AMERICAN ASSOCIA TION FOR THE AD VANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 3 OS- 



PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF 



SCIENCE. 



SYNOPSIS OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRTIETH ANNUAL MEETING. 



This Association met August i8, 1881, in Music Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio, in 

 the presence of a large audience composed of the savans of this country, with 

 many from abroad. The great organ of the hall first gave forth a magnificent 

 voluntary, rendered in a masterly way, by Mr. Winthrop Sterling. Prof. George 

 J. Brush, of the Yale Scientific School, then called the meeting to order. The 

 retiring President, Mr. L. H. Morgan, of Rochester, being absent on account of 

 sickness and advanced age, the usual address from this officer was omitted. Rev. 

 Dr. Ridgaway, of Cincinnati, and Ex-Secretary J. D. Cox, delivered an address 

 of welcome, which was replied to by President Brush. A very large list of mem- 

 bers elected at a previous business meeting was then announced. 



In the afternoon session the various sections and sub-sections met in their 

 respective rooms and proceeded to elect officers for the current year. 



In Section A, after the election of its officers. Chairman Mallery read an 

 able paper on the Gesture Speech of Man, of which the following is an abstract: 



Anthropology tells the march of mankind out of savagery in which different 

 peoples have advanced in varying degrees, but all started in progress in civiliza- 

 tion from a point lower than that now occupied by the lowest of the tribes now 

 found on earth. The marks of their rude origin, retained by all, are of the same 

 number and kind, though differing in distinctness, showing a common origin ta 

 all intellectual and social development, notwithstanding present diversities. The 

 most notable criterion of difference is in the copiousness and precision of oral 

 speech, and connected with that, both as to origin and structure, is the unequal 

 survival of gesture signs, which it is believed once universally prevailed. Where 

 sign language survives, it is, therefore, an instructive vestige of the pre-historic 

 epoch, and its study may solve problems in philology and psychology. That 

 study is best pursued by comparing the pre-eminent gesture system of the North 

 American Indians with the more degenerate or less developed systems of other 

 peoples. 



The conditions and circumstances attending the prevalence, and sometimes 

 the disuse, of sign language in North America were explained. The report of 

 travelers that among Indians, as well as other tribes of men, some were unable 

 to converse in the dark, because they could not gesture, is false. It is the old 

 story of barbarian, appUed by the Greeks to all who did not speak Greek, re- 

 peated by Isaiah of the "stammering" Assyrians, and now appearing in the term- 



