1896]. Scientific News. 693 
colored words signifying degree of ethnic importance, advanced methods 
of construction, superiority in the arts, and kinship to other peoples. 
Meanwhile the excavation and production of the strange carvings in 
wood, the human masks, the unique paintings, the hafts of wood and 
tools of shell, the relics of rope and fabric, remain in evidence to speak 
in manifold praise of the enthusiastic searcher who while telling 
his glowing story has shown that he has known where to dig and dug 
with effect. 
Symbols inscribed upon the drawings of birds, totemic buttons 
arrangements for burial with reference to the “four quarters of the 
world,” the paraphrenalia of priests buried together in the mud here 
seek explanation at the hands of an interpreter, whose experience should 
have qualified him for the task. Luckily the elucidation of the alle- 
gorical meaning òf the serpent and the raccoon, the gopher and the bat, 
the badger and the cormorant, tokens of gods of the dead and the liv- 
ing of the morn and the dusk, has fallen to the lot of one whose knowl- 
edge of the mystic inner life of the Indian, gathered upon a painful 
path of Zuni initiation might best recognize in the manifold characters 
of these remains a symbolism hidden to other eyes.—Henry C. MERCER. 
SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 
The International Geological Congress will hold its seventh session, 
in 1897, at St. Petersburg, Russia. The presidential chair on that 
occasion will be occupied by M. A. Karpinsky. * A number of interest- 
ing excursions have been planned to take place both before and after 
the meeting. It is proposed to visit Finland and the Ural country, to 
examine the basins of the Don, the Volga and the Dneiper. While the 
grand tour at the close of the Session covers the ground from St. Peters- 
burg to the Caucasus, giving opportunity for special examinatlon of 
many interesting localities. 
The circular of announcement gives the following information in the 
closing paragraph. 
“The Committee on Organization takes pleasure in making known 
to you_that His Majesty the Emperor, upon the report of his Excel- 
leney the Minister of Ways of Communication (Transportation) has 
deigned to grant to all the geologists (who give notice in time of their 
