PHILOLOGY. 375 



in by collectors. A noteworthy specimen is a nearly complete skull 

 of an extinct horse, found in the gold-bearing silts near Dawson, Yukon. 

 Within the year the writer has pubhshed a paper {Proc. U.S. Nat. 

 Mus., vol. 51, pp. 107-123, pis. 3-7), describing a new species of 

 ground-sloth (Nothrotherium texanum) and a glyptodont {Glyptodon 

 petaliferus) , both from Texas. The latter was based by Cope on a 

 half of one plate of the carapace; the writer is able to describe a large 

 part of the skull and skeleton. Both specimens described belong to the 

 U. S. National Museum. In another paper (8th Ann. Rep., Fla. Geol. 

 Surv., pp. 39-76, pis. 1-8) fourteen new species of tortoise belonging 

 to the Pleistocene of Florida were described. 



Wieland, G. R., Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Continuation 

 of investigations on fossil cycads. (For previous reports see Year Books 

 Nos. 2-4, 6-9, 11-14.) 



During the year volume II of the American Fossil Cycads was 

 pubhshed by the Carnegie Institution of Washington and La Flora 

 Liasica de la Mixteca Alta with atlas appeared in Boletin 31 del 

 Instituto Geologico de Mexico. Volume II of the American Fossil 

 Cycads deals primarily with the silicified forms, but is in a certain sense 

 a manual on the cycadeoids. Its logical continuation is a more exacting 

 treatise on anatomy. This is planned, and much of the work of the 

 past year is preparatory to such a continuation. The contribution 

 on the Mexican Liassic enters the broader field of early Mesozoic 

 floras. Of these, whether large or small, there is to-day scarcely one 

 which does not invite restudy. 



PHILOLOGY. 



Churchill, William, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Research associate in 

 primitive philology. (For previous report see Year Book No. 14.) 



In the past year I have completed the examination of the available 

 hnguistic material of the Sissano people who live upon the Ar6p-Ser 

 lagoons along the north coast of New Guinea, 65 miles east of the 

 boundary of the Dutch moiety of that continental island. Although 

 the vocabulary material is of extreme paucity, the intensive study 

 to which it has been subjected estabUshes this station as one of great 

 critical importance in the identification of the folk migration of 

 Polynesian ancestors out of Indonesia eastward toward their present 

 Pacific homes under the expulsive influence of the Malayan swarm 

 into Indonesia from the west. It reveals to us a fresh chapter in the 

 conmion history of the dawn of human society, the shattering of a 

 well-established stone-age society by the coming of a society which 

 has attained to the metal culture. When we make the acquaintance 

 of the Polynesians they are found to be living in neolithic culture; 

 their implements are of pohshed stone. The Malayan races, arriving 



