1886. ] Axthropology. 195 
rancherias of the surrounding country; in letters 2, 3 and 4 are 
contained vocables, paradigms and the like of the San Gabriel 
language, which belongs to the Shoshondan family and has been 
variously termed Kish (“houses”), Tobikhar and San Gabriel 
dialect—A. S. Gatschet. 
KICHE GRAMMAR:—A short abstract of a Kiché grammar in 
Spanish, dated Santa Clara, Dec. 6, 1842, and composed by L 
Aleman (pp. 26, 8vo), was sent by A. Blomme to the Congress 
of Americanists at Copenhagen (1883). The revises came in at 
so late a day that this elementary grammar could not be inserted 
in the Compte-rendu of that session, but the secretary ordered it 
to be struck off in a separate edition, a copy of which is before 
us. Mr. Blomme has given an historical account of the manu- 
script in the Compte-rendu, page 365. The grammar is written 
entirely in the old-fashioned way of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, when every missionary was sure to find the classifica- 
tions and grammatic categories of Latin in any Indian language 
whatsoever. Aleman’s Kiché cases of the noun, dative, ablative, 
etc., are simply postpositions connected with a noun ; the verb 
coh is regarded as identical with the verb substantive, and a “ sub- 
junctive” is found to occur through all the tense-forms of this 
Guatemaltec language.—A. S. Gatschet. 
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, founded in 
1879 by Dr. J. M. Toner, Professor Otis T. Mason and Col. Gar- 
rick Mallery, has just published its third volume of Transactions, 
extending from Nov. 6, 1883, to May 19, 1885. Among the 
papers included are the following, reported in full : 
The Smithsonian anthropological collections for 1883. By Albert Niblack. 
Discontinuities in nature’s method. By H. H. Bates, 
Elements in modern civilization. By J. M. Gregory. 
sae tan of the antiquity of man on the site of the City of Mexico. By Wm. H 
olmes 
How the problems of American anthropology present themselves to the English 
ind . B. Tylor. - 
The Eskimo of Baffin land. By Franz Boas. 
Seal catching at Point Barrow. By John Murdoch. 
On the probable nationality of the mound-builders. By Daniel G. Brinton. 
Moral and material progress contrasted. By Lester F. Ward i 
The genesis of invention. By F. A. Seely. 
Sinew-backed bow of the Eskimo. By John Murdoch. 
From savagery to barbarism. Address by J. W. Powell, president. 
Papers by Messrs. Kengla, Dorsey, Holmes, Blodgett, Thomas, 
Ward, Thompson, Gallaudet, Burnett, Reynolds, Howitt, Mindeleff, 
Matthews, Henshaw, Stevenson and Gatschet are given in abstract, 
but, as they will be published elsewhere in full, no mention of 
their contents will be made here. 
Mr. Bates draws attention to the seeming chasms in nature, such 
