August 30, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



277 



present instance it seems -wortli while to give 

 some reasons why it seems practically certain 

 that Collier's correspondent has been the vic- 

 tim of a hoax, especially as " an archeologist 

 of repute " in America is stated to have said : 

 " This looks very much as if we should have 

 to begin our research all over again," pre- 

 sumably meaning in South American archeol- 

 ogy. 



To my mind, there is a probability, almost 

 amounting to a certainty, that the photo- 

 graph, which is certainly taken from a real 

 scene, represents a structure which is not pre- 

 historic, which is not South American, which 

 is not the work of a savage people, and which 

 is situated not in a tropical jungle subject to 

 a rainy season like the Peruvian TJcayali, but 

 in an arid country probably devoid of vegeta- 

 tion. Where or why it exists is a problem to 

 be solved by some one better posted in Eura- 

 sian archeology than the present writer. 



The halftone does not lend itself to mag- 

 nification like an original photograph but it 

 can be seen that the top of the wall is abso- 

 lutely rectilinear and level, and provided on 

 a bevelled edge with long smooth sloping slabs 

 of some substance, probably stone, roofing it 

 from the weather. These slabs are of uniform 

 length, apparently about fifteen feet, and at 

 their junctions are placed the vases on a pre- 

 sumably flat surface. The latter are of a 

 " classical " design like no product of the 

 American aborigines. No structure with 

 such unvarying lines is known among Amer- 

 ican prehistoric ruins nor as the product of a 

 people in a state of savagery. 



It is notable that there is no trace of trop- 

 ical or other vegetation in the picture. If 

 some skeletons still remain in a natural posi- 

 tion, and no deposit of vegetation or drift of 

 dead leaves and mold has formed on this im- 

 mense heap of bones, and those in the lower 

 part of the heap seem (from the picture) to be 

 perfectly preserved, it is evident that the de- 

 posit can not be prehistoric but is very recent; 

 that it can not have been subject to tropical 

 rains and blown debris for centuries, but must 

 be in an arid climate where bones do not read- 



ily decay, and where there is no vegetation of 

 a kind to form a covering of humus. 



The picture is interesting enough in itself 

 to be worth an authentic explanation. 



Wm. H. Dall 



Smithsonian Institution 



" terms used to denote the abundance or 



RARITY OF birds" 



To THE Editor of Science : I sympathize 

 with Mr. John Dryden Kuser's desire to 

 standardize the terms used to denote the 

 abundance or rarity of birds,^ but it seems to 

 me that the chief difficulty is the inherent 

 one that lies in the personal equation. No two 

 persons can have just the same notion as to 

 the precise meanings of the various terms 

 used. What one calls rare another calls un- 

 common, and still another, having in mind 

 the relativity of all such terms, may call the 

 species " fairly common," — for a hawk, for 

 instance, hawks being judged by a different 

 standard from warblers. Undoubtedly the 

 best system is a numerical one when that is 

 possible, the exact or estimated nujnber of 

 individuals observed being noted. That en- 

 tails, however, in some cases an amount of 

 labor that the observer may prefer to expend 

 in other directions, while for generalizations 

 it is unsatisfactory. 



As to the list of terms with synonyms of- 

 fered by Mr. Kuser, it seems to me that it is 

 open to objection in some particulars. It is 

 not quite clear, for one thing, just what he 

 means when he states that " not uncommon is 

 equal to common." Is he making an arbi- 

 trary ruling for his own guidance, or is he 

 stating what he believes to be a fact? Pre- 

 sumably the latter, since he says he limits 

 himself to eight terms, and " not uncommon " 

 is not one of the eight listed. And yet I ven- 

 ture to express the belief that to most ornith- 

 ologists the term " not uncommon " expresses 

 a status distinctly less common than " com- 

 mon." It comes nearer to " fairly common," 

 but to my mind means less common than that. 

 In short, it seems to me that we can not treat 



» Science, June 14, 1912, p. 930. 



