72 



SCIENCE. 



[X. S. Vol. I. No. 3. 



Adelbert College, upon tlie Biology of the 

 Lobster wiU be printed in full in a later 

 number of Science. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY {II.). 



NATIVE ASTRONOMY IN MEXICO AND CENTEAL 

 AMERICA. 



At the International Congress of Ameri- 

 canists, wMcli met in Stockbolm last Au- 

 gust, two papers were presented wbicb ought 

 to give j)ause to those would-be critics who 

 of late years have been seeking to belittle 

 the acquirements of the semi-civilized tribes 

 of Mexico and Central America. Both are 

 studies of the positive astronomic knowledge 

 which had been gained by the observers 

 among those tribes. One is by Mrs. Zelia 

 Nuttall, and bears the title, Notes of the 

 Ancient Mexican Calendar System. It is 

 intended merely as a preliminary publica- 

 tion to a thorough analysis of this system 

 as it was carried out in Mexico, and con- 

 tains only the outlines of her discoveries. 

 These are, however, suificient to support 

 her thesis, that the astronomer-priests 

 possessed a surprisingly accurate knowl- 

 edge of the exact length of the solar 

 year, of the revolution of the moon, and 

 of the sjTiodical revolution of the planet 

 Venus. 



The second paper is by Dr. Forstemann, 

 who is the foremost student in Germany of 

 the contents of the books written in the 

 hieroglyphic script of the ancient Mayas. 

 He takes up page 24 of the Dresden Codex, 

 and explains its meaning. This page has 

 been long recognized as a sort of abstract or 

 table of contents of those which follow it in 

 the Codex, but its exact bearing has not 

 previously been interpreted. Dr. Forste- 

 mann shows by ingenious and accurate 

 i-easoning that it relates chiefly to the syn- 

 odical revolution of the planet Venus and 

 its relation to the courses of the sun and 

 moon. 



RECENT AMERICAN LINGUISTIC STUDIES. 



It is gratifying to note that the immense 

 field of native American languages is find- 

 ing cultivators in many countries. 



Even in England, where so little has been 

 done in this direction, a special fund has 

 been raised called the ' vocabulary pub- 

 lication fund,' which prmts and issues 

 (through Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & 

 Co.) short grammars and vocabularies of 

 languages from MSS. in the possession of 

 learned societies and individuals. The first 

 printed is a grammar and vocabulary of the 

 Ipurina language, by the Eev. J. E. E. Po- 

 lak. This is one of the Amazonian dia- 

 lects, and though we were not without some 

 material in it before, this addition to our 

 knowledge is veiy welcome. 



From the same teeming storehouse of 

 Brazil, Dr. Paul Ehi-enreich has lately pub- 

 lished in the Berlin Zeitschrift fi'tr Ethnoloc/ie, 

 his excellent studies m the language of the 

 the Carayas and Caj-apos. They are practi- 

 cally new in matter and form. The Pu- 

 quinas are a rude tribe who live about Lake 

 Titicaca. M. Eaoul de La Grasserie has 

 lately issued (through Koehler, Leipzig) a 

 number of old texts ra their langxiage ; and 

 Dr. Max. Uhle has collected considerable 

 material in it as sjjoken to-day. Dr. A. F. 

 Chamberlain, in the American Anthropolo- 

 gist for April last, analyzes a number of ne- 

 ologisms in the Kootenaj^ language ; while 

 our knowledge of the remote and confusing 

 dialects of the Gran Chaco has latelj' been 

 notablj' increased by the activity of the-Ai-- 

 gentine scholars, Macedo and Lafone-Que- 

 vedo, in editing from rare or manuscript 

 works the notes collected by the early mis- 

 sionaries. 



AMERICAN ONOMATOLOGY. 



The study of the meaning and origin of 

 geographical names has a higher purpose 

 than to satisfj' a passing curiositJ^ They 

 are often the only surviving evidences of 



