K^NS^S CITY 



Review of Science and Industry, 



A MONTHLY RECORD OF PROGRESS IN 



SCIENCE, MECHANIC ARTS AND LITERATURE. 

 VOL V. AUGUST, 1881. NO. 4. 



ETHNOLOGY. 



f 



CONTRIBUTION TO THE HISTORY OF THE ALEUTIAN ISLES, 



OR ALEUTIA. 



BY ARTHUR B. STOUT, M. D. , SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA. 



In the course of the year 1874, the CaUfornia Academy of Sciences re- 

 ceived the donation from the Alaska Commercial Company, of San Francisco, of 

 two skeletons or mummies. These specimens were two from a collection of a 

 dozen or more which were by them presented to the Smithsonian Institution at 

 Washington. A report upon these latter was published by the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution, and written by W. H. Dall, U. S. G. S., in 1878. To this very valua- 

 ble essay on " The Remains of Later Prehistoric Man," I refer, with great pleas- 

 ure, for many important details omitted in this paper. 



The two mummies in question have remained in my care, as Curator of the 

 Department of Comparative Anatomy of the Academy, since 1874, and, except 

 to open the cases which contained the bodies, to disinfect and carbohze them, I 

 have not until now ventured to study them. But such is the increasing interest 

 in anthropology ; in the prehistoric condition of man ; his evolution ; his ethnologic 

 and archaeologic history, that I have thought it important to disturb these remains 

 and offer the work for comparison with that of other similar researches. 



The source whence these mummies was procured is best described by quot- 

 ing as follows from the report of Mr. Dall : 



V— 13 



