December 12, 1884.] 



SCIENCE. 



527 



whether in his sleeping or waking hours, with 

 the apparent sight or presence of a person 

 whom he knows, shall immediately, without 

 waiting for further investigation, state that 

 fact on a postal-card, and mail it to the society, 

 being careful to give the name of the person ; 

 also that any remarkable connection between 

 this impression and any other circumstance 

 subsequently discovered shall be sent in an- 

 other communication. It should be distinctly 

 understood that no case will be taken into ac- 

 count unless it is shown that the first card was 

 mailed before the knowledge contained in the 

 second was acquired. A correspondence of 

 this sort might lead to something worthy of 

 inquuy and investigation. 



The evidence of haunted houses is entirety 

 different in kind, but I must frankly admit that 

 Mr. Gurne}-'s repl}- to what I said on the sub- 

 ject in my previous paper does not strike me as 

 satisfactory : indeed, he quite mistakes the point 

 of my illustration, which was intended to show 

 that events are all the time happening which 

 we are unable to explain. The same logic that 

 he uses would, it seems to me, lead to the con- 

 clusion that all tricks of the juggler which we 

 could not explain after the most careful exami- 

 nation must be due to some other than known 

 general causes. The general rule which we all 

 unconsciously apply is, that if, upon investi- 

 gating a class of seemingly unaccountable phe- 

 nomena, we readily explain one-half, then 

 explain another portion after much investiga- 

 tion, and with yet additional toil and industry 

 succeed in explaining a third, but finally still 

 have an inexplicable residuum, we conclude 

 that this residuum could also be explained if 

 we knew all the circumstances. This is the 

 conclusion which everybody adopts in the af- 

 fairs of common life ; and I see no reason for 

 making an exception to it in the case of that 

 small collection of haunted houses which the 

 committee on the subject has found it impossi- 

 ble to explain. 



To sum up, I deem it essential that psychic 

 investigators should find stronger evidence for 

 the improbable than for the impossible. 



Simon Newcomb. 



SOME IMPLEMENTS OF THE MINNE- 

 SOTA J IB WAS. 



The uses of a portion of the implements 

 figured in Abbott's ' Ancient stone implements 

 of eastern North America ' are still somewhat 

 open to conjecture. One group, comprising 

 oval, grooved pebbles, has recently been re- 

 duced by Dr. Abbott to a classification com- 

 prehending mauls, club-heads, bone-breakers, 

 and net- weights respectively (Science, iii. 701 ) . 

 These neolithic objects, and a second series 

 closely allied to them, appearing in considera- 

 ble numbers upon the New-Jersey coast, are 

 attributed by their discoverer to the Indian 

 races inhabiting the countiy when first colo- 

 nized by Europeans ; that is to say, to the 

 Lenni Lenape, or Delawares. 



Now, the latter tribe, if it may still be called 

 a tribe, is a cognate of our Algonkin-Ojibwas 

 of the north-west. The languages of the two 

 peoples are essentially the same, being dialects 

 of the common Algonkin tongue, like the 

 speech of the Canadian Crees, of the New- 

 England Indians (preserved to us by the Eliot 

 Bible) , and of other nations. The Ojibwas, 

 therefore, may not unreasonably be expected 

 to retain, at the present time, vestiges of early 

 race-ideas and race-practices which may, per- 

 haps, serve in some way to illustrate the 

 archeology of dead branches of the parent 

 stock. Hence the writer of this paper thought 

 it not amiss to set on foot inquiries touching 

 the actual use of the two sets of implements 

 instanced among the Ojibwas of Red Lake, 

 northern Minnesota, where, owing to peculiar 

 isolation, tribal peculiarities are believed to 

 have been retained to an exceptional degree. 



The members of the second series of imple- 

 ments, indicated above, are described as flat, 

 discoidal pebbles, with side-notches, which in 

 thickness vary little from about half an inch. 

 These Dr. Abbott regards as almost certainly 

 net- weights, considering that there would be 

 no room for doubt upon the subject, were it 

 an ascertained fact that the Delawares of pre- 

 historic time were actually acquainted with the 

 manufacture and management of nets. Now, 

 the Ojibwas are credited by their native his- 

 torian, Mr. William Warren, with making 

 and using fishing-nets before the appearance 

 of the whites in North America. In describ- 

 ing the Ojibwas seated upon the shores of Lake 

 Superior, at La Pointe and vicinny, prior to 

 the advent of the whites, he sa} T s : — 



" The waters of the lake also afforded them fish of 

 many kinds, — the trout, siskowit, white-fish, and 

 sturgeon, — which in spawning-time would fill their 



