EEPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 53 



ology show a wide and intimate acquaintance with the literature and peoples of both 

 continents, and his various writings exemplify his scholarly taste and strong power 

 of philosophic comparison. Among the papers pertaining to this subject prepared 

 by Colonel Mallery are: Manners and Meals, Greeting by Gesture, Customs of Cour- 

 tesy, Philosophy and Specialties, and The Gesture Speech of Man. His study, 

 "Israelite and Indian — a parallel in planes of culture," provoked much discussion 

 among scientific men, and was translated into the German by Dr. Fredericks. Krauss. 

 In the words of a lifedong friend, Garrick Mallery was " the gallant soldier with 

 a stainless record; the scholar largely read in the literature of his own and other 

 times; the man of science who has left an imperishable record of ingenious and far- 

 reaching research ; the trusted councilor in the societies which honored him with 

 their highest dignities; the genial companion; the affectionate husband; the staunch 

 friend; the high-bred gentleman." 



James Owen Dorsey. — In the death of Mr. Dorsey American ethnology lost a bril- 

 liant student. Born in Baltimore October 31, 1848, he acquired his primary education 

 in the schools of his native city. At an early age he evinced a marked precocity in the 

 acquirement of language; it is said that at 6 he learned the Hebrew alphabet, and 

 ere he reached his eleventh year he could read the language with facility. At 14 

 young Dorsey entered the Central High School, now City College, and pursued the 

 classic course, but during his second year he was constrained to abandon his studies 

 by reason of ill health. In the autumn of 1867 he entered the preparatory depart- 

 ment of the Theological Seminary of Virginia, and the junior class iu 1869. Two 

 years later he was ordained a deacon of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and in 

 May began mission work among the Ponka Indians of Dakota Territory. But the 

 rigorous climate and the vicissitudes of early frontier life soon affected his health, 

 which was never robust, and after serious attacks of illness in July, 1872, and early 

 in 1873, he was compelled to abandon his mission work in August of the latter year, 

 soon after he had acquired the ability to converse with the Indians Avithout the aid 

 or an interpreter. Returning to Maryland he was engaged in parish work until 

 July, 1878. 



While pursuing his work as missionary among the Indians, Mr. Dorsey became a 

 correspondent of the Smithsonian Institution. His profound knowledge of the dia- 

 lects of the Siouan languages early attracted the attention of Maj. J. W. Powell, at 

 whose instance he was sent among the Omaha tribe in 1878 for the purpose of 

 acquiring additional linguistic and other anthropologic material, remaining among 

 that people until the spring of 1880. In the meantime, upon the organization of 

 the Bureau of Ethnology, in 1879, he was immediately chosen one of the scientific 

 corps and was arduously engaged in linguistic and sociologic work up to the time of 

 the illness which terminated in his death in this city on February 4, 1895. 



His great modesty and his strong conviction that the views of a student should be 

 molded by truths prevented him from formulating subjective theories by which to 

 judge the value of his facts. In the later years of his studies in linguistic morphol- 

 ogy he began to feel the inadequacy of the venerable agglutination theory to explain 

 all the facts of word structure prevailing in the languages he was studying, and 

 he came to look upon adaptation — the infusing with a new meaning or function an 

 element which before had or had not any definite signification — as an important 

 and potent factor in the genesis and development of morphologic structures. 

 His mastery of the wealth of forms in the languages he studied enabled him to 

 illustrate copiously the working of this principle. His linguistic acumen and pains- 

 taking accuracy are brought out in his interlinear translations of numerous and 

 voluminous texts, both in print and in manuscript. His marvelous aptitude in 

 discriminating, grasping, and retaining sounds enabled him to obtain accurate 

 vocabularies and texts with great ease, and to detect differences of meaning and 

 function through differences of sound. His freedom from subjective theories, his 

 deep erudition, and enlightened conservatism made him one of the foremost 

 authorities in American linguistics. 



