2 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
In linguistics the necessity of recording those languages 
that are in danger of extinction is urgent. Several of these 
are now spoken only by a few survivors—old men or 
women—and when they die this knowledge which they pos- 
sess will disappear forever. Our Ineians had a large litera- 
ture and mythology which on account of their ignorance of let- 
ters they did not record. ‘This is rapidly being lost, and it is 
our duty to secure the information at once before it loses 
its aboriginal character. The lexical and grammatical 
structure of the different Indian languages, their phonetic 
peculiarities, and their relations to each other also require 
intensive studies, which have been industriously pursued by 
the linguists of the bureau. 
It is believed that the publications of the Bureau of 
American Ethnology should be of such a nature that they 
may be studied with profit by all intelligent persons and not 
so crowded with technicalities as to repel all readers except 
a few specialists. While the bureau publications should not 
be devoted solely to popular articles they fail to advance 
and diffuse ethnological knowledge if they are so technical 
that they appeal only to one class of readers. The policy of 
the bureau is to publish a limited number of technical 
papers, the popular demand also being given due weight. 
Important researches have been conducted by members of 
the staff on the material culture of the Indians, one aim 
being to ascertain the various fibers and foods used by them 
with a view to discover hitherto unused aboriginal resources 
that might be adopted with profit by the white man. 
In order that the character of the habitations of the 
Indian might be better known and an accurate knowledge 
of them disseminated, illustrations of aboriginal buildings 
found in early maps and documentary records are being 
gathered and a series of publications on this subject has 
been inaugurated. These, when available, are accom- 
panied by the original descriptions of the buildings and 
incidentally identifications of the sites of the larger villages 
so far as possible. 
The bureau has continued researches on the music of the 
Indians with good results, as the past publications on this 
