the English Colonies. Some good, however, has come of this agitation, though it was less than what was hoped for. In several of the Colonies local grants have been made for archaeological and linguistic research, and at the Cape a professorship has actually been founded for South African Philology, which, in connection with the important linguistic library, given by Sir George Grey, will make Cape Town, I hope, a permanent home of African studies 1.

Work done in America.

Most excellent work is now being done in America also. There had been in the United States too some remissness, and some failures and waste of money. But when at last it was perceived that the preservation of whatever can still be known about the aboriginal tribes of America forms a kind of national duty, the funds were soon forthcoming, and the best scholars were found to carry out this work most thoroughly. By Act of Congress of March 3, 1879, the United States Geological Survey was established, and a Bureau of Ethnology was started under the direction of the Smithsonian Institution, with an excellent Director, Mr. J. W. Powell, and an efficient staff of able assistants. The work was divided into four departments,-arts, institutions, languages, and opinions. But, as Mr. Powell remarks in his Report, 'these four departments must work together and throw light on each other. The study of arts is but the collection of curiosities, unless the relations between arts, institutions, and language are discovered. The study of institutions leads but to the discovery

1 Introduction to the Science of Religion, p. 275.

of curious habits and customs, unless the deeper meaning thereof is discovered from arts, languages, and opinions. The study of language is but the study of words, unless philological research is based upon a knowledge of arts, institutions, and opinions. And the study of opinions is but the collection of mythic stories, if their true meaning is not ascertained in the history of arts, institutions, and languages.'

In 1877 appeared the Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages,' with words, phrases, and sentences to be collected, by J. W. Powell; second edition 1880.

The first Report of the Bureau of Ethnology 1879 to 1880, published in 1881, contained exceedingly valuable contributions from the Director, Mr. Powell, and from several of his fellow-workers 1.

Volunteers came forward from many parts to help in this noble work, as soon as it became known that their contributions would be published with due credit, and that objects of savage and barbaric art might be safely deposited in a National Museum.

In 1881 appeared the important and comprehensive work of Hon. Lewis H. Morgan on Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines' (Vol. IV. of Contributions to American Ethnology), containing

1 The most important papers were :-Dr. H. C. Yarrow, 'Contribution to the study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians,' a continuation of a former paper, called 'Introduction to the study of Mortuary Customs'; E. S. Holden, 'Studies in Central American Picture Writing'; Colonel Garrick Mallery, 'SignLanguage among North American Indians.' There is also at the end of the volume a useful catalogue of linguistic MSS. in the library of the Bureau of Ethnology, by Mr. James Pilling, the same scholar who is preparing a complete Bibliography of North American Philology, containing a chronological list of all works written in or upon any of the languages of North America.

most careful observations on two great periods in the growth of early society of which we know next to nothing in other parts of the world. Mr. Morgan's great work, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity,' had appeared in 1871, published by the Smithsonian Institution, and had laid a solid foundation for a new branch of ethnological study. But this new essay deserves equal attention. It treats of two periods, the Older and the Middle period of barbarism, the former represented by the Iroquois and similar tribes. in the North, the latter by the Aztecs of Mexico and the Indians of Yucatan and Central America. Mr. Morgan tries to show that during those periods, the family being too weak a unit to face the struggle of life, it was thought prudent and necessary to form combinations of families, living together in large houses, and that this led to a curious social and governmental organization, to a certain communion in living, and respect for hospitality, and peculiar kinds of kinship, all of extreme interest to the student of ethnology. Mr. Morgan's death is a severe loss to ethnological science, and we ought not to forget that, as Mr. Brinton remarks ('American Languages,' 1885, p. 6), the life-work of that eminent antiquary was based entirely on linguistics.

Linguistic studies occupy the foremost place in the work now being carried on under the auspices of the Bureau of Ethnology 1, because, as Mr. Powell truly

1 The following grammars, we are informed, are in preparation, and will soon be published:-The Cegiha Language, by the Rev. J. Owen Dorsey; The Klamath Language, by A. S. Gatschet; The Dakota Language, by the Rev. S. R. Briggs. These will be followed by a Grammar of several of the Iroquois Dialects, by Mrs. Erminnie A. Smith, and by a Grammar of the Chata Language, by Prof. Otis T. Mason.

remarks,Without a fundamental knowledge of those languages which can still be successfully studied, all other anthropologic peculiarities of the tribes speaking them will be imperfectly understood.'

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The second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology for 1880-1881, published at Washington in 1883, contains, besides Mr. Powell's report, the following papers: Frank H. Cushing, Zuñi Fetiches'; Mrs. Erminnie A. Smith, Myths of the Iroquois '; Henry W. Henshaw, Animal Carvings from the Mounds of Mississippi Valley'; Dr. Washington Matthews, Navajo Silversmiths'; W. H. Holmes, 'Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans'; James Stevenson, Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections obtained from the Indians of New Mexico and Arizona in 1879 and 1880.'

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I have since received two more volumes, each full of valuable information. The Report for 1881 to 1882, published in 1884, contains, among other papers, one by Mr. Cyrus Thomas, ' On certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts,' another by Mr. J. Owen Dorsey, 'On Omaha Sociology,' and another by Dr. Washington Matthews, 'On Navajo Weavers.' The Report for 1882-1883, published in 1886, gives us an essay by Mr. Garrick Mallery, 'On Pictographs of the NorthAmerican Indians,' and several papers on ceramic art by Mr. W. H. Holmes and Mr. Frank Hamilton Cushing.

Works of this kind are of the greatest importance for the study of anthropology, and particularly for that branch of it which we call mythology. I know that in trying to encourage the study of the languages, the customs, and the religions of uncivilised

races, we may sometimes incur the suspicion of unduly exaggerating the importance of the results likely to be obtained from such researches; nor can it be denied that researches of this kind may often lead only to an accumulation of curious facts which, unless they can be interpreted by themselves or used to interpret other facts, are considered by the public at large as mere rubbish. If properly sifted and classified, however, such rubbish has yielded already the most valuable grains of gold, and those who doubt it have only to read that one truly classical work, Anthropologie der Naturvölker by Waitz, in order to see how much may be learnt from what that great scholar rightly calls, not 'Savages,' but 'the People of Nature.'

The True Meaning of Manito.

The mythology and religion of these People of Nature require, however, the same critical treatment which is demanded for the study of Greek and Roman Mythology. There is a difference between being pedantic and being honest. It is pedantic to exact from a writer on North American religions the same familiarity with the languages of the Mohawks which Gottfried Hermann possessed with Greek, or the same critical accuracy in their treatment of the religion and philosophy of these nomadic races which Munro brought to the study of Lucretius. Nor should we forget that a critical study of languages and religions has been making such rapid progress of late and has assumed such large proportions, that a writer on anthropology is not at once to be set down. as ignorant or dishonest, because he writes in ignorance of the most recent essay published, it may be, in