February ^24, 1893. 1 



SCIENCE. 



103 



In these few and simple words Professor Sergi, the distin- 

 guished Italian craniologist, describes a skull from Melanesia. 

 It offers a bv no means unexampled specimen of the extraordi- 

 nary language which writers of that specialty have been revelling 

 in of recent years. They seem to have swallowed the Greek dic- 

 tionary, and finiliag its roots of difficult digestion, have regur- 

 giated them in this unassirailable state. Let us appeal to them 

 in the words of Horatio when he listened to the dialogue between 

 Hamlet and Oscar: — 



" Is't niit possible to understand in another tongue ? You 

 will do't, sirs, really." 



To make maiters worse, a Greek root which satisfies a German, 

 is for that very reason distasteful to a Frenchman. It is enough 

 for one to say chamaeeoneh, for the other to invent megaseme. 

 Even German big-wigism has at last revolted against this dis- 

 tressing verbosity. Professor Moritz Benedikt, of Vienna, has 

 published an open letter appealing to craniologists to speak in 

 some less jaw- breaking and pedantic lingo. He addresses it to 

 Professor Sergi, and publishes it in the Proceedings of the Vienna 

 Anthropological Society, December, 1893. May his protest have 

 a wide circulation, and receive an attentive hearing! 



Ethnography of Tribes of the Northwest Coast, 

 Several interesting contributions to our knowledge of the 

 tribes of the Northwest coast have recently appeared. First may 

 be mentioned the report on the Kootenay Indians of south- 

 eastern British Columbia, by Dr. A. F. Chamberlain, published 

 with an introduction by Mr. Horatio Hale by the British Asso- 

 ciation for the Advancementof Science. It deals quite fully with 

 their psych.ilogy, social organization, arts, physical characteristics, 

 a,nd language. In the last-mentioned respect they appear to form 

 an independent stock. In the introduction, Mr. Hale discusses 

 some general questions with his customary ability and fairness. 



A neighboring tribe, the Shuswap of British Columbia, forms 

 the subject of a careful paper in the Transactions of the Eoyal 

 Society of Canada by Dr. George M. Dawson. He speaks of their 

 tribal subdivisions, houses, customs, history, and mythology, and 

 adds a long list of place-names with their significations. An ex- 

 cellent map is appended. He agrees with previous writers that 

 their linguistic affiliations are with the Salish proper; but he calls 

 attention to an ancient speech among them, now nearly exiinct, 

 apparently from some Tinne influence. 



In the same Transactions, Mr. Alexander Mackenzie publishes 

 descriptive notes on implements, weapons, and tools of native 

 manufacture from Queen Charlotte's Island, with illustrations. 

 In an introductory note Dr. G. M. Dawson extols the ability and 

 dexterity of the Haida Indians, which he thinks have not been 

 appreciated by ethnologists. He does not hesitate to claim that 

 the incipient civilization of the Haidas " was higher than that 

 found in any other people of the west coast of North America "; 

 a statement which certainly requires modification. 



Points in African Linguistics. 

 The precise relationship of the various members of the Nuba 

 stock in equatorial Africa has recently led to some discussion in 

 . German periodicals. The Nuba stock is not negritic. The fea- 

 tures and expression of the face, the shape of the nose, the forms 

 of the skull, place them outside the physical characters of the 

 true Negroes, and assimilate then in spite of their dark color to 

 certain branches of the white race, especially the Semitic. In 

 languages they appear to offer four independent families, one of 

 which includes the VIonbuttu, the Nyam-nyam, the Gola, and 

 some others, the credit of defining which belongs to Dr. Fried- 

 rich Miiller of Vienna, as has been shown in a late contest on the 

 point. The intermediate physical position of this stock lends 

 especial interest to its study. 



An important warning in reference to the Bantu languages was 

 sounded ai the last meetmg of the American Oriental Society by 

 the Rev. Lewis Grout, of Vermont. He points out that the 

 "Comparative Grainraar of the South African Bantu Languages," 

 of the Rev. J. Torrend. lately issued in London, takes as its 

 standard the tongue of Tonga or Batonga, which is unquestion- 

 ably a coiTupt and mixed dialect, with many borrowed words and 



broken-down grammatical forms. Mr. Grout touches here upon 

 a very inaportant point in linguistic study. In approaching the 

 analysis of an indigenous tongue it is extremely difficult to decide 

 which of its dialects should be chosen as the standard — as best 

 representing theparentstock. Yet it is most desirable, essential, 

 indeed, to a successful analysis, that the right choice be made. 



On Current Mexican Philology. 



It is probable that no more independent linguistic stocks will 

 be discovered within the area of the Republic of Mexico; but 

 there are many within its various states of which we lack infor- 

 mati in. Within the last few years energetic efforts have been 

 made by the Director-General of statistics. Dr. Antonio Ptnafiel, 

 to supply this deficiency. He has caused to be extensively dis- 

 tributed a list of nearly three hundred words to the officials and 

 curas of parishes where the native dialects continue to be spoken, 

 with the request that they be translated into the local idiom and 

 returned. In this manner he has obtained a mass of new and trust- 

 worthy material which will enable linguists to classify the many 

 obscure and little-known tongues, the names of which are pre- 

 served in the works of Orozco y Berra, Pimentel, and other writers. 



It is to be regretted that these lists have not been promptly 

 published in some cheap, accurate, and convenient form. The 

 only instance of an issue of this Cueslionario Filologico which I 

 know of is the "Vocabulario Castellano y NahuatI," by the licen- 

 tiate Cecilio A. Robelo, which was printed by his own efforts at 

 Cuernavaca. It is very much to be commended, and to call it a 

 vocabulary is to do it scant justice. Each word is traced to its 

 radical, its special uses and synonyms are discussed, and its va- 

 rious significations are explained. If all the cuestionarios are 

 filled on this model, American philology will be enriched, indeed, 

 by our Mexican friends. 



The Tale Told by the Teeth. 



The development of the molar teeth of the human jaw is a his- 

 tory which is claimed to reveal some interesting points in the 

 genealogy of man and the relationship of races. It is now some 

 five years since Professor Cope urged the opinion that the tuber- 

 cular forms usual in the cusps of human molars point to a rever- 

 sion to the type of dentition prevailing among the lemurs, and 

 the inference was near at hand that in the discussion of the evo- 

 lution of the genus Homo we had better look toward a lemurian 

 rather than a simian progenitor. 



His statements were studied closely by several German writers, 

 and also by Dr. H. F. Osboin of Columbia College, who, in a re- 

 cent number of the Anatomiseher Anzeiger (No 24, 1893), pre- 

 sents a summary of results, some of the weightiest taken from 

 his own researches. He shows that the primitive form of the 

 mammalian molar was a single cone, to which all the other cusps 

 have been successively added. Four, five, or six cusps, and 

 various intermediate tubercles, appear on the molars of some of 

 Che primates. The tubercles of the human molar may be con- 

 sidered a reversion to the lemurine type, and Dr. Osborn main- 

 tains that in comparison the quadritubercular form was a com- 

 paratively recent acquisition compared to the tritubercular. 



The attempted application of these traits to racial anatomy 

 cannot be said to have resulted in anything definite. It may 

 vaguely be affirmed that in the molars of the lower jaw, which 

 are the more distinctive of the two, four cusps are more frequent 

 in the "higher" and five in the "lower" races. This is the 

 opinion of Dr. Topinard in his 1 itest writings on the subject. He 

 seems to have little respect for the lemurian theory, referring to 

 these as " animaux de transition discordante, a type non arrete." 



Professor Topinard has taken up the subject vvith his usual 

 thoroughness in an article seventy pages in length in V Anthro- 

 pologie, Becemher. 1892, entitled "De I'Evolution des Molaires 

 et Premolaires chez les Primates et en particulier chez I'Homme." 

 In this he withdraws somewhat from the position he took in his 

 L'Homme dans la Nature and concedes that the molars must be 

 traced back, step by step, to le murian forms ; bu t claim s that t he f un- 

 damental types of the molars are identical in man and the anthro- 

 poids ; that these latter belong to the monkeys ; while man as he is 

 at present constitutes a sub order in the general order of Primates. 



