126 Fillmore—Forms Spontaneously Assumed by Folk-Music. 
'but I cannot resist the conviction that it would not be incon¬ 
sistent with the evolutionary process which I have sought to 
indicate in this paper nor with the conclusions which seem to 
me warranted by our present evidence. 
Permit me to say one thing more. The aboriginal folk-songs 
of our own country offer an extremely rich field for the student 
of musical ethnology and anthropology; a field whose limits are 
narrowing day by day. It will be anything but creditable to 
American science if the vast amount of material still to be ob¬ 
tained shall be allowed to perish ungathered and unstudied. 
Yet there are now no endowments for original investigation of 
this kind. The collections thus far made have been due to the 
interest in the subject of men whose main occupations lay in a 
different field. Not a single competent investigator has yet 
been given the opportunity to devote himself exclusively to this 
special domain of science, although there is more than work 
enough for a hundred, nor is there a single university in the 
country, new or old, now in a position to equip and send even 
one student into this neglected field to possess it. It is greatly 
to be hoped that these conditions may change; but they must 
change soon, or it will be too late. 
Milwaukee , Wis. 
