REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 53 
classed according to culture grades. Comparison is made with the 
customs of the South Sea Islanders and the Kabyles, among whom 
trephining has long been practiced with a heroic exhibition of forti- 
tude and an even greater recklessness of consequences than among 
the Peruvians. The South Sea Islanders hacked and scraped the 
skull with stone and shell, and covered the wound with plates of 
cocoanut. The operation was performed in some cases for the relief 
of simple headache. The Muniz series contains but six crania which 
indicate a therapeutic motive; these operations were performed to 
relieve traumatic lesions, and all resulted fatally. 
The second paper, “The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Ari- 
zona,” is accompanied by a map which shows the extent of the 
pueblo region within the limits of the United States. The Canyon 
de Chelly is located near the center of an area which embraces nearly 
all of Arizona, eastern and central Utah, western New Mexico, and 
a small portion of southwestern Colorado. 
Mr. Mindeleff’s observations show that the cliff dwellers were 
Indians, and not a race distinct from the neighboring tribes. The 
cliff houses were erected in easily defended situations, where ledges 
afforded foundations and roofs, and where suitable blocks of stone 
for the walls were abundant. The same people also possessed 
pueblos near their unprotected agricultural lands. Gradations are 
found from the cliff to the pueblo type of domicile. 
Dr. Cyrus Thomas, in a publication entitled Zhe Maya Year, 
has shown that the year recorded in the Dresden codex consisted of 
eighteen months of twenty days each. The origin and signification 
of the symbols in the Maya, Tzewtal, Quiche-Cakchiquel, Zapotic, 
and Nahuatl, representing each of these twenty days, form the sub- 
ject of the paper entitled “ Day Symbols of the Maya Year.” The 
Maya scribes had not reached that advanced stage where they could 
indicate each letter sound by a glyph or symbol; yet the characters 
used were to a certain extent phonetic. The symbols were not true 
alphabetic signs, but syllabic, in some cases ideographic, or in others 
simply abbreviated pictorial representations. 
The memoir by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes on “Tusayan Snake Cere- 
monies ” deals with a modification, produced by peculiar environ- 
mental conditions, of the serpent cultus which extended from the 
St. Lawrence to Peru. The ceremonies observed at the Hopi villages 
of Oraibi, Cipaulovi, and Cufiopavi are described in detail, and the 
conclusion is reached that “ the worship of a great snake plays no 
part, but the dance is simply the revival of the worship of the Snake 
