ANTHROPOLOGY. 639 



pictures are employed as writing the conception intended to be i^re- 

 sented m generally analyzed, and only its most essential points are in- 

 dicated, with the result that the characters when frequently repeated 

 become conventional, and in their later forms cease to be recognizable as 

 objective portraitures. 



A striking example of the interdependence of language and arts is 

 afforded by Mr. Cushing's paper on Pueblo pottery. Following up Mr. 

 Holmes's investigations into the origin of decoration, the author finds 

 that these theories are justified by an intimate study of language. In- 

 deed, the names of certain forms of pottery and decoration as well as of 

 building do not refer to the things as they now exist, but are the ver- 

 itable designations of things and forms out of which the modern forms 

 are thought to have sprung. 



Origin of languages. — The vice-presidential address of Hon. Horatio 

 Hale before Section H of the American Association at Buffalo was 

 upon the origin of languages and the antiquity of speaking man. It 

 contains views so original and novel that it is eminently proper to pre- 

 sent a condensed scheme of the argument. 



Among the puzzling questions in anthropology which we are bound 

 to notice are these two : When did linguistic stocks originate '? When 

 -did man acquire the faculty of si)eech? It will be seen that the origin 

 of languages and the origin of language are two very different questions. 



Mr. Hale, rejecting the old theories which rely upon time, the disper- 

 sion of a monosyllabic parent stock, or the dispersion of speechless man, 

 and the origination of languages in different centers, avers that the ori- 

 gin of linguistic stocks is to be found in what may be called the language- 

 making instincts of very young children. To insure the creation of a 

 speech which shall be the parent of a new linguistic stock, all that is 

 needed is that two or more young children should be placed by them- 

 selves in a condition where they will be entirely, or in a large degree, free 

 from the presence and influence of their elders, and that they should con- 

 tinue in this condition long enough to grow up and form a household, and 

 to have descendants to whom they can communicate their new speech. 



This theory is elaborated with great care, and the multiplicity of 

 stocks m California made a camping-ground of the argument. 



The second part of the argument is also accompanied with the revival 

 of startling doctrines, namely, that while the antiquity of man is incal- 

 culable, the speaking man is of recent origin, having occupied this 

 I)lanet not over ten thousand years at most. 



If we are willing to give the name of man to a half-brutish being, in- 

 capable of speech, we must allow to this being an existence of vast and as 

 yet undefined duration, shared with the mammoth, the woolly rhinoce- 

 ros, and other extinct animals. But if we term the beings of that race 

 the precursors of man and restrict the name of mau to the members of 

 the speaking race that followed them, then the first appearance of man, 



