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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



express himself in his own words. Suggest- 

 ive inquiries are made which make the stu- 

 dent and teacher companions in the work of 

 study and investigation. A good text-book 

 requires a good instructor, and this book is 

 no exception to the rule. 



In the usual courses of study in the 

 schools of this country, the teacher has 

 some knowledge of the subject ; that is to 

 say, he can pass some sort of an examina- 

 tion in algebra, geometry, rhetoric, and simi- 

 lar studies, or, at least, it is assumed he 

 can ; but we venture the assertion that not 

 one teacher in a hundred, into whose hands 

 text-books of zoology are placed, could tell 

 whether a spider had six legs or eight, or 

 whether it breathed through its mouth or 

 otherwise. 



This book, most excellent in its plan and 

 execution, will probably be in the hands of 

 every intelligent teacher of zoology, while 

 the ordinary school boards will probably im- 

 pose the short six-foot cuts across-lots, in 

 preference to longer and more instructive 

 paths. This is not a supposititious case, 

 for some years ago, a gentleman interested 

 in the publications of D. Appleton & Co., 

 on visiting a certain high-school in Indiana, 

 was gratified to find the blackboards covered 

 with drawings copied from Morse's " First 

 Book of Zoology." On inquiry, he found 

 that the teacher alone possessed a copy, 

 from which he was really teaching, while 

 the school board had introduced another 

 book which the entire class possessed, and 

 from which they were reciting, parrot-like, 

 the lessons ! 



Peaeodt Museum of American Archeol- 

 ogy and Ethnology, Eighteenth and 

 Nineteenth Annual Reports. Cambridge, 

 Mass. Pp. 124. 



The nineteenth report is dated April 9, 

 1886. The interest of the document centers 

 in the report of the Curator of the Museum, 

 in which arc recorded investigations made 

 under the direction or with the co-operation 

 of the Museum in various parts of the 

 United States and in Central America. The 

 investigations to which the most attention 

 has been directed were conducted in Ohio, 

 chiefly in the mounds of the Little Miami 

 Valley. A brief exploration was made 

 among the mound3 near Chillicothe, and 



furnished relics forming an important link 

 connecting the people who built the earth- 

 works in the Scioto Valley with the build- 

 ers of the singular group on the Turner 

 farm in the Little Miami Valley. In the 

 latter region several small mounds and a 

 part of a large cemetery were explored un- 

 der the direction of Dr. Metz. From the 

 cemetery, which is across the river from the 

 ancient cemetery near Madisonville, many 

 thousand specimens, and many skeletons 

 were obtained. For the first time the 

 large pipes cut in stone in the form of 

 human figures have been found associated 

 with the skeletons — a discovery which con- 

 nects these articles, hitherto only casually 

 found on the surface of the ground with the 

 people who used them, and which, with other 

 circumstances, throws light on the burial 

 ceremonies of those people. Examinations 

 were made of some mounds on the bluffs of 

 the Mississippi, in Pike County, Illinois, and 

 less thorough ones of mounds in Calhoun 

 County, on the Illinois River, from the results 

 of which the interesting conclusions were 

 drawn that the two sets of mounds were 

 not built by the same people ; and that 

 " the burial-mounds of the Illinois bluffs 

 resemble in contents, size, and structure the 

 simple burial-mounds of the Ohio Valley, 

 while those on the Mississippi bluffs have 

 nothing in common with them except that 

 they are burial-mounds." A special paper 

 is given to an account of the exploration of 

 the "Marriott Mound," in the Little Miami 

 Valley, and the description of its contents ; 

 and a paper by Dr. W. F. Whitney, " On 

 the Anomalies, Injuries, and Diseases of the 

 Cones of the Native Races of North Ameri- 

 ca." Accounts are given of the discovery 

 of human bones in mounds near Trempea- 

 leau, Wisconsin ; of Dr. Abbott's continued 

 investigations in the Trenton gravels ; of 

 the explorations of shell-heaps in Maine ; 

 and of Miss Fletcher's studies of living In- 

 dian customs among the Omahas, and her 

 gift to the Museum of the objects which 

 those Indians had carefully preserved for 

 many generations in their Sacred Tent of 

 War." From Dr. Flint, in Nicaragua, have 

 been received four blocks of tufa bearing 

 human foot-prints, which were found under 

 several layers of volcanic material, on the 

 shores of Lake Managua ; and several orna- 



