XLVIII REPORT 01-' THE BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY. 



ters iilentilied or discriminated. This is the common mode of 

 comparison, such as was employed in comparative anatomy 

 during the last generation, and such as is always employed in 

 the earlier stages of research. The second method is that of 

 rational or homolog'ic comparison, in which the objects com- 

 pared ai'e considered as assemblages of characters, each con- 

 veying a meaning; and when the objects are juxtaposed (really 

 or ideally) the comparison is made, not between external fea- 

 tures, but between the meanings of these features. This is the 

 method pursued in comparative anatomy today, and pursued 

 everywhere in the more advanced stages of scientific develop- 

 ment. The first method j-ields an adventive classification 

 which is often of great convenience and utility, l)ut which does 

 not necessarily express fundamental relations; the second 

 method yields an essential classification in which fundamental 

 relations are expressed — and it is found, as the meanings of 

 characters are accurately intei'preted, that the essential classi- 

 fication is an arrangement by sequence or genesis. Now 

 ethnology, including archeology and other branches of the 

 science of man, have hardly reached the more advanced stage 

 of homologic comparison or genetic classification; but, in the 

 researches of the Bureau of Ethnology, eftbrts have constantly 

 been made to raise the science to the higher plane represented 

 by genetic classification. To this consummation no collabo- 

 rator has contributed more than Mr Holmes, who, in his studies 

 of textiles, of pottery, and of stone art, has constantly souglit 

 to interpret the special features of objects, and in this way 

 to ascertain modes and conditions of development. 



By pursuing this method of research and after acquainting 

 himself throiigh study and actual imitation with manufacture 

 processes, I\Ir Holmes has been able not only to compare the 

 fabrics from the mounds, caves, and wigwams, but to compare 

 the processes of manufacture; and he has thus placed himself 

 in a jsosition to speak Avith nuich greater confidence concerning 

 the makers of these fabrics than it would be possible to do 

 with any amount of material arranged by the adventive 

 classification. 



