48 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



was afterwards prosecuted on a much more extended scale than was 

 compatible with the means of the Institution by the Sanitary Com- 

 mission, and the observations have since been discussed by Dr. JB. A. 

 Gould, of Cambridge, who has deduced from them a series of novel 

 and interesting results, which were lately presented to the National 

 Academy. It is proposed to extend similar measurements to the 

 Indian tribes, and it is very desirable that the negro should be em- 

 braced in the same investigation. We have in this country at 

 the present time a better opportunity to study the peculiarities of 

 a number of races than is perhaps to be found in any other single 

 portion of the earth, and the most casual observer cannot but be 

 struck with the marked difference which exists between the Indian, 

 the negro, and indeed between the descendants of the civilized in- 

 habitants of different parts of Europe, thousands of whom are now 

 flocking to our shores. 



The stubborn self-reliance and impatience of control of the Indian 

 are strikingly contrasted with the docility and imitative qualities of the 

 negro. The inflexibility of the characteristics of the former, with the 

 gradual changes and amelioration of the character of the latter in his 

 association with the white man, are worthy of special attention. 



It may be proper here to mention that we have received a commu- 

 nication from Dr. B. H.Davis, one of the authors of the first volume 

 of Smithsonian Contributions, pointing out an error in Lubbock's ac- 

 count of Smithsonian publications on ethnology, copied from the Nat- 

 ural History Review, of London, in our report for 1862. In this 

 article (page 322) the sculptured stone pipes found in the mounds are 

 classed under the head of pottery. This error, says Dr. Davis, does 

 injustice not only to American aboriginal art, but also misleads Euro- 

 pean ethnologists in regard to a series of sculptures pronounced by 

 all who have seen them to be illustrations of the highest stage of art 

 attained in the stone age of America. The same mistake is now re- 

 produced in the publications of the Anthropological Society of Lon- 

 don, and in Lubbock's Prehistoric Times. The fact is that the pipes 

 described in the first volume of the Smithsonian Contributions were 

 not of terra-cotta. None of this kind were found in the mounds, and 

 but few anywhere in the country. 



Intimately connected with ethnology and anthropology is archae- 

 ology, or the study of remains of the ancient inhabitants of a coun- 

 try. To those who have paid any attention to the subject, it is well 

 known that recently very interesting discoveries have been made of 

 the remains of lacustrine villages in Switzerland, Italy, and Germany; 



