792 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1118 



On invitation from Dr. P. E. Goddard, it was 

 voted to hold the nest regular meeting of the As- 

 sociation at the American Museum of Natural 

 History, New York City, on December 27-30, 

 1916, in affiliation with Section H of the Ameri- 

 can Association for the Advancement of Science. 



Nearly one hundred titles were offered in the 

 joint program; with but few exceptions the au- 

 thor was. present and read his paper. A large ma- 

 jority of the abstracts were presented through the 

 International Congress of Americanists. 



The Place of Archeology in Human Hi^ory: W. 



H. Holmes. 

 • The term history as applied to the human race 

 is a comprehensive designation corresponding with 

 the term anthropology, which is defined as the 

 science of man. The sources of information to be 

 drawn upon in these researches are comprised 

 under two principal heads: (1) intentional or 

 purposeful records, and (2) non-intentional or 

 fortuitous records. The intentional records are 

 of five forms, as follows: (1) Pictorial, as in pic- 

 tures and pictographs; (2) major objective, as in 

 commemorative, monumental works; (3) minor 

 objective, as in quipv, and wampum; (4) oral, as 

 in tradition and lore; (5) written, as in glyphic 

 and alphabetic characters. With each of these 

 categories goes necessarily a mnemonic element — 

 a very 'Considerable dependence upon memory. 

 Fortuitous records take numerous forms: (1) The 

 great body of products of human handicraft to 

 which no mnemonic significance has ever been at- 

 tached; (2) the non-material results of human 

 activity as embodied in language, beliefs, customs, 

 music, philosophy, etc.; (3) the ever-existing un- 

 premeditated body of memories which accrue to 

 each generation and are in part transmitted ad- 

 ventitiously; (4) the record embodied in the 

 physical constitution of man which, when properly 

 read, aids in telling the history of his develop- 

 ment from lower forms; (5) the records of intel- 

 lectual growth and powers to be sought in the 

 constitution of the mind; (6) the environments 

 which may be made to assist in revealing the story 

 of the nurture and upbuilding of race and culture 

 throughout the past. 



It is from these diversified records, present and 

 past, that the story of the race must be derived. 

 Archeology stands quite apart from this classifica- 

 tion of the science of man, since it traverses in its 

 own way the entire field of research; howbeit, it 

 claims for its own more especially that which is 

 old or ancient in this vast body of data. It is 



even called on to pick up the lost lines of the 

 earlier written records, as in the shadowy begin- 

 nings of glyphic and phonetic writing, and restore 

 them to history. It must recover the secrets of the 

 commemorative monuments — the tombs, temples 

 and sculptures intended to immortalize the now 

 long-forgotten great. It must follow back the ob- 

 scure trails of tradition and substantiate or dis- 

 credit the lore of the fathers. It must interpret 

 in its way, so far as interpretation is possible, the 

 pictorial records inscribed by the ancients on rock 

 faces and cavern walls, these being among the 

 most lasting and purposeful records. All that 

 archeology retrieves from this wide field is restored 

 to human knowledge and added to the volume of 

 written history. Archeology is thus the great re- 

 triever of history. 



The Origin and Destruction of a National Indian 



Fortran Gallery: F. "W. Hodge. 



Description of the efforts made in the early 

 years of the last century to establish at Washing- 

 ton a national gallery of Indian portraits, par- 

 ticularly the part taken therein by Thomas L. Mc- 

 Kenney, superintendent of Indian trade and later 

 in charge of the Office of Indian Affairs. The 

 growth of the collection; the artists engaged in 

 the task; the use of the portraits in illustrating 

 McKenney and Hall's elaborate and expensive 

 work on the Indians; the transfer of the collec- 

 tion to the National Institute and later to the 

 Smithsonian Institution; the addition of the loan 

 collection of Indian paintings by J. M. Stanley, 

 and the final destruction of almost the entire col- 

 lection by fire in 1865. 



Indications of Visits of White Men to America 



before Columbus: William H. Babcock. 



Ancient writers and voyagers knew the Atlantic 

 as far west as Corvo and the Saragossa Sea, ap- 

 proximately half-way to America, and some of 

 them describe or mention a continent on the west- 

 ern side of that ocean; but these statements lack 

 distinctive touches which might serve as tests of 

 reality. 



Medieval maps and Norse sagas give reason to 

 surmise that early Irish mariners reached the 

 northeastern outjutting elbow of America sur- 

 rounding the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which they 

 called Brazil. This would probably be consider- 

 ably before the Norse arrival in Iceland near the 

 close of the ninth century, for the Norsemen found 

 that Irish monks had preceded them there. 



About 985 Erie the Ruddy of Iceland planted a 

 colony in Greenland, which survived for 450 or 



