Jan. 20, 1887] 



NA TURE 



285 



culture and wouM be cbtaining a better literary education from 

 hearing a good lecturer and being inspired by his enthusiasm 

 than he would get by learning off one of Shakespeare's plays, 

 and answering it at an examination. Those tw'o aspects of 

 education, the literary and scientific, were often put in opposition, 

 just as the freedom of the individual and the power of the State 

 to control the individual were verj' often set up in opposition to 

 one another ; but he did not think any one would Ijelieve that 

 that opposition really arose, for the freest States were those in 

 which the power of the State was the strongest. In conclusion, 

 he would say that we must equip our youth for the battle of life 

 physically and ethically. The present is a great crisis in Irish 

 education. There is danger of science schools starting, and all 

 the evils of dual education. There are a large body who like 

 Latin and Greek, because they exclude literature and history. 

 These are to be fought tooth and nail. There are those who 

 would sacrifice the rising generation on an altar of so-called 

 culture to starve and die, with their only comfort that they can 

 describe their agony in well-expressed phrases. There are those 

 who would grind all soul out of mankind in a mill of manual 

 labour, constructed on scientific principles. All those are to be 

 guarded against. We must have literature and history. We 

 must have knowledge of the laws of the world in which we have 

 to work. We can have both if we will but work out a reason- 

 able system of education, instead of pretending that the lop-sided 

 corpse that occupies our schools and Universities is a well- 

 developed, symmetrical giant. 



ABORIGINAL ART IN CALIFORNIA AND 

 QUEEN CHARLOTTE'S ISLAND 

 T N the fourth volume, recently issued, of the Proceedings of the 

 •'■ Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences there is a valuable 

 article by Dr. W. J. Hoft'man on "Aboriginal Art in Cali- 

 fornia and Queen Charlotte's Island." In the summer of 1884 

 Dr. Hoffman visited the Pacific coast for the purpose of con- 

 tinuing his researches on primitive art, and he was fjrtunate 

 enough to find a number of localities in which there are painted 

 and " etched " records, of considerable interest, made by Indians 

 belonging to tribes now unknown. These records occur in 

 gi'oups. One group, the first described by Dr. Hoffman, is in 

 the neighbourhood of Santa Barbara. The best preserved 

 paintings in this series are in a cavity which measures about 

 twenty feet wide and eight feet high. The rock consists of gray 

 sandstone, but the ceiling and back portion of the cave have a 

 yellowish appearance. The colours employed were red ochre, 

 white, and bluish black. Some of the paintings Dr. Hoffman takes 

 to be representations of gaudily-coloured blankets. In several 

 instances a grotesque human figure is drawn over or in front of 

 what seems to be a blanket, as if the latter were intended as a 

 body blanket or serape. In the Azuza caiion, about thirty miles 

 north-east of Los Angeles, Dr. Hoffman examined a second 

 series of painted records. Rudely sketched human figures are 

 represented a pointing in certain directions, and the intention 

 evidently was that they .should serve as guides to travelling parties. 

 For instance, the left arm of a figure on a white granitic boulder 

 points towards the north-east. The precipitous walls of the 

 canon make egress in that direction impossible, but two hundred 

 yards further on the caiion makes a sharp turn towards the north- 

 east, and in rounding the point of land to the right the traveller 

 comes to another boulder, on which are numerous faint drawings 

 of vari lus kinds. This boulder is on the line of an old trail 

 leading from the country of the Chemehuevi, on the north of the 

 raou ntains, down to the valley settlements of San Gabriel and 

 T..OS Angeles. A third series of records was found in the southern 

 part of Owens Valley, California, between the White Mountains 

 on the east and the Benton Range on the west. They are 

 "etched," not painted. The most common characters in this 

 group are circles, either plain, nucleated, bisected, concentric, 

 or spectacle-shaped, by pairs or threes, with various forms of 

 interior ornamentation. This group resembles, etchings in the 

 Canary Islands so closely that the illustrations given by Dr. 

 Hoffman serve for both localities. On one of his plates he 

 presents a number of circles with ornamented interiors, from a 

 simple bisection to the .stellate and cruciform varieties. Similar 

 circles bearing cross-lin;s occur at Grevinge, Zeeland ; and 

 other forms resembling some at Owens Valley are found at 

 Slieve-na-Calliagh, Grange, and Dowth, in Ireland. The 

 spectacle-shaped variety resembles the mysterious symbol on 



some Scottish monuments which has given rise to so much 

 vague speculation. The reversed Z, however, is wanting in the 

 Califoniian examples. Of the various outlines of the human form 

 presented by Mr. Wallace from Brazil, and referred to more 

 recently by Prof. Richard Andree in " EthnographischeParallelen 

 und Vergleiche," a considerable number are almost identical 

 with etchings in the Owens Valley series. Many of the characters 

 in these three Californian groups are similar to, and some are 

 indistinguishable from, those made by the Moki and other tribes 

 of the .Shoshonian linguistic slock. Further research on the 

 same lines may, therefore, enable anthrojjologists to determine 

 the former geographical area of the Shoshonian family, as has 

 already been done in the case of the Algonkian tribes. 



In the neighbourhood of Los Angeles Dr. Hoffman obtained 

 a portion of an old Indian gravestone. On this slab there are 

 incised characters which seem to represent a whale-hunt, and no 

 doubt they were intended to denote the occupation of the person 

 to whose memory the tablet was erected. Honour is done to the 

 dead in a similar manner by the Innuit of Alaska and by the 

 Ojibwa. Among the Innuit, the posts erected for men usually 

 bear rude drawings of weapons and animals ; those for women 

 have representations of household utensils and implements. On 

 Ojibwa gravestones, as Mr. Schoolcraft has noted, the totem of 

 the deceased is dravvn in an inverted position. 



Dr. Hoftman offers some interesting remarks on the subject of 

 tattooing. In former times, in the vicinity of Los Angeles, every 

 chief caused the tattooed marks upon his face to be reproduced 

 upon trees or poles which indicated the boundaries of his land ; 

 and as these marks were well known to neighbouring chiefs, they 

 were a sufficient warning that trespassers would be punished. A 

 custom akin to this prevails in Australia, where the tattooed 

 designs upon the face of a native are often engraved upon the 

 bark of trees near his grave. Among many of the tribes west 

 of the Mississippi there are still numbers of persons who bear 

 tattoo marks upon the chin, the cheeks, and even upon other 

 parts of the body, but the marks seldom occur in any forms 

 other than narrow lines, except among the Haida Indians of 

 Queen Charlotte's Island, where the art of tattooing has reached 

 a higher degree of development than on the mainland. The 

 Haidas tattoo upon the back, breast, fore-arms, thighs, and the 

 legs below the knees ; and women submit to the operation as 

 well as men. The characters are totemic, and represent either 

 animate or mytholo.;ic beings. They are usually drawn in out- 

 line, with interior decorative lines, red being sometimes intro- 

 duced to fo;m what is supposed to be a pleasant contrast. The 

 ceremonies at which the tattooing is done are held in the autumn, 

 and extend over a period of several weeks. Among the figures 

 generally adopted are the thunder-bird raven, bear, skulpin, and 

 squid. A former Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company told Dr. 

 Hoffman that when he fir.-t went to the country occupied by the 

 Haida Indians he saw no tattooing upon the bodies of the older 

 members of the tribe ; and he contends that they have learned 

 the art from natives of some of the South Pacific Islands, which 

 they occasionally visit as traders. 



■The Haidas display considerable skill as carvers in wood and 

 slate. Totem posts are often placed before the council-houses, 

 and more frequently before private dwellings. When the posts 

 are the property of some individual, the personal totemic sign is 

 carved at the top. Other animate and grotesque figures follow 

 in rapid succession down to the base, so that unless one is 

 familiar with the mythology and folk-lore of the tribe the 

 subject would be utterly unintelligible. On one post to which 

 Dr. Hoffman refers there are only seven pronounced carvings, 

 but they relate to three distinct myths. On household vessels, 

 the handles of wooden spoons, and other objects, the Haidas 

 often carve the head of a human being in the act of eating a 

 toad. Sometimes the toad is placed at a short distance below the 

 mouth. The idea is that in the wooded country there is an evil 

 spirit who has great po« er of committing evil by means of poison 

 extracted from the toad. The Indians are not willing to 

 acknowledge the common belief in this mystic being, even when 

 they are aware that the inquirer is in possession of the main facts. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE 



Oxford. — The long-expected reform of the examination 

 system which makes it unnecessary for men reading mathematics 

 and natural science to pass any examinations of a non-scientific 



