952 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 495. 



lect lias absorbed a considerable number of 

 TinigTis stems, which in their use in word- 

 formation have been subjected to the rules of 

 the Tukaghir grammar. These investigations 

 show that the Yukaghir language stands iso- 

 lated from the Siberian languages of the so- 

 called Ural-Altaic group, and that it has many- 

 similarities to the languages of the American 

 Indians. 



The chief phonetic and morphological dif- 

 ferences that distinguish the Yukaghir lan- 

 guage from Ural-Altaic languages are the fol- 

 lowing: (1) It has not the intricate system 

 of vowel harmony that is found in Ural-Altaic 

 langaiages; (2) we do not find that the vowel 

 of the root is unchangeable — an important 

 rule in Ural- Altaic phonetics; (3) the Ural- 

 Altaic possessive suffixes of nouns and verbs 

 are wholly absent in Yukaghir verbs, and pres- 

 ent in nouns only for the purpose of ex- 

 pressing ownership of the third person; (4) 

 words are formed by means of suffixes and pre- 

 fixes, while the Ural-Altaic languages use 

 sufiixes only. 



The chief points of similarity between the 

 Yukaghir language and Indian languages are : 

 (1) The existence of a simple harmonic law 

 in the use of vowels ; (3) the use of prefiLxes ; 

 (3) adjectives are morphologically identical 

 with verbal forms; (4) the verb-bases are 

 mostly stems consisting of a single vowel or 

 a small group of consonants, while the noun- 

 bases are almost always derivatives of verbal 

 forms; (5) the conjugation of transitive verbs 

 is clearly distinguished from that of intrans- 

 itive verbs; (6) transitive verbs may be 

 changed into intransitive verbs by means of 

 suffixes, and vice versa; (7) we find in the 

 Yukaghir language the ' polysynthesis ' of 

 the American languages; (8) although there 

 is not the actual ' incorporation ' of the Ameri- 

 can languages, the syntactical construction of 

 the Yukaghir sentence is akin to it. 



James E. Lough, 

 Secretary. 



DISCUSSION AND GORRESPONDENGE. 



A FLYING MACHINE IN THE ARMY. 



To THE Editor op Science : In recent num- 

 bers of various joiirnals, much has aptly been 



said about flying machines, balloons, aero- 

 planes, kites, aerodromes and mechanical 

 means for navigating the air, with historical 

 data, giving credit where credit is due and 

 naming several of the great thinkers of the 

 age and what they have done in this direction, 

 with hints for the future, but not a word of 

 what the army has done seems to have been 

 printed. 



For ages commanders in the field have de- 

 sired to know what the enemy was doing. 

 Hence the use of captive balloons and the wish 

 to make them dirigible; and when the Astron- 

 omer General Mitchell commanded at Port 

 Royal during the civil war, the matter was 

 discussed with his chief engineer officer, who 

 brought forward the proposition to make a '■",.«/■' 

 machine without infiiation, and exhibited a tinCK'-'' 

 model that wound up with a string and a 

 handle and spun like a humming top and would 

 fly into the air a hundred feet or more, ver- 

 tically, according to the force exerted upon it, 

 and would carry a bullet or two if the string 

 was pulled hard enough. Erom this little toy 

 which was a circular disc of tin, so cut and 

 bent as to make a fan-screw wheel, it was 

 argued that with power enough, if it could be 

 had within the necessary limit of weight, such 

 fan propellers could be made and combined as 

 to lift an observer into the air and by other 

 horizontal propellers could be driven through 

 the air, and by making one on a horizontal 

 shaft so that the direction of its axis could be 

 changed at will, the machine could be steered. 



That it must have power to be driven faster 

 than the wind moves was apparent or the wind 

 would take it as it does a balloon. At that 

 time balloons were very simple. No one had 

 made progress in directing their flight. 



Mitchell was a mechanician as well as a 

 mathematician, and was proud of being able 

 to measure the one ten-thousandth of an inch 

 accurately, and he concluded that it would be 

 well to consider the problem of air navigation 

 without gas bags. But the yellow fever 

 claimed him, and for a long time no m^ore 

 was done in that direction at department 

 headquarters. 



The Tenth Army Corps had a captive bal- 

 loon, but it was of little use, except to excite 



