488 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 92 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 AMERICAN LINGUISTICS. 



Students of the ethnography of the 

 IS'orthwest Coast will welcome the ' Haida 

 Grammar,' written by the Eev. C. Har- 

 rison and edited by Dr. A. F. Chamberlain. 

 It is published in the Transactions of the 

 Eoyal Society of Canada (Second Series, 

 Yol. I.), and covers 108 octavo pages. It 

 is based on the scheme of grammars of 

 Aryan tongues, the same grammatical cate- 

 gories being applied to the Haida. While 

 this offers no special difBculty to one versed 

 in the morphology of American idioms, it 

 certainly presents such tongues under false 

 analogies, which have often misled tyros in 

 their study. It would have been better if 

 the highly competent editor had taken the 

 material and recast it in the form now re- 

 quired by linguistic science. 



Dr. Paul Ehrenreich has added another 

 to his valuable studies of Brazilian lan- 

 guages by publishing in the Bastian Fest- 

 schrift several old vocabularies and a list 

 of phrases of the tongue of the Botocudos. 

 The analysis of them and the grammatical 

 remarks which he adds give largely in- 

 creased value to these fragments. His paper 

 is entitled ' Ein Beitrag zur Charakteristik 

 der Botocudischen Sprache.' 



PRIMITIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 



To the primitive man, as we know him, 

 the sense of individual power, that which 

 metaphysicians call ' free will,' was very 

 present. The strong, the mighty, was what 

 excited his admiration above all else. His 

 ideal was the man who could do what he 

 wished or willed to do. The savage ac- 

 knowledges no theoretic limit to the will 

 any more than does the religious enthu- 

 siast. It can move mountains and consume 

 rivers. It can act at indefinite distances 

 and its force is measureless. In the re- 

 ligion of ancient Egypt the highest gods 

 could be made to serve the will of a 



man, did he but use the proper formula of 

 command. 



An interesting study of these aspects of 

 savage psychology was read by Miss Alice 

 C. Fletcher before the American Associa- 

 tion. It is entitled ' Notes of certain beliefs 

 concerning will power among the Siouan 

 Tribes.' The author sets forth the strong 

 sense of personality characteristic of the 

 tribe and its language, though by no means 

 confined to them, analyzes a series of terms 

 employed to express the exercise of the 

 power of volition, and explains a number 

 of curious rites and customs which have 

 sprung from the beliefs held by the Siouan 



gentes on this subject. 



D. G. Brinton. 

 University of Pennsylvania. 



CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 

 A TORNADO IN ARGENTINA. 



A LARGE quarto of 556 pages is Vol. X 

 (for 1891) of the Anales de la Oficina Meteor- 

 ologica Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1896). It 

 contains annual summaries for the principal 

 stations and a general account of the year's 

 work by the director, "W. G. Davis. The 

 most notable meteorological phenomenon 

 of the year was a tornado, which occurred 

 on November 13th, at Arroyo-Seco, situ- 

 ated on the railroad from Buenos Aires to 

 Eosario, 19 miles from Eosario. Ten per- 

 sons were killed, and more than 80 wounded, 

 and of 50 or 60 houses in the town only 5 

 were left intact. The atmospheric condi- 

 tions preceding the tornado, its progression 

 and its destructive force, all resembled the 

 similar features familiar here in the United 

 States in connection with our own torna- 

 does. The day had been very hot, and just 

 before the occurrence of the tornado the air 

 was suffocating. The movement was from 

 southwest to northeast. One freight car, 

 weighing over 30,000 pounds, was carried a 

 distance of 98 feet from the railroad track. 

 Calculations as to the force of the wind, 



