216 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 110. 



Dr. Kobert M. Lawrence spoke of the 

 many superstitions connected with common 

 salt even among our own people. 



Mr. Stewart Culin exhibited a number of 

 Divinatory Diagrams from Tibet, China, 

 Mexico, etc., and called attention to their 

 similarity as well as to the fact that they, 

 being arranged on a plan of four quarters, 

 might be developed from the idea of the 

 four cardinal points. 



'An Ojibwa Myth,' by Harlan I. Smith, 

 referred to the white-dog sacrifice and ideas 

 common to several of the neighboring 

 tribes. 



' The Psychic Origin of Myth,' by Dr. D. 

 G. Brinton, was an inquiry into how far the 

 psychic unity of man satisfactorily accounts 

 for similarities in myths found among widely 

 separated peoples. Dr. Brinton's position 

 that it accounted for even minor details was 

 vigorously contested by several present. 



Mr. Stansbury Hagar contributed from 

 his store of Micmac mythology such parts 

 as related to weather and the seasons. 



Miss Whitney, Secretary of the Balti- 

 more Branch of the Society, contributed a 

 paper on the lore of ' The Sword and Belt 

 of Orion or De Los Ell an Yard.' It seems 

 that this group of stars in the constellation of 

 Orion holds an important place in the folk- 

 lore of the negroes. 



Dr. Franz Boas related ' A Star Legend 

 from the Interior of Alaska and its Ana- 

 logues from the other parts of America.' 

 While holding to the idea generally ac- 

 cepted among scientists, that the same 

 fundamental concept may arise independ- 

 ently among widely separated peoples hav- 

 ing no contact, and due purely to the same 

 psychic phenomena common to man ; yet 

 he held that similarity in a long series of 

 minor details, especially in cases where 

 contact was possible, could not be positively 

 accounted for in that way and that historic 

 influence must be considered as well as 

 psychic unity. 



Mr. W. S. Scarborrough's paper on ' ITe- 

 gro Songs ' was an interesting contribution 

 on the play songs of negro children. 



' The True Story of Blue Beard,' by Pro- 

 fessor Thomas Wilson, illustrated the mak- 

 ing of folk-lore, the changing of a historic 

 story to a legend by continual repeating 

 with slight change, in a way exactly oppo- 

 site to the accurate repetition of the Omaha 

 song. 



A public lecture was given in the evening 

 by Mr. Heli Chatelain, on ' African Life 

 Illustrated.' Mr. Chatelain, who was late 

 United States Commercial Agent in Angola, 

 spoke very feelingly against the existing 

 Arab slave trade, while his main subject 

 was the ethnology of the Negroes of i\.n- 

 gola, from whom he collected the volume 

 of folk-tales recently published by the So- 

 ciety. 



The meeting concluded with the annual 

 dinner. In this the Society was joined by 

 the Section of Anthropology of the Ameri- 

 can Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, with which it is closely affiliated. 

 Harlan I. Smith. 



Ameeican Museum of Natural History. 



HORATIO HALE. 



In the death of Mr. Horatio Hale, which 

 took place at Clinton, Ontario, December 

 28th, science in America has lost an earnest 

 worker and student, who for more than 

 half a century has been prominent in lin- 

 guistic and ethnographic literature. Indeed, 

 it is sixty-three years since his first contri- 

 bution to science was printed — a small 

 pamphlet on an Algonquian dialect. He 

 was born May 3, 1817, at Newport, N. H., 

 and was at the time of that publication a 

 student in Harvard College. 



He graduated in 1837 and was immedi- 

 ately appointed as ' philologist and eth- 

 nographer ' to the United States exploring 

 expedition under Captain Charles Wilkes. 

 His report constituted the seventh volume 



