236 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No. 276 



vations of the temperature of the surface and bottom of the water, 

 and try to plot the isothermals of 50°, 55°, 60", 65°, and 70°. The 

 reports of a vast number of former observations made wilh other 

 ends in view, but which included temperatures, are now being ex- 

 amined in Washington, and the results plotted upon charts; so 

 that the amount of data available for constructing the isothermals 

 will, by the end of the season, be very large. 



Another duty assigned to the party in the 'Grampus' is to 

 discover, if possible, the spawning-grounds of the bluefish and 

 mackerel. To this end the great masses of floating fish-eggs found 

 upon the ocean at certain seasons will be examined for the purpose 

 of determining what they are. Small hatching-apparatus have been 

 supplied ; and samples of the eggs will be hatched, and the young 

 developed sufficiently to enable the embryologists to determine what 

 they are. This work, if it is successful, is also expected to be of great 

 economic value. In order for Congress to be able to legislate in- 

 telligently for the protection of food-fishes, it is necessary that their 

 habits should be understood. If the mackerel and bluefish, for 

 instance, spawn out at sea, where there is no danger that they will 

 be disturbed by fishermen, it will be unnecessary to make laws 

 restricting the capture of them on the grounds where they are 

 usually taken. It is not probable that the capture of these fish for 

 food or other purposes makes any perceptible difference in their 

 numbers, unless they are stopped on the way to their spawning- 

 grounds. 



Dictionary of North American Indian Tribes. 



The Bureau of Ethnology has substantially completed the dic- 

 tionary of North American Indian tribes, upon the preparation of 

 which it has been engaged for many years ; and it is probable that 

 the work, comprising a volume of about five hundred pages, will 

 be published within a year. For practical as well as scientific uses, 

 this will be the most important product of the bureau since its 

 organization ; except, perhaps, the map showing the geographical 

 distribution of the linguistic famihes of Indians, a notice of which 

 was recently given in Science. The material is now in the form of 

 cards alphabetically arranged. Each card contains one title, and 

 of these there are between forty thousand and fifty thousand. 



The plan of the work is to give alphabetically the name of each 

 linguistic family, tribe, and village of the North American Indians 

 at the time of the settlement by Europeans, with all the known 

 synonymes for them. The work has involved the long and patient 

 labor of a great number of specialists under the direction of Prof. 

 H. N. Henshaw, and could not possibly have been undertaken by 

 a private individual. 



A word as to the method of preparation. The literature of the 

 North American Indians is very voluminous. Early and later ex- 

 plorers, travellers, missionaries, traders, pioneer settlers, and sol- 

 diers have written about them, or have referred to them in their 

 books. Very rarely have they been careful to be exact in the spell- 

 ing of the names of the tribes they have described ; and, when 

 they have done so, typographic errors have crept in, which have 

 been perpetuated and often added to by other writers, until the 

 synonymes have been multiplied almost without end. For ex- 

 ample : the number of different names and different spellings of the 

 same name found in literature to designate the Mohawk tribe is 

 about two hundred. The most of these would not be recognized 

 by the ordinary reader, and many of them not even by the stu- 

 dent of Indian ethnology. In fact, even the scientific man can 

 hardly read five pages of an old book on the North American In- 

 dians without encountering the name of an Indian tribe that he 

 never heard of. 



Many writers have misunderstood the names the Indians gave 

 them ; others, thinking-from the form of the name as they have 

 found it in some book that it must be incorrect, have guessed at 

 what it ought to be, and have generally corrupted it still more ; still 

 further variations have been caused by typographic errors, as has 

 already been noted, until there was almost inextricable confusion. 

 For instance : one writer speaks of the ' Roundaxes ' Indians ; an 

 earlier one, of the ' Rondaxes ; ' one still earlier, of the ' Oron- 

 dacks ; ' and the true name is the ' Adirondacks.' In another 

 case the ' Round Head ' Indians are mentioned ; a French book, 

 which was probably this author's authority, calls the same tribe 



the 'Tete de Boule;' he probably got the name from an English 

 writer who had spoken of them as ' Bullet Heads ; ' their true 

 names was ' Bull Heads.' In still another instance the reader en- 

 counters the name ' Pickpocket ' to designate a tribe. This came 

 from ' Pickwocket,' which was itself a corruption of 'Pigwolket,' 

 which somebody wrote for ' Pigwacket.' The last writer mis- 

 understood the true name ' Pagwaki.' The following is very fun- 

 ny: The ' Kouani ' tribe are first called ' Kuhus,' then ' Ku-un,' 

 then ' Kun ' (pronounced ' Coon '), and then ' Raccoon.'^ The 

 ' Sundowns ' of a certain author are the 'Samdans.' 



By a careful examination of the literature of the North American 

 Indians, all these names have been collected and arranged, first 

 under the linguistic families, and then according to tribes. When 

 thus brought together, the origin and relations of the different 

 synonymes have been discovered, although previously they were 

 not at all apparent. 



In the dictionary the name of each linguistic family will be given 

 in its proper alphabetical place, followed by a short history of each, 

 a description of it and of the country it inhabited, and a list of the 

 tribes that composed it, and of the villages in which they lived. 

 The name of each tribe will be found in its proper place, wilh a 

 list of all the synonymes for it ; each of which, in turn, will be 

 entered in alphabetical order with a cross-reference to the correct 

 name of the tribe, a statement of the linguistic family to which it 

 belongs, and a list of the villages it occupied. Finally, the name 

 of each village will be entered, followed by a brief description and 

 a statement of the tribe and linguistic family of its people, and the 

 number of its inhabitants. 



The publication of this dictionary will make intelligible much in 

 the literature of the North American Indians that has heretofore 

 been vague and confused ; it will enable the reader of books refer- 

 ring to them to identify the tribes and villages ; it will simplify the 

 labors of investigators in all other branches of Indian ethnological 

 research. For example : a great number of skulls have been 

 collected at the National Museum, where they are classified and 

 arranged for study. The collectors are many of them army 

 officers, Indian agents, and voluntary contributors, not special 

 students of ethnology, who have given the names of the tribes rep- 

 resented as they have heard or understood them. The dictionary 

 will enable the curators to identify these tribes, and thus make the 

 classification easy. Dr. Yarrow of the Army Medical Museum is 

 preparing a book on the mortuary customs of the Indians. Until 

 this dictionary is published, or he has access to it in its present 

 form, no thorough classification can be made. The dictionary will 

 also enable the government to determine the boundaries of lands 

 ceded by Indian tribes, and in many other ways clear up doubtful 

 and disputed questions. 



Reclamation of Arid Lands. 



Congress has been asked for an appropriation of two hundred 

 and fifty thousand dollars to pay for the preliminary work of dam- 

 ming up the caiions of the Rocky Mountains, from the Dominion 

 line to Mexico, and thus forming vast reservoirs of water to be 

 used in the irrigation of arid lands, and preventing the disastrous 

 floods on the lower Mississippi. The area of arid land in the 

 United States is about 1,300,000 square miles ; and Major Powell, 

 director of the National Survey, estimates that at least 150,000 

 square miles of this might be reclaimed, — a territory exceeding in 

 extent one-half of all the land now cultivated in the United States. 

 The plan is to build dams across all the canons in the mountains, 

 large enough and strong enough to hold back the floods from heavy 

 rains and melting snows, and then to let the water down, as it may 

 be needed, upon the lands that would be reclaimed. 



The preliminary work for which the appropriation is asked is to 

 pay for surveys to determine the sites and locations for the dams, 

 reservoirs, canals, and irrigation areas ; the total volume of water 

 susceptible of storage, and the loss through evaporation and seep- 

 age in the reservoirs and canals ; the area of land to be served by 

 a unit of water ; the value of the redeemed land for the growth of 

 the crops adapted to the climate and soil; the expense of construct- 

 ing the dams and canals and the expense of maintaining them ; 

 what vested rights, if any, exist. 



With ample appropriations, at least two years will be required 



