84 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
About the middle of May Doctor Michelson left for the 
field to make a reconnaissance of the Algonquian tribes of 
eastern United States and Canada, including the Labrador 
Peninsula. His observations lead him to conclude that the 
aboriginal culture of the Penobscots at Old Town, Me., is 
disintegrating. None of the young people speak the lan- 
guage, and with the constant intermarrying with whites it 
will be but a short time when ethnology and folklore, which 
are both well remembered, will be a thing of the past. The 
Malecites living at the “village,” about 12 miles from 
Frederickton, New Brunswick, cling tenaciously to the lan- 
guage, which is spoken universally, though practically every- 
one also has a good command of English. Their ethnology, 
on the other hand, is fast disappearing. During his short 
visit with the Penobscots and Malecites, Doctor Michelson 
determined a number of peculiar morphological traits of the 
language as compared with central Algonquian. He finds 
the phonetics of both languages extremely difficult, and on 
the whole it may be said that neither language is archaic in 
type. On June 13 Doctor Michelson arrived in Sydney, Cape 
Breton, Nova Scotia, en route to Labrador. 
The beginning of the fiscal year found Mr. John P. Har- 
rington, ethnologist, engaged in the preparation for publica- 
tion of his recent field notes on the Picuris and Taos tribes of 
New Mexico and the Mission Indians of California. All the 
notes on the Taos Indians collected by the late Mrs. M. C. 
Stevenson were copied and arranged for publication. 
Mr. Harrington also prepared for publication a paper en- 
titled “ Picuris Children’s Stories with Texts and Songs.’ 
This manuscript embraces Picuris stories in native text such 
as are told to the Indian children on winter evenings in their 
isolated village in northern New Mexico. The stories have 
high literary quality, and many of them hold the attention 
of child or adult throughout. The volume is thought to be 
practical for school use. The 12 songs accompanying the 
stories are beautifully rendered by Mr. Rosendo Vargas, and 
are transcribed into musical notation by Miss H. H. Roberts. 
Mr. Harrington also prepared an article on “How the 
World Grew,” which is an account of origins corresponding 
