April 3, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



505 



dians, it is found that many of their char- 

 acteristics and their respective courses of 

 development are. widely diverse. The for- 

 mer are habitually at peace; the latter ha- 

 bitually at war. The former cooperate with 

 men, animals and plants; the latter antag- 

 onize men, slay animals and destroj^ or neg- 

 lect plants. The former developed the 

 highest attributes of humanity to the extent 

 that they met the Spaniards as peers; the 

 latter remained robbers and assassins. The 

 former produced arts, rose into agricul- 

 ture, and at one time made conquest of the 

 waters; the latter are perhaps the most 

 primitive of American peoples. The former 

 tribe is populous and probably increasing 

 in number, despite the invasion of their 

 territory by white men; the latter has been 

 reduced to a handful and is destined to dis- 

 appear, probably within a decade, almost 

 certainly within a generation, perhaps 

 within a year or two. In a few character- 

 istics the tribes are similar, in certain re- 

 spects their courses of development have 

 been parallel ; but the differences are more 

 striking than the resemblances. Both 

 peoples have been subjected to hard condi- 

 tions with unlike, but not necessarily incon- 

 gruous results ; as among fishes the dark- 

 ness of the deep sea may lead either to de- 

 velopment or elimination of the eyes, so 

 among men stress of circumstance may 

 lead either to the growth or to the decay 

 of humanity. 



In considering the relations between 

 tribes and their environment it is desirable 

 to avoid a common and natural misconcep- 

 tion to which attention has been directed 

 by Powell. There is indeed a direct rela- 

 tion between the physical characteristics of 

 the individuals composing the tribe and 

 their environment, in virtue of which the 

 hard environment tends, through survival 

 of the fittest, to produce excellence of phy- 

 sique among men as among the lower ani- 

 mals ; but among mankind this direct re- 



lation is overshadowed by an indirect re- 

 lation passing through the institutions, 

 arts, etc., of the human animal. The im- 

 portance of this indirect relation is indi- 

 cqited by the generalization that the move- 

 less plants are most, the moving animals 

 less, and demotic mankind least affected by 

 environment so far as purely physical or 

 biotic characteristics are concerned, while 

 the converse is true of the demotic charac- 

 teristics. The same law is well illustrated 

 by the Papago and Seri tribes. The Pa- 

 pago Indians were enabled to survive de- 

 sert conditions by organization and by an 

 assemblage of arts growing into agriculture; 

 while the Seri, albeit of fine physique, have 

 been enabled to survive only by tribal 

 union, endogamy, a consistent system of 

 warfare, and an assemblage ot arts all ad- 

 justed to their habitat even more closely 

 than the striking Seri physique is adjusted 

 to desert-bound Seriland. 



W J McGee. 

 Washington, D. C. 



NOTE ON THE PERMANENCE OF THE BUTH- 

 ERFURD PHOTOGRAPHIC MEASURES. 



One of the most interesting questions 

 conjronting practical astrouomers at the 

 present day is the question of how long the 

 photographs which are now being accumu- 

 lated in such great numbers will remain fit 

 for measurement. To throw some light 

 on this matter, I have caused some of Ruth- 

 erfurd's Pleiades plates to be remeasured 

 with the new Eepsold measuring machine 

 of the Columbia College Observatory. The 

 present note is published in advance of the 

 detailed account of the observations and 

 their reduction, as the matter seems to be 

 of immediate interest to astronomers. The 

 measures have been carried out with great 

 care by Mrs. Herman S. Davis and Mrs. 

 Annie Maclear Jacoby. As measures of 

 these same plates were made under Mr. 

 Eutherfurd's direction by Miss Ida C. Mar- 



