Anthropology 757 



tiquity of Man," Desor on " Palafittes of Lake Neuchatel," 

 and Adler on " Oriental Antiquities." 



One important publication on Egyptian archaeology has 

 been issued by the Institution. Gliddon, the Egyptologist, 

 in 1842 presented to the national collection a portion of 

 the lid of a mummy case from Sacara. This was regarded 

 by Doctor Charles Pickering, of Boston, as older than the 

 third dynasty, and its inscription, which unfortunately gives 

 no indication of the date, appeared to him to have preceded 

 an important change in the character of hieroglyphic writing. 

 The lid had been divided into three parts, and distributed, 

 and the missing parts could not be traced. Doctor Pick- 

 ering, however, described the portion which came to the 

 Smithsonian, and gave a large plate of it, which was a fac- 

 simile in size and color, representing the figures upon it with 

 scientific accuracy. 



LINGUISTICS 



THE Smithsonian Institution early recognized the value of 

 linguistics in the study of anthropology, and from 1850 to 

 1876 a large amount of work was done in collecting the vo- 

 cabularies of the American Indians. The keynote of the value 

 of linguistics is well indicated in one of the early reports, 

 from which I quote, "A language is not originally a thing of 

 man's device, or the result of conventional art, but the spon- 

 taneous production of human instinct, modified by the mental 

 character, the physical condition, and other peculiarities of 

 the people or tribe among whom it had its origin, or by 

 whom it is used. It is subject to definite laws of formation 

 and development, and is intimately connected with the his- 

 tory of the migrations and affiliations of the people by whom 

 it is spoken, and hence becomes an object of interest to the 

 student of the natural history of man." 



