March 



1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



157 



rails clean through, and several of the sleepers were splintered, a 

 large piece of one being flung fully 40 yards, while the crater formed 

 was upwards of 12 feet in diameter. This, the most striking of the 

 €xperiments, was also the last. 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS IN WASHINGTON. 



Bibliography of the Iroquoian Languages. — The Los Angeles Base- 

 Line. — Deep-Sea Models. 



Bibliography of the Iroquoian Languages. 



Some ten years ago Mr. Pilling of the Bureau of Ethnology 

 ■entered upon the formidable task of preparing a systematic and 

 exhaustive exhibit of all printed and manuscript works giving in- 

 formation respecting the speech of the native races of North 

 America. The need of such exhibit had become strikingly ap- 

 parent. For nearly four hundred years information had been ac- 

 ■cumulating respecting the North American aborigines, and this 

 accumulated information had been printed in many lands in many 

 tongues. The subject was fast becoming, or had already become, 

 buried in the dibris of its own literature. Special students found 

 themselves consuming an inordinate amount of time in acquiring 

 even an imperfect knowledge of the literature of the special subject 

 of their study. 



Recognizing this condition, the labor of preparing a bibliography 

 of North American linguistics was, as already indicated, syste- 

 matically entered upon more than ten years ago, and has been con- 

 tinued with only such interruptions as were necessitated by other 

 official duties. The work before us^ closes the third chapter in 

 this work. 



The first chapter or division of the work was a bibliography of 

 the Eskimo languages, issued in 1887 ; the second, a bibliography 

 of the Siouan languages, issued in 1888; and the third, that of the 

 Iroquoian, now before us ; to be shortly followed by the Musk- 

 hogean, and later by the Algonquian and the Athabascan. 



The aim to make the catalogue as exhaustive and complete as 

 possible, and the dictionarj' plan of arrangement, carried to its ex- 

 treme limit, remain the same as in the earlier bibliographies ; and 

 it may be added, that zeal in the pursuit of all information relating 

 to the books catalogued, and fidelity in exhibiting this information, 

 increase rather than diminish as time passes. 



As a sample of Mr. Filling's painstaking bibliographic research, 

 the " Voyages of Baron Lathontan " may be cited. Seven pages 

 of the bibliography are given to the careful and minute description 

 of the eighteen editions of the work, which appeared in French, 

 English, German, and Dutch. To collate these different editions, 

 copies were borrowed from numerous sources, and photographs of 

 titlepages made, that proof might be read from facsimiles. The 

 careful scrutiny exercised in preparing these minute descriptions 

 has developed the fact, that, from the original edition of 1703, two 

 spurious editions of the same date were prepared. So far as as- 

 certained, but one copy of the authentic edition is extant. 



The catalogue contains in round numbers 950 titles, of which 

 •800 relate to printed and 1 50 to manuscript matter. Of these, Mr. 

 Pilling has himself seen and described 850, or 89 per cent ; and of 

 the remaining 1 1 per cent, about two-thirds have been seen and 

 described for this catalogue by his correspondents. Thus about 

 95 or 96 per cent of the entries are at first-hand ; and, further, 6 1 

 per cent of the entries were compared directly with the original 

 sources while the proof was passing through his hands. 



Of the various languages included under the general term"" Iro- 

 quoian," — viz., Cayuga, Cherokee, Hochelaga, Huron, Iroquois, 

 Maqua, Minqua, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, Tuscarora, 

 and Wyandot, — more than half of the material catalogued relates 

 to the Cherokee and Mohawk only ; most of the Bible, for instance, 

 having been printed in each of these languages. Printed diction- 

 aries of the Huron, Mohawk, and Onondaga, and manuscript dic- 

 tionaries of the Seneca and Tuscarora, are in existence. There are 

 in print rather extensive grammatical treatises on the Cherokee, 

 Huron, and Mohawk, and fragmentary grammatical notes on 

 several of the remaining languages. Of the Cherokee texts, all 

 except two spelling-books, published in iSigand 1824 respectively, 



* Bibliography of the Iroquoian Languages, by James Constantine Pilling. 



are in the Cherokee syllabary, these two having been printed before 

 the invention of those characters. 



The earliest printed record of any North American language ap- 

 pears to have been made by Cartier, whose first voyage was made 

 in 1534, and the second in 1535. There is reason for believing 

 that the original account of the first voyage contained a vocabulary 

 of the people of New France ; but, so far as known, no copy of this 

 book is in existence, and the date of its publication is not known. 

 The account of the second voyage was published at Paris in 1545, 

 and contains a Huron vocabulary. 



This is one of the rarest books in the entire list, only two copies 

 having been known for the last three hundred years. Of these, 

 one was bought in 1851, and lost in a ship on its way to America. 

 The other and only known copy is in the British Museum. Of 

 this " unique," Mr. Pilling gives a facsimile of the titlepage. Fac- 

 similes are also given of several other rare, curious, or specially in- 

 teresting books. 



The work contains eight pages of addenda, which accumulated 

 while the copy was in the printer's hands. 



A chronologic list of authors at the end of the volume, covering 

 eighteen pages, begins with Cartier in 1545, and ends with a list of 

 nearly forty works issued in 1888. From an inspection of this list, 

 it appears that interest in matters relating to the Iroquois was 

 never greater than at present ; and, while the literature of the sub- 

 ject has been accumulating during the past three hundred and forty 

 years, more than half of it has appeared within the last forty. 



The Los Angejes Base-Line. 



The " Yolo Base," as it is familiarly known to geodesists, being 

 the base-line measured in Yolo County, Cal, in 1S81, for the trans- 

 continental triangulation of the United States Coast and Geodetic 

 Survey, was, in point of rapidity and accuracy of measurement, the 

 best work of the kind ever performed. That measurement was 

 made under the immediate supervision of Professor George David- 

 son, assistant United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, with the 

 five-metre compensating base apparatus, which had been con- 

 structed at the office of the survey in Washington, under the super- 

 vision of Assistant C. A. Schott, and in accordance with a design 

 prepared and submitted by him. The length of the " Yolo Base " was 

 17,486.5119 metres (10.86 miles). It was measured twice through- 

 out its entire length, with a third measurement covering less than 

 half (42.8 per cent) of its length. The two measurements and par- 

 tial measurement occupied a total of forty-six days. 



The recent measurement of a Coast and Geodetic Survey base- 

 line near Los Angeles. Cal., which was concluded on the i6th of 

 February, afforded to Professor Davidson, under whose supervision 

 the work was also done, an opportunity of fulfilling his announced 

 purpose of " breaking all records " of base measurements. 



The " Los Angeles Base " is roughly 17,496 metres in length, or 

 9.5 metres longer than " Yolo Base." Although the weather was 

 extremely unfavorable, the work having been pushed in the fre- 

 quent severe rain-storms, which converted the line into a route of 

 deep mud, standing pools, and rushing streams, three full measure- 

 ments were completed in 46.75 days, the average measurement per 

 day having been 1,122.73 nietres, against an average of 912.5 in 

 the " Yolo Base ; " the longest measurement in a single day having 

 been 2,000 metres, against 1,620 metres on the " Yolo Base ; " and 

 the cost, exclusive of the expenses connected with the establish- 

 ment of monuments at the ends of the lines, was $8,000, against 

 $15,578 for the measurement of Yolo. 



It is hardly to be expected that the accuracy of the Yolo meas- 

 urement, which involved a probable error of ±0.035 of ^'^ mch. per 

 statute mile, or .38 of an inch in a length of 10.8657 miles, will be 

 surpassed by that of the Los Angeles Base. If it is even equalled, 

 the Los Angeles Base measurement will signalize again the un- 

 equalled proficiency of American officers. 



Deep-Sea Models. 



Mr. E. E. Court of the Hydrographic Office of the Na\-y Depart- 

 ment has published two excellent models, — one of the Atlantic 

 Ocean, the other of the Caribbean Sea. These accurate and neatly 

 finished models convey an excellent idea of the configuration of the 

 bottom of the sea which is only inadequately expressed to the in- 



