7 GO SCIENTIFIC RECORD FOR 1883. 



of all the tribes are given, and excellent descriptions of the people 

 and their arts. Bonney is the author of a treatise on the inhabitants of 

 Colombia, and Bove" on those of Tierra del Fuego. 



The study of the elements in the present populations of Europe may 

 be said to begin with Quatrefages's researches concerning fossil men. 

 fl. H. Howorth continued his ethnologic investigation into the proto- 

 historic tribes of Germany and France. 



The Kevue d'Ethnographie, established by M. Hamy, passed through 

 its second volume successfully. 



No ethnographic field w receiving more thorough attention than 

 Australia. The publication of the results of these investigations in 

 the Journal of the Anthropological Institute has lifted that journal to 

 the very first rank among our special journals. Mr. Sanger also con- 

 tributes a paper on the aborigines of Cooper's Creek. Bastian's re- 

 searches in Polynesia are noticed in Archiv. M. de Quatrefages is the 

 author of a pamphlet in which he seeks to identify the Negritos with 

 the Pygmies of the classic authors. 



VI. — GLOSSOLOGY. 



Since Mr. Darwin published his work on the expression of emotion 

 in the animal creation and in man, much attention has been paid to the 

 methods of speech that are not vocal. A paper by Bruce in the Amer- 

 ican Naturalist discusses this subject. 



The question of a universal language is not yet within the purview 

 of anthropology, but a universal alphabet is, and it would seem to be 

 the next duty of philologists to come to some understanding in the 

 matter. The study of deaf-mutes and of the phonetic revelations of 

 the telephone by A. Melville Bell and his son, A. Graham Bell, are in 

 the line of this study. Isaac Taylor has written a work on the origin 

 and development of letters, and Gustav Oppert has attempted a classi- 

 fication of languages on the basis of ethnology. 



Since Lazarus Geiger broached the theory that the absence of certain 

 color names in ancient writers proves that the special color senses were 

 not yet developed, many philologists have taken up the subject. The 

 Societe dAnthropoiogie published a memoir by J. Geofl'roy upon the 

 knowledge and the names for color among the ancients. In the Amer- 

 ican Journal of Philology Thomas E. Price publishes a paper on the 

 color system of Virgil, in which, discarding the wild speculations of 

 Geiger, the author tries to give a rational definition of the color names 

 used and to account for certain omissions about which much ado has 

 been made. 



Dr. W. J. Hoffman, after having studied the sign languages of the 

 world pretty thoroughly, conceived the idea that the Eskimo and Indian 

 pictographs were related iu many instances to the sign language. A 

 paper published by the Washington Anthropological Society is devoted 

 to this comparison. The same author wrote about the Carson footprints, 



