ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 50 



the headings of a work on sign language, which itself formed part of 

 the Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology now in press. 1 Its 

 publication will direct attention to the interpretation of ideographic 

 characters in many parts of the world, through the significance 

 of gesture signs, and also react upon the scientific study of sign 

 language as a former general mode of communication between men. 

 Though the published presentation of the suggestion had hitherto 

 been imperfect, he had already received gratifying assurances from 

 European scholars of their success in discovering gesture signs in- 

 cluded in Egyptian and Akkad glyphs, as well as in the radicals of 

 those languages. Mr. Hyde Clarke, Vice-President of the Anthro- 

 pological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, had specially 

 shown interest in the investigation. 



President Powell was glad to note that rational principles and 

 methods were being applied to the solution of such questions. The 

 true value of facts consists in their proper and rational interpretation. 

 Human history is being rewritten to satisfy this sentiment. The 

 isolated facts of the old style of chronological history are useless, 

 and now it is necessary to go over the ground again, for the purpose 

 of deducing from them the laws of progress and of society. It is 

 the same with ethnological facts. These pictures convey no mean- 

 ing in themselves, and the work of true science is to discover such 

 laws as will lead to their proper interpretation. 



Forty-First Regular Meeting, June 7, 1881. 



Professor Samuel Porter read a paper entitled Vowel Systemi 

 zatiox, of which the following is an abstract : 



On the theory of Helmholtz, the character of each vowel is pro- 

 duced by the reenforcement of harmonic tones in the oral cavity. 

 That of Danders finds it in the noises that go with the tone. The 

 truth lies in a combination of the two. 



1 " Sign Language among North American Indians compared with that among 

 Other Peoples and D;:af-Mate;." B/ Garric'i Millery. In "Annual Report of 

 the Bureau of Ethnology," 1879-80, pp. 269-50S. 



