OF THE BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY. XXXI 
by him on the “Navajo names for plants,” showing their 
mode of discrimination and classification of the flora of their 
region. 
WORK OF MR. JEREMIAH CURTIN. 
On September 1, 1883, Mr. Jeremiah Curtin went to the 
Cattaraugus Reservation, New York, where he collected about 
one hundred and seventy myths and some texts. Many of 
these myths are long and were written out with full details. 
The collection is valuable from its accuracy and completeness. 
From Cattaraugus Mr. Curtin went to the Indian Territory, 
where he collected myths till June 30, 1884. The whole 
number obtained during the year was about four hundred, of 
which seventy-five were Modoc and the remainder Yuchi, 
Pottawatomi, Sak, Shawnee, and Seneca. Vocabularies of 
the Yuchi and Pottawatomi languages were also collected. 
WORK OF DR. W. J. HOFFMAN, 
Dr. W. J. Hoffman, in the autumn of 1883, visited the Ot- 
tawa, Ojibwa, and Pottawatomi Indians of Northern Michi- 
ean and the Sisseton and Mdewakantanwan bands of Dakota 
in Minnesota and Dakota, with special reference to the study 
of pictographs and gesture signs, and collected additional ma- 
terial. 
OFFICE WORK. 
The collection and examination of materials for future pub- 
lications considered to be fundamental to the study of Indian 
anthropology continued to engage the attention of the Director 
and other officers of the Bureau. These projected publications 
are: (1) Aseries of charts showing the habitat of all tribes when 
first met by Europeans and at subsequent eras; (2) a diction- 
ary of tribal synonomy, which should refer the multiplied and 
confusing titles, as given in literature and in varying usage, to 
a correct and systematic standard of nomenclature ; (3) a clas- 
sification, on a linguistic basis, of all the known Indians of 
North America, surviving and extinct, into families or stocks. 
