March 13, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



403 



ceremony takes place and in the particular 

 part of the sky towards which the special 

 rites of the day are directed. The stars 

 thus seen are supposed to represent cer- 

 tain gods of the tribe. 



In "A Number-Form from Folk-Medi- 

 cine," Professor Charles Bundy Wilson 

 presented a peculiar combination of num- 

 bers occurring in a remedy for rheumatism, 

 which was discovered by the writer when 

 gathering material for a paper on folk- 

 medicine. The application of the remedy 

 calls for three series of doses of three doses 

 each. When the numbers of units in these 

 doses are arranged in regular form, the 

 sums of the vertical, horizontal and 

 diagonal columns present interesting 

 results, particularly with reference to 13 

 and 3. 



Professor Francis W. Kelsey's paper on 

 "Some Archeologieal Forgeries from 

 Michigan" was accompanied by photo- 

 graphs and specimens illustrating the 

 forgeries of 1891-92, 1898 and 1907, re- 

 spectively. The three series include ob- 

 jects of clay, copper and slate, decorated 

 for the most with bogus hieroglyphics. 

 The jumble of ancient Oriental writing was 

 explained as due to the composite character 

 of a colony, Egyptians and Phcenicians as 

 well as Assyrians, which in a remote period 

 found its way from the drainage area of 

 the Euphrates and Tigris across seas, up 

 the St. Lawrence and the Lakes to Michi- 

 gan. The distributing center of these 

 forgeries^ during the past year has been 

 Detroit. 



The success that has attended these 

 efforts at imposition— so far as they have 

 been successful — is. Professor Kelsey 

 thinks, almost wholly due to the religious 

 element in several of the designs. These 

 are at the same time self-interpreting and 

 mystifying ; and their presence has seemed 



' It seems a pity that there is at present no 

 legal means of punishing the forgers. 



to turn the attention of many away from 

 consideration of the material and of the 

 crass incongruities in design and technique. 



There is no danger that by frauds such 

 as these purchasers for museums will be 

 imposed upon; but it is the duty of the 

 expert to protect so far as possible the 

 amateur collector, not only for his own sake 

 but because he creates the market for 

 archeologieal remains which without such 

 a stimulus would be neglected or destroyed 

 as of no value and so lost to science. 



In "The Prehistoric Habitations of the 

 Sioux" Professor N. H. Winchell called at- 

 tention to the evidence which indicates that 

 in prehistoric times the well-known form 

 of earthen house of the Mandans was com- 

 mon in Minnesota. This evidence consists 

 of traditions amongst the Ojibwa, the 

 existence of many flat-topped, or concave- 

 topped, low mounds, the persistence of such 

 terms as "Ground House River," coming 

 through the Ojibwa, who expelled the 

 Sioux, found in Kanabec County, the stock 

 alliance of the Sioux with the Mandans 

 and the Hidatsa, as well as with the 

 Omaha, all of whom are known, even in 

 historic time, to have occupied such habita- 

 tions, and finally some slight historic 

 allusions to houses of this kind. 



"Recent Aspects of the Eolithie Dis- 

 cussion" were reviewed by Dr. Charles 

 Peabody, who called attention to Rutot's 

 Tertiary eoliths and to his eolithie series 

 persisting through all ages to and including 

 recent Tasmanian cultures; also to a pro- 

 posed change in the connotation of 

 "eolithie," "paleolithic," etc. It is pro- 

 posed to determine whether an eolithie in- 

 dustry may not exist in America. 



Dr. Peabody also presented a "Report 

 for the Committee on American Archeo- 

 logieal Nomenclature" of which he is 

 chairman. This report has been published 

 and is already in the hands of members of 

 the American Anthropological Association. 



