June 11, 1897.] 



SGIENGE. 



919 



The general board of studies of Cambridge 

 University recommend tliat a University lec- 

 tureship in physiological and experimental psy- 

 chology, connected with the special board for bi- 

 ology and geology, be established for the term of 

 five years from October next, and that the sti- 

 pend of the lecturer be £50 a year. 



Professor H. K. Wolfe has resigned the 

 chair of psychology in the University of Ne- 

 braska. Dr. W. B. Pillsbury, now instructor in 

 psychology in Cornell University, has accepted 

 a similar position in the University of Michigan. 

 Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, instructor in logic in Cor- 

 nell University, will return to Oxford, having 

 been elected fellow and tutor in Corpus Christi 

 College. It is understood that Dr. C. E. Sea- 

 shore, now assistant in Yale University, will be 

 appointed assistant in psychology in the Univer- 

 sity of Iowa, and Dr. J. H. Leuba, lately fellow 

 at Clark University, to a position in psychology 

 in Clark University. Mr. S. I. Franz has been 

 elected assistant in psychology in Columbia 

 University. 



Professor "William S. Franklin, of Iowa 

 University, has been elected to the chair of 

 physics and electrical engineering at Lehigh 

 University, filling the place vacant by the re- 

 signation of Professor Harding. Dr. John 

 Marshall has been appointed to the chair of 

 chemistry in the medical department of the 

 University of Pennsylvania, vacant through 

 the death of Professor Theodore G. Wormley. 



Miss Mary E. Pennington was appointed 

 Thomas A. Scott fellow in hygiene in the Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania. Miss Bertha Stone- 

 man, now at Cornell University, has been ap- 

 pointed to the chair of botany in the Huguenot 

 College for Women in Cape Colony. 



Eev. R. E. Jones, of All Angels' Church, 

 New York city, has been nominated for the 

 Presidency of Hobart College, Geneva, N. Y. 



Professor J. L. Prevost has been elected 

 professor of physiology in the University of 

 Geneva. Dr. P. Francotte has been appointed 

 professor of embryology and Dr. P. Stroobant 

 professor of astronomy in the University of 

 Brussels. Dr. J. J. Zumstein has been pro- 

 moted to a professorship of anatomy in the 

 University of Marburg. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 

 THE potter's wheel IN ANCIENT AMERICA. 



The paragraph referring to American Ce- 

 ramics, by Dr. D. G. Brinton, in SCIENCE, for 

 May 21, 1897, page 797, containing the cate- 

 gorical statement that ' the device of the pot- 

 ter's wheel was (anciently) unknown in either 

 North or South America,' should be noted as 

 inadequate. Under the present knowledge of 

 the subject, while referring, as a noteworthy 

 substitute for the wheel, to a clay dish twisted 

 by the Chillian Indians (Araucanians), so as to 

 mould the clay ball resting in it (described in 

 Globus, February 20, 1897), it would have been 

 well to mention a similar device from the South- 

 west or Mexico, which, according to Professor 

 Putnam, had been in the possession of the Pea- 

 lody Museum at Cambridge, Mass., for some- 

 time previously. 



More uninstructive is it to ignore the Kabul, 

 of Yucatan, a disc of wood caused to turn on a 

 slippery board by the bare feet of the (present) 

 Maya potter, while the clay sticking to the disc 

 and revolving with it is thus made to mould 

 itself symmetrically against the stationary fin- 

 gers of the worker. This very noteworthy de- 

 vice, a primitive potter's wheel in the full sense, 

 was observed and fully explained by the Cor- 

 with Expedition of the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania to Yucatan in 1895. I illustrated it 

 in ' Hill Caves of Yucatan ' (Lippincott, Phila- 

 delphia, 1896, page 163), having previously de- 

 scribed it to archaeologists, in the American 

 Naturalist, for May, 1895. A correspondence 

 with Dr. Brinton upon the significance of the 

 Maya word Kahal resulted in his failure to find 

 the word in the Spanish dictionarj' of the Maya 

 language, published at the monastery of Motul 

 in 1576, upon which he argued, inconsequently 

 I thought, that the device had been brought to 

 Yucatan by Spaniards. On the other hand, 

 the late Bishop of Yucatan and, I think. Cap- 

 tain Theobert Maler believed it to be indigenous, 

 and I have as yet learned of no discovery of the 

 Kahal device in Spain or among the Moors in 

 Africa. Under these circumstances, whether final 

 investigation shall prove the Kahal to have been 

 of European or American origin, the general 

 references above noted to the potter's craft in 



