154 The Glassijicatory System of 



mass for the same purpose. Lastly, the force can be applied 

 to a large number of purposes, viz., pumping, the extinction 

 of fires, ventilation, reduction of temperature and others, 

 as well as to auxiliary propulsion. 



The comparison is made with sailing ships, because on 

 account of the great cost and inconvenience of fuel foi: 

 steam-power at sea, sailing ships still successfally carry on 

 the bulk of the world's commerce ; and if their only draw- 

 back, viz. the unreliability and contrariety of the winds 

 wliich impel them can be overcome, as is proposed to be done 

 on this principle, by applying the indirect but cumulated 

 force of those winds, it may, notwithstanding unreasoning 

 prejudices which such an assertion may elicit, be found 

 unnecessary to import fuel from the land, when nature has 

 provided a never ending supply of the vastest force ever at 

 hand on the highway of the ocean. 



Art. LIII. — The Glassificatory System of Kinship. By 

 Rev. Lorimer Fison. 



[Read 9tli December, 1872.] 



About the year 184^8, the Hon. Lewis H. Morgan, of 

 Rochester, New York, found among the L^oquois Indians a 

 most extraordinary system of relationship widely differing 

 from that with which we are familiar. He then supposed 

 it to be an invention of, and confined to that particular tribe. 

 But in the year 1857, having occasion to re-examine the 

 subject, there occurred to him the possibihty that it might 

 prevail among other Indian tribes, and if so, how important 

 a use might be made of it for ethnological purposes. 

 Extending therefore his inquiries during the following 

 summer, he found precisely the same system among the 

 Ojibwa Indians, of Lake Superior. Every word used by 

 them as a term of kinship was radically different fi:om the 

 corresponding term in the Iroquois ; and yet in every case 

 the meaning was the same. Before 1860, having found the 

 system throughout the five principal stock languages 

 eastward of the Rocky Mountains, and having moreover 

 discovered traces of it in the Sandwich Islands, and in 

 Southern India, he was encouraged to prosecute his 

 researches on a more extended scale. He therefore solicited 



