March 13, 189G.] 



SCIENCE. 



413 



along the priucipal mountain ranges. The 

 long-tailed shrews in general prefer forested or 

 semi-wooded regions, and a rather northern or 

 alpine habitat; they are hence not generally 

 dispersed south of the northern parts of the 

 United States ; farther southward and in the 

 drier portions of the continent they are limited 

 to mountainous districts. 



This admirable series of papers is illustrated 

 by twelve plates and some additional cuts in 

 the text giving carefully-drawn figures of 

 the skulls and dental characters of most of 

 the species. Fauna No. 10 thus marks an 

 epoch in the history of this hitherto little- 

 known and difficult group of American mam- 

 mals. J. A. A. 



Indianische Sagen von der nordpacifischen Kiiste 



Amerikas. Feanz Boas. Berlin, A. Asher 



& Co. 1895. 8vo., pp. 363. 



This is, undoubtedly, the most comprehen- 

 sive collection of northwestern Indian myths 

 now in existence and, considering the length of 

 time, the hardships and privations experienced 

 in obtaining them, and the large number of 

 tribes that had to be visited, is a work unique 

 of its kind. Boas had pviblished these myths 

 previously in the ' Transactions of the Berlin 

 Society of Anthropology,' and this explains the 

 fact that they are worded in German and not 

 in English. Most of the stories that were ob- 

 tained from full-blood Indians in their ver- 

 nacular had to be translated into Chinook 

 Jargon before they were rendered in German. 



Dr. Boas begins with the myths, legends 

 and traditions of the numerous Selish tribes of 

 British Columbia, then presents what he ob- 

 tained on Vancouver Island and the mainland 

 opposite, and terminates the volume with the 

 tales from the Haida on Queen Charlotte 

 Islands and the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska. 

 The stories have the most varied contents: 

 Origin of the deities and powers ruling the 

 universe and the earth, creation of sun, moon 

 and stars, origin of the elements and seasons, 

 of the tribes of men, animals and plants, of the 

 rocks and islands. Men and women often 

 originate from animals, especially from fish, and 

 the number and variety of the ' fishy ' progen- 

 itors is so great that no other but a fisher race 



could have produced a similar folklore. The 

 making of the sun is mostly represented as a 

 liberation of it from a box or inclosure which 

 held it in captivity, and the liberator is the 

 raven, who in his bold flight cuts through the 

 dense cloudiness enveloping the ocean and the 

 seashore or permits it to ascend again to the 

 sky, after night had imprisoned it for a long 

 while. The raven also provides the organisms, 

 when lifeless still, with souls, and is regarded 

 as the animating principle in nature. In the 

 myths of the Eastern tribes the raven is of 

 great significance, being the presager of calami- 

 ties and death. 



The most painstaking portion of Boas' work 

 lies in the appendix from pages 329 to 363, 

 where in a statistical essay the attempt is made 

 to trace one and the same myth through various 

 parts of North America. There are, e. g., 

 nineteen myths in the Northwest found simi- 

 lar to Micmac, eleven to Ponka, twenty-five 

 to Athapaskan — even among the Aino of 

 north Japan elements were discovered compar- 

 able to those of the northwest coast. To fol- 

 low up all these details in Boas' volume, is of 

 the highest interest; the number of linguistic 

 families to which the legends belong are five in 

 number (see Table, p. 329), Selish, Wakash (or 

 Nutka), Tsimsiiin, Haida and Tlingit — the first 

 and the second of these showing a large num- 

 ber of dialectic sub-divisions. 



As a fair instance of the mythic imagery 

 which forms the make-up of the northwestern 

 religions, we may present the world's creation 

 as related by the Tsimsi^n Indians on Skeena . 

 river and the coast of the mainland. They as- 

 sume that the earth is level and disk-shaped, 

 resting upon a pillar which is held upright by an 

 old woman. Any naovement of the old woman 

 causes an earthquake, but the hillocks and 

 sinuosities on the earth's surface were produced 

 by a flood, which scattered all the human be- 

 ings over the most distant parts of the earth to 

 people them. Whoever wants to visit the sky 

 has to pass through the moon's house, and its 

 headman is called 'Disease.' The west side 

 of the moon's house is guarded by a number of 

 mischievous dwarfs, who are hermaphrodites 

 and likely to attack and kill visitors. When 

 Gamdigyetlne-eq started to reach the sky, his 



