504 The American Naturalist. [May, 
the Zapotec Indians.’’ These meritorious antiquarian inquiries of the 
Berlin savant are profusely illustrated with wood-cuts in such manner 
that the original colors are made apparent from the drawings.—A. S. G. 
Huastec Language.— Reliable information upon this language 
of Eastern Mexico is not easily obtainable. We notice with agree- 
able surprise that a treatise of considerable extent has just been 
published by a native of that country, by the Statistical Bureau of 
Mexico. ` The title runs as follows: ‘(Cartilla huasteca con su 
gramatica, diccionario, y varias reglas para aprender el idioma, etc. 
por Marcelo Alejandre, Mexico, Calle de San Andrés, numero 15, 
1890, Quarto, pp. 179. The Huastec language is the northernmost 
of the Maya dialects, and differs very considerably from all others in 
the lexicon and in the grammatic portion. This difference is ascribed 
by linguists to the archaic character of the language, but other causes 
may also have been at work. The nouns do not inflect for case, but 
for number only ; for the verb the author establishes two conjugations, 
according to the suffixes which are employed in forming the preterit 
tense. The personal pronoun is placed separate from the verb. The 
dictionary, by Lamberto Asiain, contains about 2900 items, and is 
supplemented by a Spanish-Huastec part. There are two principal 
dialects of Huastec, the Potosino and the Veracruzano; they are 
spoken at Tantoyuca, Chontla, Tantima, Amatlan, San Antonio, 
Tancoco, and are heard sporadically also at Ozuluama, in the state of 
Vera Cruz, where Alejandré composed his Cartilla or elementary 
manual. The volume concludes with some specimens of conversation 
and poetry in that language, and makes mention of historic traditions 
once current among the ancestors of the present Indian population. 
—A. S. G. 
Zapotec Language.—The Licentiate Francisco Belmar, of Oajaca, 
has composed a juvenile manual for the study of the mountain dialect 
of the Zapotec, which is spoken in the central parts of the state of 
Oajaca, Mexico. The thirty pages of the little book are filled with 
Zapotec words, arranged after the number of syllables which they 
contain, and with their Spanish definitions ; the book concludes with 
some religious short texts, and although the translation is not added z 
, the lexical portion of the Cartilla, which was published in 
Oajaca, 1890 (16mo), will be of service to the students of linguistics 
at large.—A. S. G. 
Mixtec and Mije are two aboriginal nations of Oajaca, mae 
Mexico, which have retained their Indian languages in a comparative'y 
