146 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [VoL. XXXIV. 
wishing to examine it. Further evidence was obtainable only in the 
locality whence it came. No opportunity to seek such evidence has 
yet occurred during the short period in which the skull has been in 
the possession of the Peabody Museum, 
The sixth summer meeting of “ The American Association to Pro- 
mote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf" was held at the Clarke 
School for the Deaf, Northampton, Mass., in June, 1899. In his 
presidential address Dr. Alexander Graham Bell reviewed the his- 
tory of the association from the time of its foundation in 1890, A 
condensed account was also given of the present condition of instruc- 
tion in speech-teaching in the United States. Only a few years ago 
silent methods of instruction of deaf-mutes were everywhere in vogue ; 
now speech is used as a means of instruction with the majority of 
such pupils (53.1 per cent), and the total number taught speech and 
speech-reading amounts to 6460, or 61.4 per cent of the whole. 
There is a steady increase in the percentage of speech-teaching, and 
Dr. Bell believes that the time is not far distant when speech will 
be taught to every deaf child in America. In a reprint from Zhe 
Association Review, Dr. Bell adds a number of tables of statistics 
compiled from the American Annals of the Deaf. These show the 
number of schools, pupils, teachers, and give lists of the schools, 
with their location, official names, directors, etc. ti 
GENERAL BIOLOGY. 
A Study of Heredity among the Deaf.!— We are indebted to 
Professor Edward Allen Fay for an important contribution to the 
data of heredity. The collection of the large mass of material and 
publication of the expensive tables were made possible by a liberal 
use of the funds of the Volta Bureau, an institution endowed by 
Dr. Alexander Graham Bell “ for the increase and diffusion of knowl- 
edge relating to the deaf.” 
The inquiry was begun in 1889. Circulars containing questions to 
be answered were distributed widely among heads of schools for the 
deaf, the deaf themselves, and their relatives and friends. Facts 
were gathered also from journals for the deaf, school reports, and 
Fay, E. A. Marriages of the soc in America. Washington, The Volta 
Verdes: 1898 (1899). vii, 527 pp. 
