No. 373.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATCORE. 55 
ceived ; and, if the people were to become homogeneous and the 
practice of exogamy continue, some expedient must have been 
devised by which the permanent groups could be maintained and 
kinship lines be defined. The common belief of the people, kept 
virile by the universal practice of the rite of the vision, furnished this 
expedient.” “Social growth depended upon the establishment of 
distinct groups, and the one power adequate for the purpose was that 
which was believed to be capable of enforcing the union of the 
people by supernaturally inflicted penalties.” 
There were ten gentes in the Omaha tribe; exogamy prevailed, and 
descent was traced only through the father. ‘“ Each gens had its 
particular name, which referred directly or symbolically to its totem, 
which was kept in mind by the practice of tabu.” The office of the 
totem in the religious societies, in the gentes, and the tribe is 
described, and the paper closes with a discussion of the linguistic 
evidence as to the import of the totem. Peavey Russert 
GENERAL BIOLOGY. 
A Study in Heredity.’ — For the student of heredity no domestic 
animal is of greater interest than the American trotting horse and his 
brother, the pacer. The two are closely related; their development 
has been rapid and has taken place mainly during the latter half of 
the present century, and the records of ancestry and of speed, which 
have been kept accurately, give a measure of the inheritance of vari- 
ations in a large number of correlated parts. It is, therefore, a real 
service to biologists, as well, no doubt, to breeders, that Mr. A. J. 
Meston is doing in bringing together in one work the main facts 
concerning the ancestry of the best trotters and pacers. 
The first part of this work, dealing with the descendants of the 
horse known as Rysdyk’s Hambletonian ro, is what we have now 
under review. That the remaining parts will not be long forth- 
coming is to be hoped, for each part will gain in value in proportion 
to the completeness of the whole. 
The pamphlet before us opens with a list of the common sources 
of 2:10 speed arranged chronologically. Then follows an introduc- 
1 A. J. Meston, The Common Sources or Main Taproots of 2:10 Trotting and 
Pacing Speed. Rysdyk’s Hambletonian ro (Complete). Pittsfield, Mass. Pub- 
lished by the author, 1897. 32 pp. 
