THE RETROSPECT OF THE YEAR. 131 



and he thought that, if we went far enough back, we should 

 find that the Indian was, as the high cheek hone and other 

 characteristics seemed to indicate, of the Mongolian race, 

 as it is certain he belongs neither to the White, the Xegro 

 nor the Malay. 



Monday Evening, April 4, 1898. — Regular meeting 

 in the Library room. Mr. John Robinson read a paper 

 on coins and coinage. He spoke of the use in early days 

 of shells and skins of animals for money, and later of the 

 use of flocks and herds as a standard of value. The first 

 coinage of New England was the Pine Tree Shilling in 

 1652, coined in Boston on the Gardner Green estate, now 

 the site of the new Court House in Pemberton Square. 

 He said that the Institute collection is a large and valuable 

 one and submitted a catalogue of it which he had recently 

 made. Discussion hy the President and Professor Morse 

 followed. 



Monday Evening, April 11, 1898. — Dr. George A. 

 Bates, of the Tufts College Medical School, lectured on 

 " A chapter from the evolution of man." He showed by 

 diagrams the development of the teeth from the reptiles 

 and the lower animals to the teeth of man in the present 

 time. He explained how the environment causes the 

 teeth to assume new shapes, from the single, double or 

 tri-cone teeth for holding and cutting the prey, to the 

 broad, flat tooth for crushing and grinding the food. He 

 said that these theories were brought to the notice of 

 scientists from the fact that the tooth was the hardest bone 

 in the human or animal body, and was always found in a 

 good state of preservation after all the other bones were 

 destroyed or softened by decay. 



Saturday, April 16, 1898. — A meeting of the 

 Board of Directors was held at the rooms this morn- 



