sibly being less endowed, the Indian, despite all, had progressed an immense distance towards civilization; that the race contained all the capabilities for a further advance and for achieving a civilization of its own, differing, it may be, markedly from our own, as other civilizations differ, but still containing within itself all the essentials of that wonderfully complex thing called civilization. Such, at least, is the lesson evolution teaches.

Hardly had the new land been discovered when the question arose, Who are the Indians, and where did they come from? Naturally enough, the Indian had his own answers to these questions. It may almost be said, as many tribes, so many origins. A large number of tribes claim to have originated in the localities where they were first found by Europeans, where they emerged from the ground or came from the recesses of some neighboring mountain. Somewhat more poetical is the idea of the Aht of Vancouver Island, who allege that animals were first created at Cape Flattery, and from the union of these with a star that fell from the skies resulted the first men, their ancestors. Puerile these answers certainly are, yet who will maintain that they are more so than the theories of origin held by the Greeks and other classical peoples?

Who, then, are the American aborigines? For Columbus and his followers there was but one answer to the question. As he had reached the eastern shores of India, the people must be Indians, and his error is perpetuated to-day in the name. Later, when the newly discovered country was found to be not an old, but a new continent, the question of the origin and consanguinity of the Indians was renewed. So strongly tinged with religious thought was the philosophy of the day, that biblical sources were naturally first appealed to, to solve the knotty problem. As mankind was supposed to have originated in Asia, and as all but the ten lost tribes were accounted for, they were rationally appealed to for the origin of the Indian. Perhaps the best exponent of the belief in the Jewish origin of the Indians was Adair, who published his celebrated essay in 1775.

There is a theory of origin to suit the tastes of all. If you have a special bias or predilection, you have only to choose for yourself. If there be any among you who decline to find the ancestors of our Indians among the Jews, Phoenicians, Scandinavians, Irish, Welsh, Carthaginians, Egyptians, or Tatars, then you still have a choice among the Hindu, Malay, Polynesians, Chinese, or Japanese, or, indeed, among almost any other of the children of men.

Preposterous as may seem many of the theories above alluded to, nearly all of them rest upon a certain basis of fact and comparison. Many, at least, of the similarities of thought. custom, methods, arts, religions, and myths from which the theories are deduced indeed exist, though false analogies permeate them all. The thread of fact which sustains the theories is, moreover, far too slender to bear the weight put upon it. Erroneous hypotheses like the above have, however, been productive of great good in pointing out and emphasizing some of the most useful lessons which the student of anthropology of the present day must learn and ever keep in mind. Of these, perhaps the most important is that the human mind is everywhere practically the same; that in a similar state of culture, man, in groping his way along, will ever seek the same or similar means to a desired end; that, granting the same conditions of environment, man acts upon them, and is acted upon by them, in the same way the world over: hence in large part arise those similarities of customs, beliefs, religions, and arts, which have been appealed to as evidences of genetic connection or of common origin, when in fact they are evidences of nothing but of a common humanity.

Likewise up to the present time the attempts to classify mankind by his physical characters have produced discordant results, and little dependence is to be placed upon the results themselves or upon the theories arising therefrom which relate to the more profound question of the origin of races. In turning to the test of language, if doubt and uncertainty were left behind, and harmony and agreement took the place of discordant views, we might count ourselves fortunate indeed. Yet, though still in its infancy as regards future possibilities, and while it needs and welcomes the aid of all the other sciences to solve the complex questions which come properly within its domain, it is unquestionably our best guide in prob

lems relating to the origin and relationship of the races of mankind.

The evolution theory sees evidences of growth and development in every language spoken by man. Comparing the languages of highly civilized peoples with those of lower culture, it finds in the latter evidences of the successive stages through which all languages have necessarily passed in their upward growth. It notes the fact that among lower peoples languages are less and less highly organized, and that among them signs are much more freely used than among the higher; that the sign-language is capable of a development among savage peoples and mutes so wonderful as to be the medium of all classes of ideas; and, noting these, it is prepared to believe, though it has not yet proved, that there was a time in the dawn of the human race when organized vocal speech was unknown, and when the fingers, the facial expression, and the postures of the body, were the chief if not the sole means possessed by man to communicate to his fellows his simple wants and ideas.

Before proceeding further, let us glance briefly at some of the methods employed by linguistic students in their efforts to unlock the mysteries of linguistic relationship. How the comparative study of language is to be carried on, linguistic students are well agreed. Since language is made up of words, each word being the sign of a thought, the science of linguistics is largely the study of words in other words, it is the tracing word genealogies by means of their etymology. By stripping words of the accretions they have received in the process of time, they may be resolved into roots; and by the comparison of these roots the philologist obtains proof of relationship, and classifies languages into linguistic families.

It may be well at this point to define clearly what linguists mean by a linguistic family. A linguistic family is a group of languages which have sprung from a common parent language. The first requisite of a linguistic family, therefore, is that the languages composing it shall be related genetically; the second, that they shall not be related to the languages of any other family. Each family thus consists of a group of languages wholly disconnected from all other families. The chief danger to the student in dealing with such material is to mistake apparent for real resemblances, and to be led to present false word analogies as evidences of true genetic relationship.

That linguistic science is competent to deal with problems of great magnitude and intricacy, and that there are students who are capable of applying its varied resources, best appears in the grand achievements which concern the group of languages known as the Aryan or Indo-European family, in which our own English tongue takes a prominent if not the first place. It is almost wholly as the result of linguistic studies that the component members of the large and important Aryan family are now recognized, and the history of its earlier members reconstructed to a remarkable degree. The family contains eight groups of distinct languages. Among many others, the family includes as offspring from one source Sanscrit, Hindu, Romany or Gypsy, Persian, Armenian, Welsh, Cornish, Irish, Scotch, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Albanian, Greek, Bulgarian, Russian, Servian, Polish, German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and many others. Though one of the largest, and, by reason of its history and the prominent part it has played in the civilization of the world, the most important, the Aryan family is only one of many linguistic families, each one of which is made up in the same way of a greater or less number of related languages. Such are the Bushman and Hottentot of Africa, the Semitic of Asia and Africa, the Chinese, Australian, and many others. The related languages which make up linguistic families vary indefinitely in the amount of likeness they bear to each other. They are often so much unlike, that those who speak them cannot understand each other; as, for instance, English, German, and French. Though these languages are mutually unintelligible, yet they contain many words of nearly identical form, while other members of the Aryan family have in process of time become so unlike affiliated tongues that it requires the most critical study to detect their relationship. As languages are the principal divisions of a linguistic family, so dialects are the subordinate divisions of a language. Family, lan

guages, and dialects are to linguistic science what family, genera, and species are to biology.

There is an important question which may be considered at this point: To what extent is linguistic relationship to be interpreted as blood relationship; in other words, how far does linguistic classification answer for race classification? In cosmopolitan America, where nearly all speak English, and yet a very large proportion are of foreign parentage, it is obvious that a pure linguistic classification of individuals would largely misinterpret the facts of parentage and race. Nevertheless, taken in connection with readily ascertained facts, it will not mislead even in such an extreme case, and usually a language classification of a tribe or people actually does express race relationship.

To return to the Aryan family. Not only are we able by means of language to class together as related members of one great family the above-mentioned languages, which apparently are so diverse in the sound and form of their words, but by means of word analysis we can reconstruct the past history of the peoples who spoke them, and can get a glimpse even of the mode of life, customs, arts, and religious beliefs of our remote Aryan ancestry. The process by which this is done is sufficiently simple, although, like many other simple processes, its application is not so easy. When we find in the greater number of the languages of a linguistic family the same fully formed word with the same meaning, we are justified in believing that it existed before the separation of the family, and that the thing it signifies was already known to the parent body. Applying the rule to the case of the Aryan family, we learn, that, contrary to earlier theories, our forefathers came from a cold region, since eastern and western Aryan tongues contain names for the birch and pine, and these are the only two tree names common to both branches. The same process continued shows us that the family relations were defined much as they are with us to-day, and that marriages were monogamous. The old Aryans held the land in common, and redistributed it from time to time among the members of the clan. The houses were built of wood, and were entered by means of a door. The communities were settled in villages with a recognized chief or head, and the villages were connected by roads over which travelled pedlers carrying their wares for sale. All were free men. They worshipped natural objects and natural phenomena, more particularly the sun. They believed in the evil spirits of night and darkness. They were a pastoral people, and cattle and sheep formed their chief wealth. They also had goats, pigs, dogs, geese, and bees. They had domesticated the horse, though they did not ride, but employed him, like the ox, for drawing carts. They still used stone implements, though gold and silver and bronze were known. Charms were chiefly relied upon to cure disease. Future events were divined from the flight of birds. These are a few of the facts among many which linguistic science has revealed to us pertaining to the life and achievements of our Aryan ancestry before the historic period. Surely no contemptible record this for a new science.

Let us now turn our attention to the Indian languages of this country, and see what progress has been made in the attempt to classify them. It may be premised that no part of the known world affords a better opportunity for the study of the nature of language and its processes of growth than America. The Indian languages are by no means the most primitive at present spoken by man; and it may surprise some of my hearers to be told that in respect of some of their characteristics they compare favorably with Greek and other classic tongues, though the classic languages as a whole belong to a much higher stage of development. Instead of being mere jargons of words, disconnected with each other and capable of expressing only the simplest ideas, as I find many intelligent people believe, they are in some directions singularly highly developed; and not only are they capable of serving as the vehicle of every thought possible to their possessors, but their vocabularies are extensive, possess many synonymes, and furnish the means of discriminating the nicest shades of meaning.

As a body they are still in that stage of development in which the various processes of language-making may be studied with comparative ease. Just as the various natural processes by which mountains are levelled and the earth's surface carved out and re

modelled are more apparent, and more readily studied by the geologist, in the still primitive West, so Indian languages offer to the scrutiny of the linguistic student a similar unfinished condition highly favorable for analysis and study.

For the past fifteen years Major Powell and his assistants of the Bureau of Ethnology, with the aid of many collaborators in various parts of the country, have been accumulating vocabularies by means of which to classify Indian languages. The present provisional results of the study of the large amount of material accumulated show that in the territory north of Mexico there were at the time of the discovery fifty-eight distinct Indian linguistic families, containing some 300 or more languages and dialects.

So far as Language is a competent witness, she has exhausted all the evidence thus far accumulated when she has grouped the Indians in fifty-eight families. Back of this point she may not now go, except as a theorist and in pure speculation. So far as she is entitled to speak authoritatively, these fifty-eight families are separate entities, which never had any connection with each other. But she recognizes her own limitations too well to dare to state positively that this is the interpretation that must be placed upon the results she has attained.、 When facts from which to draw deductions fail, men may and do resort to theories. Let us glance at the two broad hypotheses which have been based upon the development theory of language. The first is in effect that all the present languages of the earth are not so unlike that they may not have been developed from a single original parent language. By this view the original language is supposed to have changed and developed into all the various forms of speech that are now spoken or that have ever been spoken. According to this view, the families of languages as at present classified have no other significance than as groups of related tongues, the once existing connection of which with other tongues cannot now be proved, because through the process of change the connecting links have been lost.

The second hypothesis assumes that there must have been at least as many original languages as there are now existing families: it assumes, in other words, that the families of speech are fundamentally distinct, and therefore cannot have had a common origin. The first theory postulates that from original unity of language has come infinite diversity; the second, that the tendency has ever been from original diversity towards unity.

Widely different as are these two theories of the origin of linguistic families, they agree in one essential particular: they both remove the origin so far back in time as to make it practically impossible to prove the truth or falsity of either theory. Both of these hypotheses have able advocates; but for a variety of reasons, which time will not permit me to give, the second is deemed the more plausible. At all events, it best explains many difficulties.

There is abundance of archæologic evidence showing that man has resided on this continent for a very long period; and the character of the remains prove that the farther back in time we go, the ruder being he was. Linguistic testimony is to the same effect; and there is no a priori reason why man may not have lived upon this continent ages before he learned to talk, no reason, for that matter, why America may not have peopled the earth, if the earth was peopled from a single centre, or why, if there have been several centres of origin for mankind, the Indians, as they themselves believe, may not have originated here where they were found.

Obviously the fifty-eight families are as likely to have originated here as anywhere else; for remember that every country has linguistic families of its own to account for. Is there, then, any possible theory which will meet the case? There is certainly one that is possible, if not probable. It is the theory, that, whether born from the soil or an emigrant from other lands, our Indians spread over the entire continent before they acquired organized language, and that from not one but from fifty-eight centres sprung up the germs of speech which have resulted in the different families of language. This theory accords with the idea that there may have been but one origin of man, and that in any event all the Indians from the Arctic to Patagonia are of one race. It does not forbid the supposition that the Indian was an emigrant from other shores, though it permits the thought that the American Indian may have originated on American soil.

Though this theory seems more probable than the other, which assumes that the languages of our Indians were brought here from foreign shores, it must be frankly admitted that Linguistic Science is not now, and possibly never will be, competent to decide between them. If she is unable to decide fully as to the origin of the Indian's language, how can she be expected to solve the infinitely more complex problem which concerns the ultimate origin of the peoples who spoke them? She certainly has no solution for this problem now. When she considers the number of linguistic families, and the vast length of time it must have taken to develop their languages and dialects, she finds herself confronted by a problem beyond her present powers. And yet the case is not hopeless. Linguistic Science is still in her infancy, and her future may contain possibilities far exceeding the dream of the most sanguine.

When interrogated as to the origin of the Indian, all that she can now say is, that whether the Indian originated on this continent, where he was found, or elsewhere, it was in bygone ages, ages so far removed from our own time that the interval is to be reckoned, not by the years of chronology, but by the epochs of geologic time. With such problems she affirms that at present she cannot deal.

I have presented the subject to you to-day, not to answer it, but to aid you in comprehending the tremendous difficulties that enshroud the problem. Much time and ingenuity have been expended in the past in attempting to force an answer to a question which cannot even yet be answered. The question, however, that really concerns the ethnologist of to-day is not who are the American Indians, but what are they, and what have they accomplished in working out the problems of life, which, ever since his birth, man has grappled with.

In reading the history of mankind, we are too apt to be blinded by the achievements of our own Aryan race. As the old Greeks classed as barbarians all who did not speak their own tongue, so we are prone to think that most of the good that has come to humanity has come through and by means of our race. In truth, there are valuable lessons to be learned from races less high in civilization than our own. Though many and diverse are the roads that lead man to the higher life, they all pursue about the same course, and time only is required to unite them into one broad stream of progress.

Many are the lessons taught by anthropology; but the grandest of them all is the lesson of the unity of mankind, - the unity of a common nature and a common destiny, if not of a common origin.

NOTES AND NEWS.

WE hear that the Russification of the German educational establishments in the Baltic provinces goes on apace. The University of Dorpat, in particular, is suffering in this respect. Recently the Czar specially sanctioned the Russianizing of the faculty of law within the next few years, and now it is intended to transfer the theological faculty from that seat of learning and enlightenment to Moscow or St. Petersburg, in order to deprive it entirely of its German-Protestant character. German culture evidently seems a dangerous element in the eyes of the Russian Government.

- Nature states that Herr Victor Apfelbeck, the entomologist, will shortly start, in behalf of the Bosnian Government, on a journey of research in Herzegovina. Last year he discovered in southern Bosnia five new species of eyeless cave beetles, and his investigations excited much interest among entomologists.

- The largest tree in Great Britain, and one of the most famous, is the Cowthorpe oak in Yorkshire, which is believed to be some fifteen hundred years old. When Evelyn wrote his "Sylva," in the seventeenth century, its circumference at the ground was seventyeight feet; but later, earth was banked up around it, which covered some considerable projections, and reduced its girth. As told in Garden and Forest, at the beginning of the last century its branches overshadowed an area of half an acre of ground. The top or leading branch fell at some unrecorded date, curiously slipping down into the hollow trunk, where it remained. In the last century one of the main branches which was blown down proved to be ninety feet in length, and yielded five tons of timber. When

carefully measured by Dr. Jessop in 1829, the girth of the tree at the ground was sixty feet, and at a yard above, forty-five feet; the chief remaining limb was fifty feet long and its circumference eight feet, and the height of the tree was forty-five feet. It was then hollow to the top. For many years saplings raised from this tree were sold in pots by the villagers for as much as a guinea apiece. It is now a venerable ruin, but most picturesque in its decay. It stands in a green paddock, carefully protected from injury, with its ancient limbs supported by props. An idea of its size may be gathered from the statement that at least forty persons can stand within its cavity, and that its circumference is greater than that of the Eddystone Lighthouse, which was confessedly designed on the model of an oak.

Does the cuckoo ever hatch its own eggs? Herr Adolf Müller answers this question in the affirmative, and has given in the Gartenlaube a full account of a case which he himself claims to have observed. A translation of this account has appeared in the Ibis, and is reproduced in the new number of the Zoologist. The latter periodical prints also a translation of an article in which Herr Adolf Walter disputes the statements of Dr. Müller, who, he thinks, must have made a mistake. The same subject is dealt with in the June number of the Selborne Magazine by Mr. C. Roberts, who quotes from "Zoonomia" an interesting passage, in which Dr. Erasmus Darwin expresses his belief that the cuckoo sometimes makes a nest and hatches its own young. In this passage Dr. Darwin gives an extract from a letter of the Rev. Mr. Wilmot of Morley, near Derby, describing an instance brought to Mr. Wilmot's notice in July, 1792, by one of his laborers, and afterwards closely watched by Mr. Wilmot himself. Mr. Wilmot was confident that the bird was a cuckoo.

- There is a note by Dr. Charles Waldstein in the London Athenæum of June 8 which will no doubt attract much attention. Dr. Waldstein states that recently, while in Constantinople, he was shown photographs by Hamdy Bey of the sarcophagi discovered some time since at Sidon; and he is of opinion that the discovery is one of the most important made in this century, and, moreover, that excepting the Elgin marbles, and the Hermes of Praxiteles at Olympia, "no works of ancient Greek art have been found of greater artistic interest and merit." One of the sarcophagi contains a portrait of Alexander. Hamdy Bey does not positively assert that this is the tomb of Alexander, but Dr. Waldstein thinks he will be justified in pointing to the possibility of such being the

case.

At the New York meeting of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, February, 1889, Mr. John C. Smock of Albany, N.Y., read a paper on "The Iron-Mining Industry of New York for the Past Decade," from which it appears that the total product of the iron-mines of the State in 1888 was 1,207,000 tons. This sum includes all the returns received from the mining companies and carefully made estimates for three mines unreported. According to the "Ninth Census," New York produced 14 per cent of the iron ore mined in the country. Ten years later, the State produced 1,262,127 tons, or 15.4 per cent, and ranked third in the list of States. In 1886 the production of all the iron-mines in the country, as estimated by James M. Swank, general manager of the American Iron and Steel Association, was 10,000,000 tons. In 1887, according to the same authority, it amounted to 11,300,000 tons. New York mines produced in the former year about 900,000 tons, and 1,100,000 nearly in the latter year, or 10 per cent of the whole. In 1888 the same average proportion was maintained, but the rank changed to fourth, falling behind Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. According to the last report of the American Iron and Steel Association, the total for the United States in 1888 was 12,050,000 gross tons. The fluctuation in the totals for the State during the decade have not been so great as might be inferred from the sharp fluctuations in the prices for pigiron; and the steadiness in the figures for 1886, 1887, and 1888 is remarkable proof of the enduring capacity of the mines of the State. The variation from year to year is not as great as it is in the magnetic iron-ore districts of New Jersey. The production of the iron-mines in New Jersey in 1880 was 745,000 tons. In 1885 it had fallen to 330,000 tons, and in 1887 had risen to 547,000.

Another notable fact brought out in this comparison is the dimin-, ished number of mines producing these totals. At the commencement of the decade there were about 100 mines at work: last year, only 50 were producing ore.

- A recent issue of the French Journal Officiel contains the report of the consultative committee for sea-fisheries in France, on the subject of poisoning through the eating of mussels. The committee, in the first place, recognize that the oysters which cause poisoning are those which have become stale, or have been kept in water rendered foul by decomposed organic matter, and question whether the same may not be the case with regard to mussels. Various explanations of mussel-poisoning were made to the committee. By some it was attributed to a parasite crab (Pinnotheres pisum). This explanation, however, was unsatisfactory, for in the United States this Pinnotheres is sought after as food. By others the presence of the poison was attributed to the spawn of star-fish, and also to copper absorbed from wrecks. Both these suggestions were, however, disproved. The theory of Orfila, also, that the poisonous action of the mussels in the stomach is the result of imagination, does not find acceptance at the hands of the committee. An authority on the subject has found that the mussels lose their poisonous property if cooked for a period of ten minutes with carbonate of soda. The committee conclude that the poisonous nature of the mussels is due to the presence in them, especially in the liver, of a volatile organic alkaloid (mytilotoxine de Brieger), developed under the influence of a particular microbe which is only found in mussels living in stagnant and polluted waters. Finally, they advocate the removal of all restrictions on mussels in artificial beds, and recommend the sale at all times, at fish-markets, of mussels coming from such beds, which are usually situated in favorable localities, a sale which is at present prohibited in France during May and June.

There is being exerted at this time an effort for the establishment in the University of Pennsylvania of a department of pedagogics. The university being without the necessary funds for this work, two of this year's graduating class, as we learn from The Philadelphia Telegraph, have undertaken the raising of ten thousand dollars, which will provide for a three-years' salary for a pedagogic professor, and found a library; and at the expiration of three years it is believed that the department will be self-sustaining. A short time ago Superintendent MacAlister of the Board of Education addressed a letter to Dr. William Pepper, provost of the university, in which he set forth the manifest urgency and value of such a department. He said, “ Until within a few years American students were compelled to go abroad for the purpose of pursuing their studies in this branch, and large numbers still find it advantageous to avail themselves of opportunities which are but scantily provided in this country. The German universities have long maintained chairs of pedagogy. In the year 1876 a chair of education was organized in the University of Edinburgh, and has since been occupied by a distinguished scholar, Professor Laurie, who has exerted great influence over the education of Scotland. Some years ago, lectures on education were given for the first time in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and in both of these schools lectures are now read regularly by men eminent as teachers. The first chair of pedagogy in the United States was organized in 1879, in the University of Michigan, and this was followed by the establishment of professorships in the Universities of Wisconsin, Iowa, Cornell, and other less important schools. The only serious attempt thus far made to furnish opportunity for the study of pedagogy in the older States was the work done by Professor G. Stanley Hall before his retirement from Johns Hopkins; and it is understood that this department will be recognized in the new Clarke University in Massachusetts, of which Dr. Hall has been appointed president. It is only a question of time when all the great schools in the Eastern and Middle States will be moving in this direction." Professor MacAlister remarks, that, if the great function of a university is to teach and supply the world with teachers, it cannot be said to fully perform its office if it does not provide adequate professional preparations for the teacher's work beyond the studies of the academic curriculum. He holds that in a department of pedagogy the instruction should consist of the following courses: his

tory of education, psychology and its relation to education, the science and art of teaching, organization and administration of school systems, school hygiene. He adds, "With the provisions already existing in the university, the organization of such a department could be easily secured, and the financial responsibility incurred would be very slight. A chair of the history and science of education would be sufficient to begin with. The chair of psychology, recently organized, the chair of philosophy, the chair of political economy, the chair of hygiene, could be made available in furnishing the additional courses required. The general course in pedagogy would probably not extend beyond one year, but special courses could be formed for those desirous of more extended study. To give the department academic dignity, and make it really valuable, a degree should be granted. The degree of Ph.D. is suggested, which might be given on examination in the courses in pedagogy, with such additional electives- - say, three or four-in language, literature, science, or history as might be prescribed. In this way the department of pedagogy would become affiliated with the general instruction of the university, and would also fall into place among the university courses created during the present academic year."

No other ancient works of the United States have become so widely known, or have excited so much interest, as those of Ohio. This is due in part to their remarkable character, but in a much greater degree to the " Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," by Messrs. Squier and Davis, in which these monuments are described and figured. The constantly recurring question, "Who constructed these works?" has brought before the public a number of widely different theories, though the one which has been most generally accepted is that they originated with a people long since extinct or driven from the country, who had attained a culture status much in advance of that reached by the aborigines inhabiting the country at the time of its discovery by Europeans. The opinion advanced in a paper by Cyrus Thomas, on The Problem of the Ohio Mounds," published by the Bureau of Ethnology, in support of which evidence is presented, is that the ancient works of the State are due to Indians of several different tribes, and that some, at least, of the typical works, were built by the ancestors of the modern Cherokees. The discussion is limited chiefly to the latter proposition, as the limits of the paper do not permit a full presentation of all the data which might be brought forward in support of the theory, and the line of argument is substantially as follows: First, A brief statement of the reasons for believing that the Indians were the authors of all the ancient monuments of the Mississippi valley and Gulf States: consequently the Ohio mounds must have been built by Indians. Second, Evidence that the Cherokees were mound-builders after reaching their historic seats in East Tennessee and western North Carolina. This and the preceding positions are strengthened by the introduction of evidence showing that the Shawnees were the authors of a certain type of stone graves, and of mounds and other works connected therewith. Third, A tracing of the Cherokees, by the mound testimony and by tradition, back to Ohio. Fourth, Reasons for believing that the Cherokees were the Tallegwi of tradition, and the authors of some of the typical works of Ohio.

- The Glasgow Herald states that last year, while some workmen were engaged in drainage operations at Lochavullin for the purpose of forming a public park, they discovered what was believed to be an old "crannog." or lake-dwelling; and several experts who visited it were of opinion that it was a very good specimen of an ancient lake-dwelling. Arrangements were made by the town council for its being properly investigated and preserved as far as possible, but the weather has rendered operations impracticable till within the last few days. Workmen are now engaged in excavating round the place; and recently it was visited by Mr. Cochran-Patrick, under-secretary for Scotland, and other gentlemen interested. Among the articles turned up by the workmen during the examination were a stone bullet, such as would have been used in the slings of the period to which the dwelling is supposed to have belonged, and portions of the wattle used in the construction of the dwelling. Professor Hedley of St. Andrews took some photographs of the place.

- The last international medical congress, which met in Washington in 1887, unanimously selected Berlin as the next place of meeting in 1890. Professors Virchow, Von Bergmann, and Waldeyer, to whom was confided the preliminary direction of the next congress, have already taken active steps to make it a success. All the medical faculties and other medical bodies in Germany have been invited to nominate delegates to confer together on the subject this year, at the time of the Heidelberg meeting of the German Scientific Association in September. It is proposed that the congress of 1890 should commence its proceedings on Aug. 6, 1890.

- Dr. Oliver P. Jenkins, professor of biology in DePauw University, accompanied by Oscar Vaught and G. C. Price, two of his students, sailed June 29 from San Francisco for the Hawaiian Islands, on a scientific fishing expedition. They go under the authority and with an appropriation of the university for that purpose. They will return the middle of September. They hope to find a valuable field.

- Krüss and Schmidt's statement that both nickel and cobalt contain a small percentage of a hitherto unknown element, gnomium, amounting in the case of one specimen of nickel to as much as 2 per cent (Ber. der deut. chem. Gesellsch., xxii. 11; Nature, xxxix. p. 325), has not been permitted to pass unchallenged, and quite recently two papers have appeared which tend to show that the supposed new element is non-existent. At the time when they were led to recognize the presence of this common impurity, says Nature, Krüss and Schmidt were engaged in repeating Winkler's old determination of the atomic weights of nickel and cobalt, in which the ratio Au: Ni or Au: Co was arrived at from the amount of gold precipitated by these metals from neutral solutions of gold chloride. Winkler, in the mean time, has repeated this work with carefully purified materials (Ber. der deut. chem. Gesellsch., xxii. 890), and has not only failed to obtain any evidence of the existence of gnomium, but, moreover, calls in question the purity of the metallic specimens employed by Krüss and Schmidt. A communication from Dr. Fleitmann to the Chemiker Zeitung (xiii. 757) lends considerable support to this view. Adopting the method patented by Krüss and Schmidt for separating this common impurity from nickel and cobalt by extracting the hydroxides of these metals with sodium hydroxide, Fleitmann has examined a number of specimens of commercially pure nickel and cobalt, and, so far from obtaining 2 per cent of gnomium oxide, has failed to isolate from 50 grams of material a weighable amount of any impurity which would serve to justify the view that a hitherto unknown element was associated with these metals. Fleitmann points out that when the hydroxides of commercially pure nickel and cobalt are treated with large quantities of sodium hydroxide, impurities go into solution which vary in composition and amount with the source and degree of purity of the metals. These impurities consist of small quantities of the oxides of lead, zinc, arsenic, manganese, molybdenum, silicium, aluminium, cerium, chromium, etc., together with an amount of nickel or cobalt oxide not exceeding of one per cent of the hydroxide extracted, and, when separated from the alkaline solution by the addition of an acid and subsequent precipitation with ammonium carbonate, give rise to a highly complex mixture of oxides and acids which can only be separated and identified with considerable difficulty. It is not improbable, therefore, that Krüss and Schmidt have been dealing with some of the constituents of this mixture, and that, on further examination, gnomium oxide will prove to be a mixture of the oxides of elements already

known.

-At the ladies' conversazione of the London Royal Society, June 19, there were exhibited by Mr. Percy E. Newberry, by kind permission of the director of the Royal Gardens, Kew, a series of ancient funeral wreaths and plant-remains, discovered last year by Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie, in the cemetery of Hawara, Egypt. As described in Nature, these consisted of wreaths of Egyptian and Greek manufacture, which were all made in the first century B.C., and were found in wooden coffins, either resting on the heads or surrounding the bodies of the mummies. Among them the following are of special interest :— (1) A very perfect wreath

composed of the flower-heads of a species of immortelle (Gnaphalium luteoalbum, L.), called by the ancients "helichrysos," and much used by them in making garlands. Helichrysos wreaths are mentioned by Pliny (Hist. Nat., xxi. 96) as having been used in Egypt in Ptolemaic times, also by Theophrastus, Athenæus, Cratinus, etc. (2) Portion of a curious garland made of cones of papyrus pith, lychnis and rose flowers, rose petals, and scarlet berries of the woody nightshade. These latter are mentioned by Pliny as having been employed in garland-making by the Egyptians. (3) Portion of a wreath of Greek manufacture made of flowers of the Polyanthus narcissus (N. Tazetta, L.). Wreaths made of this flower, the "clustered narcissus" of the ancients, are often mentioned by early Greek poets. (4) Portion of a wreath made of the flowers of a species of rose (Rosa sancta, Richards). (5) A perfect wreath composed of rose-petals threaded by a needle on to strips of twine. "Recently," writes Pliny in his history of garlands, "the rose chaplet has been adopted, and luxury has now arisen to such a pitch that rose garlands are held in no esteem at all if they do not consist entirely of petals sewn together with the needle" (Hist. Nat., xxi. 8). There are also exhibited (6) a portion of a wreath composed of twigs of sweet marjoram (Origanum majorana, L.), lychnis flowers, coils of papyrus pith, and pieces of copper tinsel ; (7) a portion of a wreath composed of chrysanthemum flowers and leaves, purple cornflowers, and petals of the flower of a species of Hibiscus; (8) a portion of a wreath made of flowers of Matthiola librator, L., flowers of the polyanthus, narcissus, and Hibiscus petals; (9) portions of two necklaces made of flowers of the date palm threaded on strips of twine; and (10) a fragment of " a necklace made of fruits of the date palm. Among the plantremains are peach-stones, dates, and date-stones, walnut-shells, currants, pomegranates, plums, figs, chick peas, common garden beans and peas, lentils, wheat, barley, and oats. These are probably the remains of the ancient funeral feasts which were held in the Hawara cemetery by the relatives of the deceased people who were buried there. The whole collection (of which the series exhibited is only the third part) is fully described by Mr. Percy E. Newberry in Mr. Flinders Petrie's "Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoe."

- Nature announces the death of Signor G. Cacciatore, director of the Palermo Observatory. He died on June 16, in his seventysixth year.

In response to demand, a new edition of Professor A. Gray's small work on "Absolute Measurements in Electricity and Magnetism" will be issued immediately by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. The whole work has been very carefully revised, and several alterations and additions made, which it is hoped will bring it into accordance with the present state of practical electricity, and render it still more useful to students and electrical engineers. The preparation of the second volume of the same author's larger treatise on the same subject is being pushed on at the same time as quickly as possible.

Years ago, when Mr. Charles Wickes was engaged in the preparation of his work on "Spires and Towers of Medieval English Churches," he had the good fortune and good sense to consult certain members of the architectural profession, who earnestly besought him to print, before the completion and issue of the more elaborate colored drawings, an uncolored edition of his work for the special use of architects. This work Messrs. Ticknor & Co. have reprinted, and are about to issue, not in its original form of three volumes, but the entire work in a single volume. A certain portion of these plates have already been republished in the imperial edition of the American Architect; but even subscribers to that edition will probably be glad to find a place for the work in its enlarged and completed form, as the plates which have been printed in the imperial edition of the American Architect are scattered through the issues of that journal during a period of nearly two years, and therefore are not readily accessible. Moreover, the present edition contains in full the valuable notes and criticisms of the original, making forty pages of text and notes, not less valuable than the plates. The work is now in press, and will be ready for sale in the course of a few weeks.