790 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



civilized manners and pursuits, and to the extinction in some por- 

 tions of the country of the language with the Indians who spoke 

 them, the Indian languages are fast disappearing from the face 

 of the earth. Accordingly, a large share of the time and labor of 

 the bureau force has been, and will continue to be, devoted to the 

 record and preservation of aboriginal languages. Each year one or 

 more trained linguistic scholars are dispatched to remote parts of 

 the country, charged, as their prime duty, with the task of collect- 

 ing as much as possible of the speech of obscure tribes. To facili- 

 tate their work, and to aid and encourage linguistic students in 

 all portions of the country, a special work has been prepared by 

 the director, entitled " Introduction to the Study of Indian Lan- 

 guages." 



Comparatively little time can be devoted at present to the 

 analysis and study of the languages collected. The pressing need 

 of the moment is their preservation for the use and study of fu- 

 ture scholars. Nevertheless, the study is by no means wholly neg- 

 lected, as will be apparent from the fact that monographs are now 

 being prepared upon the Dakota languages, by J. Owen Dorsey ; 

 upon the Klamath language, by A. S. Gatschett ; upon the Tusca- 

 rora language, by J. N. B. Hewitt ; and upon Cherokee, by James 

 Mooney. 



Much has been accomplished in the direction of a comparison 

 of vocabularies and the classification of the tribes by language. A 

 book embodying the final results of this study, by Major Powell, 

 which has been many years in progress, will soon appear. The 

 number of distinct linguistic families occupying the territory 

 north of Mexico at the time of the discovery was, so far as known, 

 sixty, while the languages included in these probably numbered 

 not less than three hundred. A colored map has been completed, 

 and is now ready for publication, setting forth the areas occupied 

 by the linguistic families. 



Another important work, now far advanced toward completion, 

 is a " Dictionary of Tribal Names," in charge of Mr. H. W. Hen- 

 shaw. In this will be assembled, under each of the linguistic 

 families, all the tribes composing it. Short, succinct historical 

 and descriptive accounts will appear under the head of each family 

 and tribe, while cross-references will refer to the proper names of 

 each tribe the vast body of synonyms which have crept into liter- 

 ature since the earliest published accounts. It is calculated that 

 the above material will fill a volume of about one thousand pages. 



Mounds. — The important work of the exploration of the mounds 

 east of the Mississippi Valley is under the charge of Cyrus Thomas, 

 whose investigations cover a period of six years. The first of the 

 three volumes which will contain his final report is now ready 

 for the press. A very large number of mounds in several States 



