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NoveEMBER 5, 1896] 
NATO RE 9 
remarkable that in all these investigations Hertz does not 
once even mention, as a thing to be explained, the repul- 
sive actions which Crookes observed, and which have 
been almost universally attributed to the impact of gas 
particles. 
The other important paper, on the transmission of 
kathode rays through thin metallic films, is particularly 
interesting as the starting-point for Lenard’s work, which 
has resulted in the discovery of the X-rays. A good deal 
of what Hertz observed would be accounted for by the 
production of X-rays where the kathode rays meet the 
diaphragms, and by the reproduction of kathode rays 
mixed with X-rays on the other side of the diaphragm, 
which would thus act as a sort of local electrode. That 
something exists in a vacuum on the far side of such a 
thin film, which does not ordinarily exist in X-rays in 
air, seems conclusively proved by there being something 
there which can be deflected by a magnet. There seems 
no doubt that kathode rays themselves are quite invisible, 
and that it is only where they are interfered with by 
gaseous molecules or by phosphorescent solids that they 
are sources of light. This is very much what one would 
expect. An electrified atom would not in general be a 
source of light unless its free movement were interfered 
with by impact. 
The concluding article, on his master Helmholtz’s 
seventieth birthday, isa noble and generous tribute to 
that great teacher's abilities and character. How truly 
he portrays the important characteristics of a University 
Professor! “It is true that Helmholtz never had the 
reputation of being a brilliant university teacher, as far as 
this depends upon communicating elementary facts to 
the beginners who usually fill the lecture-rooms. But it 
is quite another matter when we come to consider his 
influence on trained students, and his pre-eminent fitness 
for guiding them in original research.” The most 
important duty of a University is to increase the know- 
ledge of mankind, and to train up a new generation who 
may be able to continue the good work. It is thus 
mankind has advanced since the dawn of civilisation in 
Egypt. He who produced the most enthusiastic disciples 
has most advanced the well-being and the well-iiving of 
the race. Cab G. 
THE BOURBACGT OF ETHNOLOGY AT 
WASHINGTON, U.S.A.* 
| gh Bureau of Ethnology at Washington has, during 
the last sixteen years, been carrying quietly on a 
work of the importance of which, we feel sure, that a 
number of students of anthropology have no knowledge 
whatever ; we are equally sure that work itself, as well 
as those who labour in it, has not received due 
recognition. It is now nearly thirty years since the ex- 
ploration of the Colorado River of the West was begun 
by the Act of Congress in America, and it is nearly 
twenty years since the various geographical and geo- 
logical surveys which sprang up in connection there- 
with were dissolved, and since the foundation of the 
United States Geological Survey became an established 
fact. In the course of the work carried on by the Survey 
its various members made most exhaustive anthropologic 
researches among the North American Indians, and the 
myriads of facts which these self-sacrificing workers 
collected were fortunately rescued for the benefit of all 
students, and for all time, by the beneficent help of the 
Smithsonian Institution, which had secured provision for 
the publication of a series of monographs on almost 
every subject connected with the manners and customs, 
history, religion, and languages, &c., of the various 
Indian tribes with which they came in contact. Under 
1 The Annual Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of 
the Smithsonian Institution, by J. W. Powell, Director. 13 Annual Reports. 
(Washington : Government Printing Office, 1881-1896.) 
NO. 1410, VOL. 55 | 
the authority of the Act of Congress, the Secretary of the 
Smithsonian Institution entrusted the management of 
this great work to the former Director of the Rocky 
Mountain Region Survey, Mr. J. W. Powell, and thus 
the Bureau of Ethnology was practically established. 
It is a pleasant thing to be able to record that Congress 
supported the work both with patronage and with 
pecuniary assistance, and all will confess that the con- 
tributors to the success of the Bureau have worked with 
a will so as to employ in the best possible manner, and 
to the best possible end, the funds which have been 
placed at their disposal. We have before us thirteen 
handsome volumes of Reports, each containing several 
hundred pages of closely-printed matter, and profusely 
illustrated with well-executed coloured plates, and many 
hundreds of woodcuts. No reviewer of these volumes 
could attempt to give an adequate account of them 
unless he had some scores of pages at his disposal, and 
it goes without saying that all that any writer can do 
here is to call attention to the plan of Mr. J. W. Powell’s 
volumes and to the general contents, hoping that the 
reader will devote some portion of his leisure to the 
perusal of aset of works which are at once of the 
greatest interest to those who study man and his ways, 
and of the first importance to the student of ethnography. 
In setting out on his work, Mr. J. W. Powell says that 
throughout “ prime attention has been given to language,” 
for “with little exception all sound anthropologic in- 
vestigation in the lower states of culture exhibited by 
tribes of men, as distinguished from nations, must have 
a firm foundation in language. Customs, laws, govern- 
ments, institutions, mythologies, religions, and even arts 
cannot be properly understood without a fundamental 
knowledge of the languages which express the ideas and 
thoughts embodied therein.” As a result of this opinion, 
the officials of the Bureau of Ethnology have devoted 
themselves to collecting materials for dictionaries of the 
North American languages, and for chrestomathies, and 
in time they hope to put grammars of the same before 
the world. With a view of enabling the philological 
student to determine what help he may or may not be 
able to obtain from these languages, the authors of the 
volumes before us give, every here and there, selected 
texts accompanied by interlinear transliterations, much 
in the same way as the early Egyptologists used to do in 
publishing hieroglyphic texts; and there is no doubt that 
this is a most useful plan. That it enables the careful 
reader, at times, to trip up his editor is true; but it is 
an honest method, and will be much appreciated by all 
painstaking students, for comparisons of words can thus 
easily be effected. Turning, though only for a moment, 
from language and from the characters which express 
language, that is to say writing, we see at a glance that 
the peoples of North America had many things in 
common with the most ancient civilised nations of 
antiquity. We do not for a moment believe that every 
custom and belief which may be found among them 
should be used to connect them with the ancient Chinese, 
or Indians, or Babylonians, or Egyptians ; but it seems 
perfectly clear that every primitive nation, wherever it 
may live on the globe, or whatever may he the cir- 
cumstances under which it lives, has certain fundamental 
ideas about the future life, and religion, and morality, 
which closely resemble those of other early nations. | It 
seems tolerably clear, too, that many anthropologists 
have erred somewhat in tracing connections between 
peoples of totally different races, which they have 
deduced from observing that they had many beliefs 
in common. A careful examination of the characters 
employed by early nations to express their ideas makes 
this quite plain, for as pictures were used by them 
all for this purpose, we have only to trace the con- 
ventional sign back to its oldest form to find out what 
fundamental ideas existed in their minds. Primitive 
