36 



ASSOCIATIONS FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. (AMERICAN.) 



111.; H, Thomas Wilson, Washington city; and I, 

 Marcus Benjamin, Washington city. Permanent 

 secretary, Leland O. Howard, Washington city. 

 General secretary, Frederick Bedell, Ithaca, N. Y. 

 Secretary of the council, Charles Baskerville, 

 Chapel Hill, N. C. Secretaries of the sections: 

 A, John F. Hayford, Washington city; B, Wil- 

 liam Hallock, New York city; C, Henry A. 

 Weber, Columbus, Ohio; D, James M. Porter, 

 Easton, Pa.; E, Arthur Hollick, New York city; 

 F, Charles L. Marlatt, Washington city, in place 

 of Frederick W. True; G, William A. Kellerman, 

 Columbus, Ohio; H, Edward W. Scripture, New 

 Haven, Conn.; I, Calvin M. Woodward, St. Louis, 

 Mo. Treasurer, Robert S. Woodward, New York 

 city. 



Opening Proceedings. The usual regular 

 preliminary meeting of the council with which 

 the association begins its sessions was held in 

 the Chittenden Hotel on Aug. 20, at noon. At 

 this session the final details pertaining to the 

 arrangements of the meeting were settled, and 

 the reports of the local committees acted on. 

 The names of 55 applicants for membership were 

 favorably considered, which number, together 

 with 26 names acted on at meetings of the coun- 

 cil held in New York city on Dec. 27, 1898, and 

 in Washington city on April 23, 1899, brought 

 the total membership up to 1810. The general 

 session with which the public meeting began was 

 held in the chapel of the Ohio State University 

 at 10 A. M., on Aug. 21. The meeting was called 

 to order by the retiring president, Frederic W. 

 Putnam, of Cambridge, Mass., who said that 

 " Columbus, as the capital of the great State of 

 Ohio, was a fitting place for the American Asso- 

 ciation for the Advancement of Science to begin 

 the second half of the century of its existence," 

 and introduced Dr. Edward Orton as the presid- 

 ing officer for the meeting. An address of wel- 

 come was made by Attorney-General Axline, rep- 

 resenting Gov. Bushnell ; also one on behalf of 

 Mayor Swartz was presented by Judge Earnhart. 

 President Thompson welcomed the association on 

 behalf of the university. He said : " The Ohio 

 State University is exceedingly happy in the 

 privilege of extending a welcome to you, not only 

 in her own name, but in the name of all these 

 institutions which are to do so much in the fu- 

 ture for industrial and scientific education in the 

 great West. We recognize in this association 

 a body of men devoted to the study of science 

 and scientific education. We trust that your 

 stay with us will assure you that the Ohio State 

 University proposes to prove her right to exist- 

 ence by ministering to the needs of the people, 

 and by presenting to them an open opportunity 

 to the best that modern education can supply." 



In behalf of the association President Orton 

 returned cordial thanks for the welcome given. 

 In the course of his remarks he described the 

 great geographical range of the association, say- 

 ing: " It transcends not only all State limits, 

 but national boundaries as well. An organiza- 

 tion that represents the United States takes in 

 a respectable part of the land areas of the planet, 

 but this is not merely a United States organiza- 

 tion. It especially includes that potent and 

 ambitious neighbor of ours to the northward, 

 that owns more than 3,000,000 square miles, or 

 a full half of the North American continent. 

 Our name is broad enough to include also our 

 neighbors to the southward, Mexico and the 

 Central American republics." In referring to the 

 work of the association, he said: "Its very title 

 indicates that the work is incomplete, that it is 

 still in progress. Its founders fifty years ago 



clearly saw that they were in the early morning 

 of a growing day. The most unexpected and 

 marvelous progress has been made since that 

 date, but as yet there is no occasion and no pros- 

 pect of occasion to modify the title. We are 

 still laboring for the advancement of science, for 

 the discovery of new truth. The field, which is 

 the world, was never so white to the harvest as 

 now, but it is still early morning on the dial of 

 science. Our contributions to the advancement 

 of science are often fragmentary and devoid of 

 special interest to the outside world. But every 

 one of them has a place in the great temple of 

 knowledge, and the wise master builders, some 

 of whom appear in every generation, will find 

 them all and use them all at last, and then only 

 will their true value come to light." 



The usual announcements were then made^ 

 after which the session was adjourned. 



Address of the Retiring President. The 

 association met again in the auditorium of the 

 Board of Trade on Monday evening to listen to 

 the retiring address of President Putnam, who 

 since 1886 has held the chair of American Archae- 

 ology and Ethnology in Harvard University, and 

 has also been the curator of the department of 

 anthropology at the American Museum of Natu- 

 ral History in New York city since 1894. The 

 subject of his address was A Problem in Ameri- 

 can Anthropology. In opening he referred to 

 the recent death of Daniel G. Brinton, a past 

 president, saying, " By his death American an- 

 thropology has suffered a serious loss, and a great 

 scholar and earnest worker has been taken from 

 our association." Then, taking up his subject 

 proper, he said : " We are still disputing the evi- 

 dence furnished by craniology, by social institu- 

 tions, and by language in relation to the unity 

 or diversity of the existing American tribes and 

 their predecessors on this continent." He dis- 

 cussed at length the paper read before the asso- 

 ciation in 1857 by James D. Dana on Thoughts 

 on Species, and then one by Sir Daniel Wilson, 

 and finally one by Lewis H. Morgan, in each 

 of which the assumed unity of the American race 

 was held. He also showed that Edward J. Payne, 

 in his recent History of the New W^orld called 

 America, likewise expressed his belief in the an- 

 tiquity and unity of the American tribes. Then, 

 taking up the subject of craniology, he described 

 the methods of studying skulls, and claimed that 

 " the many differing characteristics exhibited in 

 a large collection of crania, brought together 

 from various portions of America, north and 

 south, are reducible to several great groups. 

 These may be generally classed as the Eskimo 

 type, the northern and central or so-called In- 

 dian type, the northwestern brachycephalic type, 

 the southwestern dolichocephalic type, the Tol- 

 tecan brachycephalic type, and the Antillean type, 

 with probably the ancient Brazilian, the Fuegian, 

 and the pre-Inca types of South America. Each 

 of these types is found in its purity in a certain 

 limited region, while in other regions it is more 

 or less modified by admixture. Thus the Tolte- 

 can or ancient Mexican type (which, united with 

 the Peruvian, was separated as the Toltccan 

 family even by Morgan) occurs, more or less 

 modified by admixture, in the ancient and mod- 

 ern pueblos and in the ancient earthworks of 

 our central and southern valleys. In Peru, more 

 in modern than in ancient times, thefe is an ad- 

 mixture of two principal types. At the north 

 of the continent we again find certain traits that 

 possibly indicate a mixture of the Eskimo with 

 the early coast peoples both on the Pacific and 

 on the Atlantic sides of the continent. The 



