264 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 87. 



foundation of the Peruvian government was 

 an agrarian communism derived from the 

 rights of the primitive gentes, very much 

 as was the case not only in other parts of 

 America, but, as the author observes, among 

 the ancient Aryans as well. This explana- 

 tion he develops in a highly satisfactory 

 manner. 



The claim, however, which Mr, Cunow 

 puts forward in his preface, that he is the 

 first to make these facts clear, is, doubtless 

 unwittingly, unjust to a worthy American 

 student, Dr. Gustav Briihl, who in his 

 learned volume, ' Die Culturvolker Alt- 

 Amerikas,' Chap. XVII. (Cincinnati, 1887) , 

 traces with entire clearness the Peruvian 

 organization to the same source as does 

 Cunow. It is to be hoped that in a future 

 edition the latter will make proper acknowl- 

 edgment of this. 



THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERI- 

 CANISTS. 



Mr.E. de Olivareia y Ferrari has issued 

 at Mexico the ' Cronica del Undesimo Con- 

 greso Internacional de Americanistas ' (pp. 

 183), giving a narrative of the proceedings 

 of the Congress, its meetings and excursions 

 (not abstracts of papers). The outlines 

 were reported to Science at the time by 

 Mr. Halsted. The present volume proves 

 still further how courteous and kindly was 

 the reception accorded to the Congress by 

 the authorities and citizens of Mexico. 



That meeting, however, was not a regu- 

 lar, but an extra session. The Congress 

 meets only once in two years, and at the last 

 regular meeting, in Stockholm, 1894, it was 

 agreed to convene next in Holland, prob- 

 ably at the Hague. This is still the inten- 

 tion, and the last number of the ' Interna- 

 tionales Archiv fiir Ethnographic ' contains 

 an announcement to that effect. The precise 

 date will be determined later. The volume 

 of proceedings at Stockholm has not yet 

 been issued. The Compte-rendus of the 



Congress, now numbering many volumes, 

 the first of which was published in 1875, 

 contain numerous articles of value to the 

 student of the archaeology and languages 

 of America. 



WORD-COUPLING LANGUAGES. 



Sometimes a single linguistic procedure 

 serves as a valuable trait by which to group 

 linguistic stocks and measure their relative 

 development. Such is the plan of uniting 

 words one to another, so as to form com- 

 pounds. This has been studied by several 

 writers, and lately by Dr. H. C. Miiller, of 

 Leyden, in a monograph, 'Beitrage zur 

 Lehre der Wortzusammensetzung' (pp. 59). 

 While mainly devoted to the Aryan group, 

 he has the breadth of mind, rare among 

 Aryan specialists, to remember that all 

 tongues are not built on Aryan models, and 

 therefore calls under consideration the Ural- 

 Altaic, Australian, and even, mirabile dictu, 

 the American languages, for purposes of 

 comparison. In this particular field the 

 last mentioned offer peculiarly abundant 

 topics of study in their synthetic and incor- 

 porative character, to which the author al- 

 ludes, but perceives that the field is too 

 vast to be surveyed in a few pages. 



In some groups of tongues, as the Si- 

 nitic, word-coupling cannot be said to exist 

 in the sense of the dvandva of the Sanskrit 

 grammarians; under certain restrictions, 

 its presence and development lend flexibil- 

 ity, accuracy and poetic power to a tongue, 

 and thus serves as a criterion of linguistic 

 evolution. This and other suggestive 

 thoughts will be found in the essay. 



D. Gr, Brinton. 



University of Pennsylvania. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



MEMBERSHIP OP THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS 



OF APPLIED CHEMISTRY. 



An editorial in the London Saturday Review^ 

 August 1, 1896, makes the following comment 



