August 7, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



165 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 NATIVE AMERICAN TEXTILE ART. 



A MONOGRAPH of mucli beautv and inter- 

 est has lately appeared from the pen of 

 Prof. W. H. Holmes, of the Field Colum- 

 bian Museum. Its subject is the ' Prehis- 

 toric Textile Art of the Eastern United 

 States,' and it a portion of the 13th An- 

 nual Eeport of the Bureau of American 

 Ethnology. The topics taken up are the 

 basketry, matting, cloths, nets, feather- 

 work, embroidery and wattling of the In- 

 dians in the region designated, as these arts 

 existed before the arrival of the white man. 

 The primitive methods of spinning and 

 weaving are explained, and the various 

 knots and stitches illustrated b}^ numerous 

 engravings. Incidentallj^, the styles of 

 clothing in former use are touched upon. 



A chapter is added on ' fossil fabrics,' 

 by which is meant those exhumed from 

 caves, mounds, shelters and other deposits 

 supposed by some to be the relics of a pre- 

 Indian population. The result of the in- 

 vestigation here is noteworthy and adds to 

 the evidence that it seems impossible to get 

 away from the Ked Indian in the Eastern 

 United States. " Charred cloths from the 

 great mounds are identical in material, 

 combination of parts and texture with the 

 fabrics of the simple savage." Nothing in 

 them indicates a higher development of the 

 art than was possessed by Algonkins and 

 Iroquois. 



THE ' SECOND COLUMN ' OF THE ACHBMENI- 

 DEAN INSCRIPTION. 



The famous inscription in cuneiform 

 characters of the Achemenides is, as most 

 readers are aware, in three columns, each 

 a different language. The first is Old Per- 

 sian ; the third is the Assyrian dialect of 

 the Semitic; but the second has been a 

 standing puzzle. Some claimed it as Dra- 

 vidian, others as a remote Aryan tongue, 

 but most scholars, following Norris, Eaw- 



linson and Max Milller, looked upon it as 

 ' Turanian,' by which is meant Ural-Altaic. 

 It has been called Susian or Medic, and 

 some have thought it related to the Sumer- 

 ian or Acadian, of Babylonia. 



The first thoroughly satisfactory analysis 

 of its forms which has ever appeared has 

 just been published at Breslau, from the 

 pen of the profound Ural-Altaic scholar, 

 Dr. Heinrich Winkler. He had already 

 announced that this Susie was certainlj^ not 

 Ural-Altaic, nor was the Sumerian. In the 

 present brochure of sixty-five quarto pages 

 he proves that the verb of the Susie is a 

 true verbal, whereas in the Ural-Altaic, 

 like many American languages, it is a 

 noun form ; that the relative in the Susie 

 is one that is real and not a mere con- 

 nective ; that the formation of the case re- 

 lations is wholly distinct ; and a number of 

 other vital points. 



As the second column is certainly not 

 Altaic, what is it? To this Dr. Winkler 

 replies by assigning a number of cogent 

 reasons for believing it a member of the 

 Caucasic group of related tongues. 



His valuable essay, like that which he 

 wrote on the relationship of the Japanese 

 to the Ural-Altaic, has extremely important 

 bearings on the ethnography of Asia. The 

 full title is : ' Die Sprache der Zweiten 

 Columne der Dreisprachigen Inschriften 

 und das Altaische.' D. G. Brinton. 



Univeesity op Pennsylvania. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



electrical conduction at low temper- 

 atures. 



In a Friday evening discourse at the Royal 

 Institution, Prof. J. A. Flemming, F.E.S., re- 

 cently gave an account of the very interesting 

 researches into the magnetic and electric prop- 

 erties of metals at low temperatures, which 

 have been carried out, during the last four 

 years, in the laboratories of the Royal Institu- 

 tion, by him in conjunction with Prof. Dewar. 



According to the report in the London 



