52 REPOKT OF THE SECRETARY. 



in air as viewed l>y enligiitened peoples, for the air is regarded as essentially com- 

 mon to all living and breathing things, and its use as an inherent right far tran- 

 scending conventional titles to personal or communal jiroperty. There are, indeed, 

 certain germs of comnmnal property right in air, manifested in the occasional actions 

 of neighborhoods looking to the al )atement of certain nuisances, yet the claims put forth 

 in sucli actions relate rather to the free and common use — or to usufruct — of the air 

 than to its possession as property, so that our attitude toward air is closely analogous 

 to that of jirimitive folk toward land. The results of the inquiries find ready appli- 

 cation in connection with various public questions. One of the conclusions is that 

 primitive folk can not l)e at once transferred from the plane of collective interest in 

 the usufruct of the soil to that of individual land tenure, any more than the farmer 

 of the Atlantic seaboard i-ould be brought in a day to full understanding of irrigation 

 water rights, witli all the complications of dams, sluices, main ditches, gates, etc. — 

 indeed, the education of the citizen farmers who have gone West and grown up with 

 irrigation was much more rapid than could be expected of the slower-minded tribes- 

 men. Accordingly, it would clearly be a mistake to transfer tril)esmen directly from 

 the range to the severalty holding; there should be (as indeed experience has 

 shown in dealing with the Indians) an intermediate period of proprietary training 

 on collective reservations. The researches indicate that this i)eriod should cover at 

 least a generation ; in most cases two generations Avould ])e required for the devel- 

 oimientof that sentiment of thrift and feeling of independence required for success- 

 ful citizenshij). 8ome of the results of the year's work have been made jmblic in 

 scientific papers and addresses, and j)rogress has lieen made in arranging the material 

 for formal issue in reports. 



In connection with his linguistic researches in British Columl)ia, Dr. John R. 

 Swanton collected definite information concerning the kinship terms and other fac- 

 tors in the social organization of the Haida Indians, and toward the close of the year 

 he made progress in arranging the data for publication. 



WOKK IN l'lIIl,OLOGY. 



During the earlier part of the fist-al year the Director continued the arrangement 

 of Mexican and ('entral American linguistic material witli a view to the classification 

 of the ahorigines of the southern portion of North America on a linguistic basis. As 

 during the preceding year, Dr. Cyrus Thomas collaborated in the work. The com- 

 I)letion of the task was delayed by the illness of the Director during the later 

 months of the year. 



At the o]>ening of the year Prof. Franz Boas, of Columbia University, was given 

 an honorary appointment as philologist, and was intrusted with the supervision of 

 a considerable part of the linguistic researches in A\hich the Bureau is engaged. 

 One of the objects of the appointment was that of o))taining a uniform series 

 of outlines of Indian languages to ))e pubhshed in synoptic form for use in 

 comparative studies by the philologists of Ihe world. The work requires exten- 

 sive preparation because of the wide range and considerable volume of the mate- 

 rial both in hand and required. At the time of discovery there were in North 

 America somewhere between one and two thousand triljal dialects or languages 

 belonging to about a hundred linguistic stocks or families, so that the scope 

 of the work is so broad that it may not be acconiplislied except by the cooper- 

 ation of many specialists devoted to parti(;ular groups of languages. Under exist- 

 ing conditions it seems inexpedient to attempt covering the ground through the 

 Bureau alone; an<l the plan of tlie work intrusted to Dr. Boas is to enlist the 

 cooperation of other institutions and other linguistic specialists. During the past 

 year the work was organized in cooperati(jn with the American Museum of Natural 

 History, Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of California. 

 The collaborators included Dr. John R. Swanton, of the Bureau; Mr. H. H. St. 



