

ANTHROPOLOGY. 843 



sons Stated in the address. It appears that the oifspring does not tend 

 to resemble the parents, but to be always more mediocre than they; to 

 be smaller if the parents were large, to be larger than the parents if 

 the latter were small. 



"There can be no doubt," says Mr. Galton, "that heredity proceeds 

 to a considerable extent, perhaps principally, in a piecemeal or piebald 

 fashion, causing the person of the child to bo to that extent a mosaic 

 of independent ancestral heritages, one part coming with more or less 

 variation from this progenitor and another from that. To express this 

 aspect of inheritance where particle proceeds from particle, we may 

 conveniently describe it as particulate." 



"Whenever a feature in a child was not personally possessed by either 

 parent, but transmitted through one of them from a more distant pro- 

 genitor, the element whence that feature was developed must have ex- 

 isted in a particulate, though a personal and latent form in the body of 

 the parent. The total heritage of that parent will have included a 

 greater variety of material than was utilized in the formation of his 

 own personal structure." The lecture closes with the application of the 

 argument to the formation of colonies or composite individuals. 



Mr. Dall, from his long Alaskan experience, made familiar with 

 masks and labrets, has extended his study into other regions, and pro- 

 duced a work on the geographical distribution of these objects which 

 is of great ethnical value. His speculations lead him to the conclusion 

 that intimate relationship once existed between Oceanica and the west- 

 ern continent. 



The Eev. J. Owen Dorsey was for many years among the Dakotan 

 tribes, and became so conversant with their language and habits that 

 he has been invited by the director of the Bureau of Ethnology to pre- 

 pare an elaborate account of that stock. His monograph upon Omaha 

 Sociology is the first of a series, which will terminate with grammars and 

 vocabularies. Mr. Dorsey is by far the best equipped man in the world 

 to treat this subject. The Omaha belong to the Dhegiha group of the 

 Siouan family, the other member of the family being the Kwapa. In 

 connection with this paper should be read Major Powell's report upon 

 it in the introduction to his third annual report. 



:Mr. Ward read before the Anthropological Society of Washington a 

 paper of great sociological importance, in which are contrasted moral 

 and material progress. By the former, the author means the actual 

 removal of social evils; by the latter, the discovery of principles and 

 the invention of appliances calculated to remove them. The aim of the 

 paper was to call attention to the fact that while material progress goes 

 on by steady accretions, in which every step is ])ermanent gain, moral 

 progress takes place by a rhythmic action of which only the algebraic 

 sum of its many fluxes and refluxes can be counted. Every age has 

 possessed all the arts of tlie age that preceded it, and has added some- 

 thing to them, but the welfare of man does not advance by any such 



