412 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



culate-dotted macrospores. It grows in damp springy soil, not in 

 water, in the Willamette Valley, maturing in August and September. 



694. Selaginella rupestris Spring, var. tropica Spring. S. 

 struthioloides Presl. 



695. Equisetum l^vigatum A. Braun ; Gray, Man. p. 655. 



696. Equisetum limosum L. 



697. Marsilia vestita Hook. & Grev. Ic. Fil. t. 159. 



698. Azolla Carolinian a Willd. A. microphylla Kaulf. 

 699-701. Nitell^e species, not determined. 



The Musci, Hepaticce, and Lichenes are under examination, and will 

 be separately published. 



Six hundred and forty-second Meeting. 



March 12, 1872. — Monthly Meeting. 



The Corresponding Secretary in the Chair. 



Mr. C. S. Pierce made a communication on the photometric 

 measurement of the stars, and exhibited an instrument for this 

 purpose devised by Zollner. 



Mr. Lewis H. Morgan presented the following paper on Aus- 

 tralian Kinship ; with Appendices, by Rev. Lorimer Fison. 



There are five classes of facts, preserved in the institutions of sav- 

 age and barbarous nations, which are now attracting increasing atten- 

 tion. In connection with inventions and discoveries, they have been 

 the instrumentalities by means of which mankind traversed the succes- 

 sive stages of savagery, of barbarism, and of civilization. When these 

 facts are fully ascertained and compared, and the logical deductions 

 are gathered into definite propositions, the most instructive portion of 

 the ancient experience of mankind will be recovered and utilized. 



It seems probable that the advancement of man through the succes- 

 sive stages of savagery and of barbarism was greater in degree than 

 it has been since in the stages of civilization. When the .savage had 

 raised himself to a barbarian, and the latter had risen to the pastoral 

 and agricultural conditions, this improved man, although still a bar- 

 barian, was further removed from the primitive savage than the philos- 

 opher of the present age is above this same barbarian. Be this as it 

 may, the experiences of these several conditions are successive links 

 of a common chain, each of which is necessary to the interpretation of 



