370 Memorial of George Brown Goode. 



pologists for his opinion in regard to its character, and received the fol- 

 lowing statement: 



Washington, /a««<7;^' 5, 1886. 

 My Dear Mr. Goode : We make a very grave mistake if we think there was no 

 study of nature before the science of natural history. In all branches of study what- 

 ever there was lore before there was science. Before the Weather Bureau was 

 weather lore, a kind of rough induction which the ancient people made, and which 

 was very far from erroneous, Doctor Washington Matthews read a paper before the 

 Washington Philosophical Society more than a year ago ' to draw attention to the 

 marvelous intimacy of the Navajo Indians with the plant kingdom around them, 

 and their vocabulary, which contained names for many species constructed so as to 

 connote qualities well known to them. You are familiar with the stories concerning 

 the respect in which certain animals are held by the Eskimo, and the minute 

 acquaintance of all our aborigines of both continents with the life histories of many 

 animals. The Eskimo, as well as the Indian tribes, carve and depict forms so well 

 that the naturalist can frequently determine the species. Mr. Ducien Turner col- 

 lected carvings in ivory of foetal forms. 



Very truly, yours, O. T. Mason. 



Professor Mason also called attention to a long paper upon Tame 

 Animals among the Red Men of America, b}^ Doctor E. F. im Thurn,^ 

 in which it is stated that the Indian of South America finds means to 

 tame almost every wild bird and beast of his country, so that these 

 domesticated animals are ever among the most prominent members of 

 his household, not because of any affection for them, but because he 

 enjoys their bright colors, makes use of them in various wa5^s, and 

 employs them as a medium of exchange. Thej^ even know how to 

 change the colors of a living bird from green to yellow. In one settle- 

 ment he counted twenty-one kinds of monkeys. Nearly all of the thirty 

 or more species of Guiana parrots are tamed, two species of deer, two of 

 peccaries, two of coati-mundis, jaguars, pacas, capybaras, agoutis, hawks, 

 owls, herons, plovers, toucans, troupials, rupicolas, and iguanas were 

 also observed in captivity. The mere fact that these animals are kept 

 in captivity is not in itself especially significant, but it renders it pos- 

 sible to understand how splendor-loving rulers of Mexico succeeded in 

 building up the great menageries. 



Bearing in mind the animal myths which Major Powell has found so 

 prevalent among the Indians of Arizona and New Mexico, and has so 

 charmingly translated, and those which Schoolcraft and others recorded 

 in the north long ago, and which Longfellow has arranged in metric 

 form, we can not but be impressed with the idea that the red man of 

 old, living close to nature as he did, knew many of her secrets which 

 we should be glad to share with him at the present day. 



' Washington Matthews, Natural Naturalists. Bulletin of the Philosophical Society 

 Washington, VII, 1885, p. 73 (abstract). 



= Timehri, being the Journal of the Royal Agricultural and Conunercial Society of 

 British Guiana, Demerara, I, 1882, pp. 25-43. 



