JOHN WESLEY POWELL DAVIS 



utilized the materials at hand the loose stones of the earth, 

 the shells stranded on the shores, the broken trunks and 

 branches of trees. . . . And we further discover that he 

 was organized into small tribes, doubtless scattered by every 

 bay and inlet of the seas, along the shores of all the inland 

 lakes, and every bend of the great rivers, and on every creek 

 of the habitable earth. . . . Arts, institutions, languages, 

 and philosophies have therefore a vast multiplicity of origins, 

 and in tracing the outlines of their history we trace the change 

 frpjii^jiiullipH^ky-J^ (Human Evolution, Trans. 



Anthrop. Soc. Wash., II, 1883, pp. 181-182). ^Even in this in- 

 stance the last sentence falls into the more 'habitual form of 

 assertion, although with little danger of being misunderstood 

 because of the context. 



It must, however, be recognized that in certain other cases 

 the presentation of an inference in the guise of a fact is car- 

 ried dangerously far. It is very probably true that "attitudes 

 of the body developed into gestures, and sound-making into 

 oral speech, and the. active organs of language were special- 

 ized, and, finally, oral speech to a large extent superseded ges- 

 ture speech;" and yet even. if true, it is none the less an infer- 

 ence. One may agree that ''each minute structure within the 

 body is in part the same as the antecedent structure and in 

 part changed therefrom by the force of impressions from with- 

 out,'-' and that "it is in this manner that impressions are re- 

 corded, so that the structure itself is a product of all coexistent 

 and antecedent agencies ;" but it is a long step then to assert, 

 without qualification: "Out of this arises memory" (Human 

 Evolution, Pres. Address, Anthrop. Soc. Wash., II, 1883, pp. 

 184, 187). 



MANNERISMS. 



Powell's independence and originality are seen not only in 

 his novel treatment of scientific problems, but also in certain 

 peculiarities of his style in writing. He had a marked liking 

 for unusual words, such as "acculturation" and "intellection." 

 He seemed to regard the adjective termination, -al, as super- 

 fluous ; it is retained in the five-syllable adjective of the 

 "United States Geological Survey" because the title of the 



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