.gI2 General Notes. (September, 
Notes on the evidence collected by the Society for Phantasms of the dead, by 
Mrs. H. Sidgwick. 
Hallucinations, by Edmund Gurney. . : 
The calculus of probabilities applied to psychical research, by F. Y. Edgeworth. 
ANTHROPOLOGY.'! 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL PuBLIcATIoNS.—The Philosophic Grammar 
of American Languages as set forth by Wilhelm von Humboldt, 
with the translation of an unpublished memoir by him on the 
American verb, by Daniel G. Brinton, A.M., M.D., professor of 
ethnology and archeology at the American Academy of Sciences, 
Philadelphia. (Read before the American Philosophical Society, 
March 20, 1885. Philadelphia, McCalla & Stavely, pp. 50.) 
The original MS. of the memoirs is in the Royal Library at 
Berlin, whence Dr. Brinton obtained a copy. The fundamental 
ideas of the Philosophical Grammar are these: “The diversity 
of structure in languages is the necessary condition of the evolu- 
tion of the human mind.” Historic grammar traces the forms of 
a language ; comparative grammar extends the investigation over 
many dialects or languages; philosophic grammar analyzes the 
inmost nature of languages with reference to thought. It is con- 
trary to the results of study that the monosyllabic, the holo- 
phrastic and the inflectional languages. were developed one from 
another. : 
On some doubtful or intermediate Articulations ; an experi- 
ment in phonetics, by Horatio Hale, Esq. London, Harrison & 
. Sons., St. Martin’s place. 1845, pp. 243. (Reprinted from Journ. 
Anthrop. Inst., Feb., 1885.) This essay discusses the mixing of 
sounds of the same character, m, b w; d, ¿Z n,r, and seeks to 
account for it. Three theories are proposed; careless utterance ; 
slight anatomical modifications in the speaker; failure of the 
listener to catch intermediate sounds. Mr. Hale in his paper 
develops the latter view, There is no doubt, as we have shown 
in another place, that the philologist must take into considera- 
tion the ear and the eye of the receiver of language as well as 
the vocal organs or the pen of the author. Furthermore, it will 
be found that all unwritten languages are holophrastic by agglu- 
tination or by incorporation, and that monosyllabism and inflec-. 
writing. In the examples cited by Mr. Hale the difficulties are 
remedied instantly, when the missionaries invent an alphabetic 
ae a 
_,. American Languages and why we should study them, an ad- 
__ dress delivered before the Pennsylvania Historical Society, March 
9, 1885, by Daniel G. Brinton, professor of ethnology and 
archeology at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. 
(Reprinted from the Penn. Mag. of Hist. and Biog.) Philadel- 
ia, Lippincott, 1885, pp. 23. In this essay the author main- 
Edited by Professor OTIS T. Mason, National Museum, Washington, D.C. 
