526 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



the Other rehgions of the world. He hopes to foster and cultivate the family 

 and parental idea without any corresponding reality, without any aid from out- 

 side, indeed, except an apparatus of external ceremony, which feigns the exist- 

 istence of a purely ideal mate, and affects to indulge in the expectation of impos- 

 sible offspring. Doubtless he thinks that there is nothmg so good as the courtly 

 attitude of a pigeon toward his mate, especially if there be no mate to justify it ; 

 nothing more touching than the patient preparation for offspring and the educa- 

 tion of the young, especially if there be no young to complicate the problem of 

 tenderness and foresight, by requiring a real supply of food and attention. 



This eccentric pigeon seems to be a solitary thinker of the Comtist kind, who 

 hopes to solve the problem of preserving to the full all the higher instincts of bird- 

 life, without the difficulties involved in supplying those instinct with real objects. 

 If a human thinker can empty religion of its meaning, and yet justify all its forms 

 and sentiments and external rites, and if he is to receive nothing but praise for 

 his achievement, why may we not regard with interest and admiration the effort 

 of an eccentric bird to retain all the ceremonial forms of chivalrous observance 

 and elaborate parental care and patience, without, in fact, complicating the situ- 

 ation by admitting the neighborhood of either wife or child ? To our mind, the 

 idiosyncrasies of such a creature as this deserve the most attentive study. Who 

 knows whether we might not find in the world of eccentric instinct all sorts of 

 anticipations of eccentric intellect? Who knows whether we might not find 

 genius and originality in other races of animals which would throw as much light 

 upon the genius and originality of man as the eccentricities of this pigeon seem 

 to throw on the eccentricities of a most active and confident school of modern 

 thought? If John Stuart Mill were right in thinking it a sacred duty not to dis- 

 courage the milder lunacies of human beings, might we not with equal advantage 

 extend his exhortation, and make it include the duty of protecting the independ- 

 ent development of the idiosyncrasies of bird and beast, in the hope of finding in 

 them some clew to the various oddities and harmless insanities of human thought 

 and action ? — American Field. 



BOOK NOTICES. 



Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Eihnology, 1880-81: By J. 

 W. Powell, Director. 8vo., pp. 477. Illustrated. Government Printing 

 Office, 1883. 



The first part of this handsome volume consists of an account of the opera- 

 tions of the Bureau for the fiscal year by Major Powell himself, the remainder is 

 devoted to special papers by his assistants, illustrating the methods and re- 

 searches prosecuted under the direction of the Bureau. 



Among these papers are an account' by Frank H. Gushing, of the Smithson- 



