1876.] Anthropology. 181 
tion with American ethnology is more desirable than that every Indian 
agent in the country would furnish us with a manuscript of the tone and 
tenor of this splendid work. — O. T. Mason. 
American ARCHÆOLOGY. — Two very interesting pamphlets have 
been published recently in Rio Janeiro, from the pen of Professor Ch. 
Fred Hartt: one entitled Amazonian Tortoise Myths, the other, Notes 
on the Manufacture of Pottery among Savage Races. In the former we 
have from the Lingua Geral, or modern Tupi language, spoken at Ereré, 
Santarem, and on the Tapajos River, the fables founded on the exploits 
of the Jabuti or tortoise, and other mythical animals, — monkeys, tapirs, 
buzzards, ete. In the latter is an account of the process of pottery- 
making and ornamentation, embracing the materials, the tools, the proc- 
esses, and the products, together with a copious bibliographical refer- 
ence, 
M. Roban, in the second number of Le Musée Archéologique, speaks 
of the handles used for flint hatchets by the ancient Mexicans. Amon 
others he draws attention to weapons formed by inserting bits of obsidian 
in a grooved wooden handle, resembling the Polynesian shark’s-teeth 
spears and swords. These obsidian weapons are described and figured 
in Schoolcraft, v. 290, and in the Smithsonian Contributions, vol. xi., art. 
1x., p. 180. 
Mr. Hyde Clarke has published in pamphlet form, through Trübner 
& Co., an article from the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 
entitled Researches in Prehistoric and Protohistoric Comparative Phi- 
lology, Mythology, and Archæology, in connection with the Origin of 
Culture in America and the Accad or Sumerian Families. The design 
of the author is, in his own words, “ to bring archaic philology into 
reunion with those nascent studies of anthropology, archeology, and my- 
thology, which have met with acceptance and popularity.” He has else- 
Where spoken of the similarity between the Agaw of the Nile and the 
Abkhass of the Caucasus with the Omagua and Guarani of Brazil. He 
first draws attention to the Pygmean and other so-called prehistoric 
rosy of North and South America, of Africa, and of the islands of the 
Pacific Ocean, and then by parallels of culture he reviews the tribes of 
the two hemispheres, somewhat similarly to the plan pursued by E. B. 
Tylor in tracing the growth of culture, and by Colonel Lane Fox in 
: following the evolution of implements and weapons. He regards, for 
Philologica] purposes, Egyptian, Sumero-Peruvian, Chinese, Tibetan, 
= ad Dravidian languages as protohistoric. In addition to resemblances 
of language between the continents, the author enforces his opinions by 
Parallels of racial characters, by similar customs of head-shaping, def- 
mations of teeth, ears, and other members, circumcision, monumental 
aari. S, Monolithic and megalithic monuments, statues, towers, and os- 
ri 
ike 
es; by their metallurgy, masonry, pottery, and weaving; by their 
myths and beliefs ; by their calendars, and by their social and 
