MALLERY. | HOW COLLABORATION HAS BEEN MADE. 397 
not only of correction but of addition and suggestion, and are now being 
collated again into one general revision. 
The above statement will, it is hoped, give assurance that the work 
of the Bureau of Ethnology has been careful and thorough. No scheme 
has been neglected which could be contrived and no labor has been spared 
to secure the accuracy and completeness of the publication still in prepa- 
ration. It may also be mentioned that although the writer has made 
personal observations of signs, no description of any sign has been 
printed by him which rests on his authority alone. Personal contro- 
versy and individual bias were thus avoided. For every sign there is 
a special reference either to an author or to some one or more of the 
collaborators. While the latter have received full credit, full responsi- 
bility was also imposed, and that course will be continued. 
No contribution has been printed which asserted that any described 
sign is used by “ail Indians,” for the reason that such statement is not 
admissible evidence unless the authority had personally examined all 
Indians. If any credible person had affirmatively stated that a certain 
identical, or substantially identical, sign had been found by him, actu- 
ally used by Abnaki, Absaroka, Arikara, Assiniboins, ete., going through 
the whole list of tribes, or any definite portion of that list, it would have 
been so inserted under the several tribal heads. But the expression 
“all Indians,” besides being insusceptible of methodical classification, 
involves hearsay, which is not the kind of authority desired in a serious 
study. Such loose talk long delayed the recognition of Anthropology as 
a science. It is true that some general statements of this character are 
made by some old authors quoted in the Dictionary, but their descrip- 
tions are reprinted, as being all that can be used of the past, for what- 
ever weight they may have, and they are kept separate from the lin- 
guistic classification given below. 
Regarding the difficulties met with in the task proposed, the same 
motto might be adopted as was prefixed to Austin’s Chironomia: “ Non 
sum nescius, quantum susceperim negotii, qui motus corporis exprimere 
verbis, imitari scriptura conatus sim voces.” Rhet. ad Herenn, 1. 3. If 
the descriptive recital of the signs collected had been absolutely re- 
stricted to written or printed words the work would have been still 
more difficult and the result less intelligible. The facilities enjoyed of 
presenting pictorial illustrations have been of great value and will give 
still more assistance in the complete work than in the present paper. 
In connection with the subject of illustrations it may be noted that 
a writer in the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United 
States, Vol. IL, No. 5, the same who had before invented the mode of de- 
scribing signs by ‘‘means” mentioned on page 330 supra, gives a curious 
distinction between deaf-mute and Indian signs regarding their respec- 
tive capability of illustration, as follows: “This French system is 
taught, I believe, in most of the schools for deaf-mutes in this country, 
and in Europe; but so great has been the difficulty of fixing the hands 
