SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE, 847 



with pictures of specimens and of Indians at work. Dr. Matthews gives 

 us also some description of the Navaho religion and its ceremonies. 

 The religion is an elaborate pagan cult, and as the tribe inclines to be 

 democratic so does the pantheon : they have no highest chief, so they have 

 no supreme god. There are also evil spirits whom men dread. Many of 

 the ceremonies are of nine days' duration, while others last but a single day 

 or a few hours. Elaborate costumes and other paraphernalia are employed 

 in them, specimens of which are here figured. To learn one of the great 

 rites so as to become its chanter, or priest, is the work of many years. Dr. 

 Matthews has a good word for the medicine men that he has come in con- 

 tact with among this people. Among the notes are given the woi'ds of several 

 songs with interlinear translations, and the music of eleven melodies, the 

 latter having been recorded on the phonograph by Dr. Matthews and noted 

 from the cylinders by John C. Fillmore. In addition to its forty-two cuts 

 in the text the volume contains four plates, of which two are colored. 



Mr. Bellamy's Equality * takes up the story and the discussion of social 

 questions from where Looking Backward ended, and continues them. It 

 is in the year 2000, and in the conversation in the garden where Looking 

 Backward left the pair, Edith asks Julian West about the old times of the 

 nineteenth century, and is astonished that such things as he tells of could 

 have been. Some of the details of the revolution that changed conditions 

 are explained to him. He opens his account in the National Bank and 

 learns about the new financial system, in which private estates are extin- 

 guished, the nation owns all the property, and every citizen is allowed each 

 year an equal credit, in lieu of estate, wages, or profit. Every one is ex- 

 pected to choose some occupation and follow it, and all are expected to do 

 by turns their shares of the unpleasant work which no one chooses. A 

 remedy is described for those who refuse to take their privilege or burden. 

 In all those things, and in dress, women are as men, and changes of fashion 

 are no longer known. A discussion of right of property introduces an elu- 

 cidation of the theory of the social fund and the docti'ine that private capi- 

 tal is stolen from it, and the astonishing declaration that under the sys- 

 tem prevailing in the nineteenth century, if one monopolist could have 

 acquired title deeds to all of the earth, he might have ordered the human 

 race off of it. The right of title by inheritance is attacked, but it is argued 

 that the equalization of human interests achieved does not destroy the right 

 of property. It is simply merged in the title of the state. And it is held 

 that by this system of equalization women are delivered from a bondage 

 incomparably more complete and abject than any to which men have been 

 subjected by their fellow-men the bondage of personal subjection to the 

 husband, and to the tyranny of conventional rules. The profit system is 

 held up as one of economic suicide. Stinkers of the nineteenth century are 

 honored in statuary as the leaders in the revolt against capitalism and the 

 pioneers in the new movement. Julian finds that what he had formerly 

 thought evil has become good, and what has seemed wisdom has become 

 foolishness. The iniquity of foreign commerce for profit and the hostility 

 to improvement of a system of vested interests are enlarged upon. 

 While under the old system the continued acquisition of knowledge after 



* Equality. By Edward Bellamy. New York : D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 412. Price, $1.25. 



