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1877.] Proceedings of Socteties. 447 
clans, and tribes have their own special tutelary deity, whose image is 
their badge or totem. 
The land of want, in their hereafter, is always open; there go the bad 
souls. The conditions of admission to the land of plenty are vague and 
variously fixed. There the few living righteous will meet the many good 
who have died in the past. Who are the good and who the bad? Their 
standards are as different from ours as their ideas of meteors. The bad 
man may be he who failed to sacrifice to his tutelar deity the spleen of 
the last elk killed ; or he who slept on his back the night before the bat- 
tle, when lis gods had taught him to sleep on his belly. It is certain 
that the Indian philosophy is a stage of progress and not a degeneration 
of monotheism. Nor does it proceed from classical polytheism, in which 
human attributes were deified, nor that earlier kind where the forces and 
phenomena of nature were deified. Their myths are not symbols. The 
Indian gods are animal gods, and the Indian religion zodlatry, a develop- a 
ment from fetichism. 
February 24th. Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of Major Powell’s Survey, read a 
paper on Geological Investigations in the Henry Mountains of Utah. 
These mountains stand in the midst of a plateau region, and form sev- 
eral groups or subgroups, the structure of which is exposed by erosion 
and denudation. They were formed by an upward flow of lava through 
horizontal strata, which flow did not reach the surface, but apparently 
severed the connection between two layers and intruded itself between 
them in the form of a mound or low cone, the superincumbent strata 
being forced up without fracture in the form of a dome which reached 
an angle at the sides of some sixty degrees. The superincumbent strata 
have been largely removed by natural causes. The facts were very re- 
markable and not yet fully explained. To these formations or. subter- 
ranean lava cones .he had applied the name of Jaculttes. 
Boston Sociery or Naturat History. — February 21st. Mr. C. 
S. Minot read a paper on the Systematic Position of the Trematodes, 
and Mr. Scudder made a communication on “ perfect ’’ and “ imperfect ” 
metamorphoses of insects. 
March 21st. Papers were read by Dr. T. M. Brewer, entitled Notes 
by Captain Bendire on the Birds of Oregon ; and by Mr. Scudder on 
Polymorphism of our Blue Butterflies. 
Appatacntan Movuntarn Crus, Boston. — February 14th.. Ọs- 
good’s White Mountain Guide Book was discussed and criticized. Mr. 
George Dimmock described a trip to Mount Mitchell, in North Carolina, 
and Miss M. F. Whitman a climb through Tuckerman’s Ravine. 
March 14th. Prof. J. H. Huntington read a paper on the Source of 
the Connecticut River. . 
ERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL Society, New York.— March 13th. 
Dr. W. J. Morton lectured on South African Diamond Fields and the 
Journey to the Mines. 
