.8 proof of a people infinitely older than the present Polynesian people who inhabit the near-by South Pacific Islands.

During the last 25 years, Mr. Burnet has spent much time in the South Seas. In 1919 he traveled through Central and South America examining a great many of the then existing monuments in an endeavor to establish a connection between the early races dwelling here and that people who carved the sculptures and built the platforms on Easter Island. Mr. Burnet says: "Having seen the Easter Island sculptures and those in Bolivia, and having noted their resemblance, I am in favor of the theory that they are both the handiwork of a race that inhabited portions of South America and the eastern groups of the South Pacific when the latter comprised a much greater area than they do at present; a race that dwelt in a great empire and passed away ages before the rise of the Inca Empire, and before the Polynesians left their Asiatic home to wander eastward on their long, long drift to the Pacific Islands. The only difference between the Easter Island images and those in Bolivia, consists in the design of the ear. At the latter place, this organ is depicted in the natural shape, while on Easter Island the lobe is largely distended, in the same manner that the presentday Solomon Islanders and some other tribes are accustomed to treat their ears. I am fully in agreement with Prof. Macmillan Brown regarding the possibility of a bygone continent being submerged, and that all available evidence points that there was a sudden abandonment of the work, very probably due to a cutting off of food supplies."

Surely this is one of the most fascinating stories in the vivid history of the race of man.

Popular Mechanics, D., '22.

"If there is honor or humanity or Christianity or common decency in the breast of an American he will write to Albert B. Fall, Secretary of the Interior and formerly Senator from New Mexico, to protest against the Bursum bill -and he will write also to his Congressman to vote against this projected crime."

HE attempt to dispossess the In

Tdians of their land and water

rights in New Mexico by the Bursum bill is a special piece of villainy. It is probably true that the United States government has never kept fully a single one of the hundreds of treaties which it has made with the Indians. Under pressure from local interests the government has invariably yielded to measures of spoiliation. But in this case the excuse that the Indians are a disturbing factor in the community, an obstacle to the advance of civilization, does not exist. The Pueblo dwellers of New Mexico represent a settled society which dates from before the European colonization of America, an economic system of extraordinary interest, and

a

culture and an art inexpressibly lovely and precious. That local greed should initiate such a raid as the Bursum bill is not to be wondered at. That the United States government should become an accomplice is what is virtually the extermination of a people under its protection is monstrous.

The Bursum bill is not a local issue. It is of national significance. Here we have a race of 8,000 Pueblo Indians in our midst, and for political or private greed we propose to wipe them out. And what this loss would

be to us, aesthetic, social, moral, is incalculable. The life of these Pueblo Indians is a survival of an archaic world, a beautiful living experiment and achievement in social relations. The Pueblo Indians are artists in ceremonial dances, in music, in poetry, in pottery, in weaving, in silver-work; and in the art of pure design alone their achievement is superb, comparable to the early Greek art and far surpassing the most ambitious achievements of American artists in this direction-as the American artists themselves are the first to acknowledge.

The Pueblos, with the single exception of the Zunis, do not live on government reservations, but in small, isolated tribal groups massed in communal adobe villages. They have, so far as the memory of man carries, been a peaceful race of farmers and craftsmen; a race altogether attached and bred into a particular piece of soil. The first white men who came to the Southwest made no attempt to eject the tribes from the fruitful tracts of irrigated lands where they were found. On the contrary, the Spaniards affirmed the rights of every tribal unit by making every Pueblo village the center of a grant of land, generally measuring a league each way from the Pueblo church, containing about 17,000 acres a grant inalienable and held in common. has been the effort of three centuries of wise Spanish, Mexican and American rule to preserve this remarkable self-government which prevails in every one of the Pueblos. In taking over New from Old Mexico, our government formally confirmed to the Pueblos the rights held under the Spanish Crown and to every tribe gave for its land a patent in fee simple, communally held. Today each Pueblo governor treasures the silver

It

topped cane presented by Abraham Lincoln in token of the final and complete ratification of the Pueblo land grants and of their right to self-government. Yet, year after year, there have been encroachments on Indian land, in almost every Pueblo grant, and acreage has been reduced by the intrusion of non-Indian squatters until in the Pueblo of Picuris to cite examples only 40 irrigated acres remain of the original grant, while in the Pueblo of San Juan outsiders are in possession of 3,412 of the 4,000 irrigable acres-leaving only 588 acres to yield a living to 432 Indians. Yes, an island of irrigated land surrounded by a ditch is a rather valuable thing in the desert, and why should a red man in a blanket have a claim to it anyhow? What if his ancestors did grub the soil and dig the ditch? Better men are now at hand. Some such reasoning, conscious or unconscious, has prevailed in the New Mexico courts where the juries have chiefly consisted of the friends of the claimants.

on

The Bursum bill, which has already passed the Senate, ostensibly is a measure to settle the disputed titles of non-Indian claimants to Indian lands. In reality it is a new and sweeping encroachment these lands, since it takes as final proof on boundaries the so-called Joy survey made in 1914. This survey showed every cabin, ranch or field within the Indian boundaries, giving to each claim such dimensions as the claimant chose verbally to define. It was a map and nothing more; it involved no investigation into the validity of the claims. was never intended that it should be used in any way as proof of title. Now the Bursum bill proposes to make this survey into "prima facie evidence" of the extent of holdings.

It

Who framed the Bursum bill? The bill was introduced by Senator Bursum of New Mexico, who even stated that the Indians wanted it. Secretary Fall stated in writing to the Senate Committee that it was an administration measure. The bill was drawn by two New Mexico lawyers, A. B. Renehan and Ralph Twitchell. Mr. Renehan represents his American and Mexican clients, claimants of Indian lands, some with more or less valid titles and the majority with no titles at all. Mr. Twitchell holds an appointment under Secretary Fall as Special U. S. Attorney for the Indians, at a salary of $8,400 a year. In this capacity Mr.

Twitchell prepared a brief, published last March, in which he stated that if suits were

instituted by his predecessors

pushed through the courts, they would result in a restitution to the Indians of the lands anciently owned by them. But the Bursum bill outlaws all these suits and makes redress to the Indians for any infringement of land or water rights irrevocably impossible! Mr. Twitchell, prior to his sponsoring the Bursum bill, had this to say: "Our local courts have yet to show, in my judgment where an Indian has ever received a square deal." Yet, the Bursum bill withdraws government protection, and in cases of dispute over water rights the Indians are directed to apply to the local courts.

The bill perpetuates and legalizes the unsquare deal. Every section of the bill is unfavorable to the Indians. In the early days many Indians holding individual sections of Pueblo lands (by custom, not by law) sold or bartered pieces of land to Spanish-American settlers. The descendants of such settlers, or those who have bought from them in good faith, have equal rights in equity, if not in law, with the Indians. Only in 1913 did the Federal Supreme Court establish that the Pueblos were wards of the Government, with no legal rights to sell an acre of their land. The Bursum bill, however, confirms the ownership of all those who have squatted since 1900, without color of right, the compensation to be decreed by the United States District Court. Land outside of the Pueblo boundaries, even if such land be obtainable, is no substitute to the Pueblo Indian for his own lands inside the Pueblos, and the permanent intrusion of non-Indian settlers into the heart of his communal life is destructive to his sacred institutions. Opposition to the bill should be nationwide unless American wishes to see the Pueblo civilization die within the next ten years. The tribes which are still primitively vigorous are those like Santo Domingo, or Zuni, where there has been little or no encroachment; the tribes that are dead or dying, like Pojoague, Picuris, Nambe, are those which have been unable to prevent non-Indian elements from creeping like a net about their communal villages.

Far from desiring the Bursum bill as has been stated on the floor of the Senate, the Indians are unanimously in proOne hundred and twenty test against it. delegates from the 20 Pueblos involved met at Santo Domingo on November 5th to protest against the bill. Here were 20 autonomous nations, speaking five distinct root languages, confederating for the first time since the general Pueblo rebellion of 1680, when they were united against an invader who was in effect far less deadly than the crisis which now hangs over them. N. Rep., N. 29, '22.

1.

A hint of what may soon be expected from pyschologists. 2. Specific tests for musical abilities.

3. Enormous economic importance of the tests.

4. The discovery of the "Iowa Kreisler."

W

HILE the sciences of physics and chemistry have become fine arts in which accurate measurements are not only possible but required, the attempts to measure the various capacities of the human mind have doddered along so far behind and remained so inaccurate that they have never been taken with too much seriousness.

Even the most enthusi

astic psychologists claimed no more for the famous army mental tests than that they were rough indications.

Out of the jungle of ignorance of ways and means for precise determinations of mental abilities great things are to come in the next few years. How much we can expect is shown by the excellent work done by Professor Carl Emil Seashore, who has done more and gone further to establish precisely certain particular abilities of the human mind than has any other student. His work in measuring musical talent is wellnigh flawless in so far as it goesand he has gone much further than the layman can have dreamed possible. He is able to test any given subject and to say definitely how much musical talent that person has in relation to the average talent possessed by the group of persons al

ready tested and numbering more than 5,000.

Professor Seashore can tell you, with the aid of scientific instruments of excellent precision, whether or not you have the physiological tools which you need in order to be a musician. It would be easy indeed to determine a person's inherent musical talent if music were entirely dependent upon some one physical characteristic such as the ear. But physiological musical talent is а hierarchy of talents overlapping upon each other. Seashore has broken down and analyzed the sum total of its parts. Incidentally, it has been proved that the best training available does not change the results of the fundamental tests. A child ten will make the same relative score ten years later after intensive musical training during the entire period.

of

2. The simplest tests which Seashore has devised are now being used in hundreds of educational institutions to rate the capacities of children. For instance, in Des Moines, Iowa, five tests, which have been incorporated into a set of phonograph records, are given to all children in the public schools in the fifth and sixth grades. These five fundamental tests are for pitch, memory, rhythm, consonance and dissonance, and intensity. The record for pitch is placed upon the phonograph played through. The sounds are in pairs and the subject is to record on a ruled sheet whether the second sound is higher or lower than the first. At first the difference between pairs is marked-almost a half tone. As the record goes on they become more and more difficult.

and

The test of time is similar to the test for pitch in method. Three clicks