SUMMARY OK PROGRESS IN ANTHROPOLOGY. 617 



or suffixing suitable tiexioiis and foriuatives to the forms fixed by the 

 foregoing- canons. 



Dr. Washington Matthews, reviewing the new edition of the Riggs 

 Dalofa (licfioHory, published by the Smithsonian Institution as Vol. 

 IV of Contributions to Knowledge, pays a just tribute to the original 

 work and its author. Great and worthy praise is bestowed upon the 

 Rev. J. Owen Dorsey for tlie editorial supervision of the new volume, 

 and the reviewer says that tlie improvements are largely dialectic*. This 

 shows how thoroughly the jtioneer members of the Dakota mission did 

 their scholarly work [Am. Anthroj)., Wash., VI, 96). 



The question of the phoneticism of the Maya is reviewed by Cyrus 

 Thomas in the American Anthropologist (Washington, vi, 241-270), who 

 says that their ideographic character is maintained by Forstemaun, 

 Schellhas, Seler, and Valentini; their i)honetic character by Chareucy, 

 de Rosny, and Thomas, and an intermediate ground is assumed by 

 Brinton, who gives to them the name ikonomatic. 



A substantial contribution to the extension of ethnology through 

 linguistics has been made by Rev. J. Owen Dorsey in a paper before 

 the Madison meeting of the American Association proving that the 

 Biloxis, a tribe on the southern border of Louisiana, belong to the 

 Siouan or Dakotan linguistic s!ock. This family is now traced along the 

 western side of the ^lississippi River from the gulf to its source, through- 

 out the entire drainage of the JMissouriand the Arkansas and along the 

 eastern slopes of the Appalachians from Washington city to central 

 South Carolina. 



Ul)on the study of American native languages abroad. Dr. Brinton 

 draws attention to a report on American lingnistics made at a confer- 

 ence in Madrid by Don Francisco de Fernandez y Gonzalez and luinted 

 by the Athen;T3um. In the Anales de la JJrdversidad, of Santiago, 

 Chile, is a i)aper entitled, " La linguistica Americana, su historia y su 

 estado actual,'' by Diego Barros Arana and Rodolfo Lenz. 



A valuable addition to the resources of Mexican archaeology is Dr. 

 Seler's publication with textual explanation of Humboldt's collection of 

 maguey paintings. In the city of Mexico, in 1803, Humboldt purchased 

 sixteen hieroglyphic paintings collected by Boturini Beuaducci, 1740, 

 confiscated by the Government and phiced in the hand of Leon da 

 Gama to study. In 180G these paintings were presented to the Ber- 

 lin Royal Library and there they remained until in 1888, they were 

 exliibited to the Congress of Americanists. Photograpliic facsimiles 

 were published by the Royal Library as a gift to the Columbus Cen- 

 tennial. 



But the remainder of Boturini's collections were scattered and lost 

 sight of nearly a hundred years, until M. Aubin, 1830-1840, with assid- 

 uous care gathered them and took them to Paris. Fifty years hmger 

 they were kept with miserly cu'cumsi)ection from inquisitive eyes 

 until M. Eugene Goupil bought them and placed them in the hands 

 of M. Bobau to catalogue. Already a v'olume has appeared entitled, 



