202 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VIII., No. 187 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECTION OF AN- 

 THROPOLOGY. 



This section is, perhaps, the one that is of most 

 general interest, and was, as usual, well attended. 

 The papers presented were of a varied character, 

 and an encouraging increase in the consideration 

 of what may be called ' psychological anthro- 

 pology ' was noticed. 



One of the most important papers was pre- 

 sented by Dr. Daniel G. Brinton of Philadel- 

 phia. The paper had for its object the determi- 

 nation of the phonetic elements in the Mexican 

 and Maya languages. The European conquerors 

 found these races familiar with the art of writing, 

 and possessing volumes of tradition, besides stone 

 and hard-wood inscriptions. In spite of destruc- 

 tion and neglect, there are enough of these re- 

 mains to form a respectable corpus inscriptionum 

 Americanum. The important question concerning 

 the languages of the Mayas and Aztecs is, To 

 what extent were they phonetic systems? Did 

 they appeal to the meaning, or the sound, of the 

 word ? In answering this question, one must re- 

 member that the arrangement to the eye of pho- 

 netic symbols is an arbitrary one, and that the 

 sound represented may be a word, a syllable, 

 or a sound-element. One must not approach the 

 subject with the expectation of finding any usual 

 an-angement, but must remember that the orders 

 of space and of time do not agree. Some lan- 

 guages are read from right to left, others from 

 left to right ; some from above downwards, and 

 some alternately from left to right and the reverse. 

 The only requisition of a phonetic system is that 

 a written symbol shall in some way represent a 

 spoken^sound or combination of sounds. Natu- 

 rally, the most frequently occm-ring sounds will be 

 the ones most apt to acquire a symbol. The 

 process by which they do so is quite similar to 

 that by which the Cherokee Indian Se-Quo-Yah 

 gave to his nation a written alphabet. He simply 

 listened for the syllabic sounds used by his tribe, 

 and had each represented by a single symbol, taken 

 from or suggested by an Enghsh spelling-book. 

 Suffixes and affixes very naturally would soon be 

 represented by a written symbol. In examining 

 the Maya language from this point of view, one 

 finds, for example, the picture of the sun with its 

 rays, indicating the sound of its name (kin). We 

 find in the expressions for ' east ' and ' west ' {laJcin 

 and cliikin) that the final syllable is represented by 

 the sun-picture. Turning to the Mexican language, 

 our material is more abundant, and has been 

 better utilized. This language {Nahuatl) was 

 thoroughly studied by the Catholic priests. They 

 found that the native phonetics were partly syl- 



labic and partly alphabetic, somewhat as though 

 one would write ' cat ' by a picture of a chair, an 

 axe, and a table, each sign representing the 

 initial sound of its name. It is known, that, of the 

 five vowels and fourteen consonants composing 

 this language, three vowels and probably three 

 consonants had reached the stage of being ex- 

 pressed by simple letters : a was represented by 

 the sign for atl (water) ; e, by etl (bean) ; o, by otli 

 (footprint) ; p, hj petl (mat) or pau (flag) ; t, by tetl 

 (stone) or tentle (hps) ; z, by zo (lancet). These are 

 exceptions, however, and many phonetics are 

 syllabic. What may be called the ' rebus ' mode 

 of writing is, however, the characteristic one. 

 The lover who wooed his bride by sending his 

 message in the form of the picture of a rose, a low 

 mound, an eye, a loaf of bread, and a well, mean- 

 ing ' Rose Hill I love well,' was going back to the 

 language of the ancient Mexicans. In the Mexi- 

 can form the order of the rebus signs was im- 

 material. 



In addition to the above illustrations of what 

 can be accomplished in tliis diri"'ction. Dr. Brinton 

 presented some interesting results obtained by 

 Mrs. Nuttall Pinart, and closed with a i^lea for the 

 scientific study of this group of languages, and 

 the assurance that many unique aspects of the 

 problem of language were there concealed. 



A novel and ingenious method of getting an 

 insight into the unconscious mechanism of author- 

 ship was described by Mr. T. C. Mendenhall, under 

 the title ' Characteristic curves of composition.' 

 The method consists in counting the number of 

 words of each length, from one letter to fourteen, 

 fifteen, or as long as were found, and plotting the 

 result on a curve, in which the abscissae repre- 

 sented the number of letters in the word, and the 

 ordinates the number of words per thousand of 

 each length. It was shown that while the curve 

 resulting from each thousand words was not en- 

 tirely regular, that resulting from five thousand 

 was much more regular, and that from ten thou- 

 sand almost entirely so. The inference from this 

 was, that the phenomenon which the curve repre- 

 sented was a regular one, and that it was an ex- 

 pression of the peculiar vocabulary of the author. 

 Moreover, by comparing the respective curves, 

 one would be able to judge whether two works 

 were written by the same author, and perhaps 

 even decide the controversy whether Bacon wrote 

 Shakspeare. Mr. Mendenhall's method was to 

 count a thousand words at a sitting, and then turn 

 to another part of the book. One soon acquired 

 the art of counting at a glance the number pf 

 letters in each word, and, with an assistant to 

 record the result, one thousand words could be 

 counted in a half -hour. Curves derived from 



