November 8, 1894 



NA 1 UKE 



27 



some hut, where for several days they will perform 

 nusical ceremonies before it, and then the saint will be 

 jrought back to its proper altar' — and again, ' they 

 :ome from afar to make offerings of blossoms and leaves, 

 ight candles before the altars of those saints they wish 



honour, and then silently return to their huts.' " 



There can b3 little doubt that in pre-Christian times 

 hey were accustomed to an elaborate ritual, and it was 

 )artly for this reai m that they took so readily to the 

 lereinonies of the Roman Church, but they never quite 

 bandoned their old beliefs. The twenty-four years that 

 lave elapsed since Admiral Brine's journey have not made 

 nuch difference in this respect ; and little rough altars 

 nay any day be found on the tops of abandoned temple 

 nounls with the scent of incense still hanging about 

 hem. 



Admiral Brine camped for a few days in the ruined 

 emples at Palenque, and then travelled northwards to 

 Yucatan and visited the ruins of Uxmal. The last two 

 hapters give an interesting summary of the author's 

 otes and the conclusions to which he has come. With 

 hese conclusions it is not always possible to agree ; but 

 liat is not much to be wondered at, when dealing with a 

 ubject which is so closely enveloped in mystery as the 

 ivilisation and migrations of the races of America. 



Happily we can feel assured that a distinct advance 



1 our knowledge of the subject is being made, and that 

 lere is a fair prospect that, within the next few years, 

 ame at least of the mystery will be rolled away. 



A good example of the very careful work which is being 

 one by numerous scientific societies in .America, in 

 ollecting and examining prehistoric lemains, can be 

 sen in Mr, Clarence B. Moore's account of his excava- 

 ons in the sand mounds of the St. John's River in 

 'lorida, and Mr. \V. H. Holmes's notes on the pottery 

 ■om these mounds, which was submitted to him for 

 xamination, both published in the Joicrnal of the I 

 hiladelphia .Academy of Sciences. 



The sand burial mounds occur frequently in the ■ 

 eighbourhood of l.irge shell deposits. They are usually | 

 Lratined, the layers consisting of different coloured sand, 

 'ith sometimes a slight admixture of shell, and the human 

 ones and other objects are most frequently found in a 

 Iyer of sand of a pinkish colour, due to the presence of 

 Ortdered hematite. 



It is not unusual to find in Indian burial mounds 

 ottery which has been purposely broken before burial, 

 s though in observance of some ceremonial rite, but 

 1 these sand mounds Mr. Moore found mortuary pottery 

 1 which the breakage or perforation had been made 

 efore the pottery was fired. 



With some of the surface and intrusive burials were 

 ssociated iron and brass objects, showing them to have 

 een post-Columbian ; but nothing indicating contact 

 ■ilh Europeans was found associated with the deeper 

 Uernients, and many of the mounds were entirely fiee 

 om evidence of contact with white men. 



At Thursby Mound a number of very curious rough 

 ottery figures were found, representing squirrels, 

 irkeys, fish, turtles, &c , as well as some vegetal forms, 

 'hich are extremely rare in the norm.il art of the United 

 tales. The illustrations which accompany these notes 

 re numerous and excellent. 



.MO. /306, VOL. 51] 



As we hear that Mr. W. H. Holmes, whose admirable 



work is so well known, is leaving the Bureau of 

 Ethnology at Washington, in order to take charge of the 

 new and liberally endowed museum at Chicago, which 

 is the outcome of the great World's Fair, we may look for 

 steady and increasing contributions to our knowledge of 

 the Indian races and their arts, which will not be limited 

 to the result of investigitions in the territory oftheUnited 

 States, but will include the whole .American continent. 



The Peabody Institute of Massachusetts (principally 

 owing to the liberal support afforded it by Mr. C. 

 Bowditch, of Boston) has been able to set a good 

 example in commencing systematic work on the central 

 civilisations, by the investigations now being carried on 

 at the ruins of Copan, the site of which has been 

 acquired on lease from the Government of Hondur.ns 

 for a period of ten years. The Peabody Museum at 

 Cambridge, with its fine collections of pottery, origim.1 

 sculpture and casts, is fast becoming a centre for the 

 study of -American antiquities. 



WA TTS' DICTIONAR Y OF CHEMISTR Y. 

 Watts' Dictionary of Chemistry. Revised and entirely 



re-written. By M. M. Pattison Muir, M..A,, and H. 



Forster Morley, M.A., D.Sc. Assisted by eminent 



contributors, \'ol. I\'. With .Addenda. 8vo. Pp. 922. 



(London and New York : Longmans, Green, and 



Co., 1894.) 

 T^HE completion of the grand work before us renders 

 ■'- it possible to form a fair estimate of its features 

 and its general character. No candid reader can fail to 

 appreciate the industry displayed by the editors and 

 contributors, in bringing together and sifting out the 

 vast mass of existing matter, in a science which is 

 experiencing so rapid a growth. Perhaps a greater 

 difficulty has been encountered in compressing within 

 reasonable limits the facts which must claim insertion. 

 This end has been reached by a style laudably laconic, 

 but at the same time free from obscurity, and by an 

 ingenious system of abbreviations, the editors — or we 

 might better say the authors, since the entire work has 

 been re-written — have confined themselves to the pure 

 science, leaving its thousand and one applications in 

 manufactures, metallurgy, and agriculture, to be dealt 

 with in the '• Dictionary of .Applied Chemistry," issued 

 by the same publishers. Without this limitation, the 

 cost of producing the work would have been simply 

 prohibitive. 



Many of the articles included in this volume are, in 

 their value and extent, almost worthy to rank as inde- 

 pendent works. As instances we may mention the 

 section on the Proteids ; that on the Ptomaines — which 

 might have been a little more extensive — the article on 

 Phosphorus ; and, above all, that on the Physical .Methods 

 used in Chemistry. This article, which extends to 100 

 pages, treats separately of methods based on capillarity, 

 of crystallographic methods, of dialysis and diffusion, of 

 dynamical methods, of electrical methods, of procedures 

 based on the freezing-points of solutions, of optical 

 methods, of methods based on osmotic pressure, of 

 photographic method-;, of methods turning on the specific 



