624 General Notes. [ October, 
NortHern Rance or THE Bison. — Mr. E. W. Nelson, the well- 
known ornithologist, now in charge of one of the government meteo- 
rological stations in Alaska, writes me as follows under date of St. Mi- 
chael’s, Alaska, July 11, 1877: “I have met here two gentlemen who 
crossed the mountains from British Columbia and came to Fort Yukon 
through British America, from whom I have derived some information 
about the buffalo (Bison Americanus) which will be of interest to you. 
These gentlemen descended the Peace River, and on about the one 
hundred and eighteenth degree of longitude made a portage to Hay 
River, directly north. On this portage they saw thousands of buffalo 
skulls, and old trails, in some instances two or three feet deep, Jeading 
_ east and west. They wintered on Hay River, near its entrance into 
Great Slave Lake, and here found the buffalo still common, occupy- 
ing a restricted territory along the southern border of the lake. This 
was in 1871. They made inquiry concerning the large number of 
skulls seen by them on the portage, and learned that about fifty years 
before snow fell to the estimated depth of fourteen feet, and so envel- 
oped the animals that they perished by thousands. It is asserted that 
these buffaloes are larger than those of the plains.” This is con firmatory 
of the statements I have elsewhere given of the comparatively recent 
presence of the bison near Great Slave Lake and on Peace and Hay 
rivers. — J. A. ALLEN. 
ANTHROPOLOGY. 
“ANTHROPOLOGICAL News. — Two very important contributions to 
American ethnology have just been issued from Major Powell’s office. 
One is entitled Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages, with 
Words, Phrases, and Sentences to be collected, by J. W. Powell. The 
paper is to be one of the chapters of a Manual of North American Eth- 
nography, which Major Powell will shortly publish with the aid of emi- 
nent specialists. The other work is volume i. of Contributions to 
North American Ethnology, issued by the Interior Department. 
I. of this volume contains On the Distribution and Nomenclature of the 
Native Tribes of Alaska and the Adjacent Territory, by W. H. Dall. 
On a Succession of Shell-Heaps on the Aleutian Islands, by the same 
Remarks on the Origin of the Innuit, by the same. Appendix to Part 
I. contains Notes on the Natives of Alaska, by J. Furnhelm. Terms of 
Relationship used by the Innuit, by W. H. Dall. Comparative Vocab- 
ularies, by George Gibbs and W. H. Dall. Part II. embraces a paper 
on the Tribes of Western Washington Territory and Northwestern Or 
egon, with Maps, by G. Gibbs. The appendix to Part LI. contains 
Comparative Vocabularies, by Messrs. Gibbs, Tolmie, and Mengarinis 
pa 
Niskwalli-English Dictionary and English-Niskwalli: Dictionary, by & 
Gibbs. i 
ae, 9 
The Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences has issued Part 
