4+8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



wood and bone, the ornaments, headdresses, and costumes — all, 

 in fact, that made the savagery of those strange lands of the 

 South Sea so remarkable and distinctive. In it is reflected the 

 spirit of that island civilization that spreads from the far South 

 to the Alaskan shores of the Pacific. 



The results of the explorations conducted by the department 

 in Florida, the caves of the Ohio Valley, and in Yucatan have 

 been of the greatest scientific importance. The explorations of 

 Mr. Charles B. Moore in the shell mounds of Florida produced a 

 case of selected objects which filled a most important gap in the 

 collection of the American department. During the past few 

 years Mr. Henry C. Mercer, Curator of American and Prehistoric 

 Archaeology, has visited the most important prehistoric sites of 

 Europe. The university museum has thus been enriched by 

 European collections, such as are to be found in no other museum 

 in America. He made sketches of French caves, where the oldest 

 objects of human skill have been discovered, and where pictorial 

 art of a striking character has been found in drawings upon the 

 bones of the mammoth and the cave bear. Mr. Mercer has also 

 explored the floors of the mountain caves of Yucatan for traces 

 of pre-Indian occupation, continuing the systematic search for 

 evidences of the existence of palaeolithic and glacial man, which 

 he had carried on with negative results in the Ohio and Missis- 

 sippi Valleys. The caves yielded nothing older than the pottery 

 of the Maya Indians of the time of the conquest, verifying Maya 

 traditions that they found the country uninhabited when they 

 entered it, ages ago, from the North. Mr. Mercer's observations 

 have practically demonstrated that the antiquity of man in 

 America is more recent than in Europe, as shown by the human 

 remains found in Euroj^ean caves. 



No piece of work done in America in a decade has so elevated 

 the European estimate of American scholarship as the recent ex- 

 plorations in Babylonia under the auspices of the university. In 

 the summer of 1888 the University of Pennsylvania equipped and 

 sent out the first American expedition to the northern half of the 

 plains of Babylonia to efi'ect a thorough exploration of the ruins 

 of Nippur. A short time before this a few citizens of Philadel- 

 phia had met in the house of Dr. William Pepper and formed 

 the Babylonian Exploration Fund, with the purpose of effecting a 

 systematic exploration of ancient Babylonia. Two professors, Dr. 

 J. P. Peters and Dr. Hermann V. Hilprecht, were intrusted with the 

 management of the expedition. The explorations were conducted 

 amid the greatest difficulties, the chief ones being the deadly 

 climate and the hostility of the natives. But the excavations 

 were pressed on with energy and confidence, under the gracious 

 protection of the Sultan of Turkey and Hamdy Bey, the Director- 



