the St. Louis Academy of Science upon the prosecution of an investigation so thorough that it will never need to be repeated. THE STUDY OF INDIAN LANGUAGES.-Major J. W. Powell has just issued a second edition of" Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages, with phrases and sentences to be collected. Washington, 1880." Although purporting to relate to language alone, the work covers the whole ground of anthropological research. Chapter 1 is a discussion of the alphabet, together with the best method of transliterating an Indian language. Chapter 11 is headed Hints and Explanations, and is a preparation for the lists of phrases and sentences to be collected in the schedules. These are divided into thirty-two sections, treating of persons, parts of the body, dress and ornaments, dwellings, implements and utensils, food, colors, numerals, measures, divisions of time, standards of value, animals, plants, geographic terms, geographic names, the firmament and meteorologic phenomena, kinship, social organization, government, religion, mortuary customs, medicine, amusements, new words, accidence, pronouns and transitive verbs, possession, intransitive verbs and the other parts of speech used as verbs, voice and mood and tense, the best method of studying materials collected, the rank of Indian languages. Chapter is a collection of schedules containing a great variety of questions in order to bring out the truth with reference to each of the subjects named above. In the back of the volume is a set of kinship charts which embrace both consanguinity and affinity for nine generations, including that of ego, four above ego, and four below cgo. Instead of using the old-fashioned circles for the individuals in the group, found in Mr. Morgan's tables and elsewhere, the triangular characters used by the Indians themselves to denote man and woman are worked up with a series of colors so as to present to the eye at a single view, all the facts desired. The alphabet presents a few innovations, which are usually very undesirable, but which in this case are on the whole an improvement, since they substitute a plain letter, which may be found in any printing office, for characters and logographs difficult to reproduce. A PRE-HISTORIC ROCK RETREAT-In January, 1876, the late S. S. Haldeman, Professor of comparative philology at the University of Philadelphia, discovered on his farm near Chickies, Pa., upon the eastern bank of the Susquehanna river, a rock retreat of the prehistoric age, which yielded him, when he explored it with the spade, a large number of stone implements, and proved to be a locality where the occupation of arrowmaking had been followed for a long lapse of time. This retreat, located in Lancaster Co., had been made the subject of several printed communications by Professor Haldeman, the last of which was the one read before the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, Pa., June 21, 1878, and printed since in the Transactions, Vol. xv, page 351-368, with fifteen lithographic plates; one of these represents the rock recess with the railroad track running in front of it. The text accompanying the plates contains a statement concerning the probable age of the relics; thirty inches of black mold accumulated by decaying vegetation would seem to indicate to the author a time roughly estimated at two thousand years. The objects found are described under the following headings: Knives, chisels, scrapers, borers, arrowheads, spear-heads, hoes and diggers, sinkers, hammer-stones, tomahawks of honor, pipes, cores and chips, pebbles, shells, bones, pottery; the latter showing a large number of different patterns. The professor's remark (page 354), that the name “celts” given to the stone chisels, should be restricted to the people who bear this name, is not quite to the point, for this term, in Greek, rs, stands in no connection whatever with the national name of the Celts; but is related to the Latin verb calare, to chisel out, to engrave; and to the substantives: cælatura, the art of chiseling and that of making relievos; cælamen, a basso or mezzo-relievo; celum, the artist's chisel. ANTIQUITY OF MAN.-In the Princeton Review for Nov., Principal Dawson reviews Dawkins on early man in Britain, Barrande's "Brachiopodes," "Les Enchainements du Monde Animal," by Gaudry, and Saporta's "Le Monde des Plantes," in their relation to the antiquity of man and the origin of species. Objecting to Professor Dawkins' classification of the later tertiary, the writer suggests the following: 1. Pleistocene, including (a) Early Pleistocene and (b) Later Pleistocene; 11. Modern, or period of man and modern mammals, including (a) post-glacial and (b) recent. Exception is also taken with good reason to Dawkins' separation of the cave men from the river-drift men, and to his identification of his cave men with the Eskimo. On the next page, however, Dr. Dawson is not so hard to please, when he says that the connection of the Etruscans with the introduction of the bronze age into Central Europe, viewed in relation to their probable ethnic affinities with the neolithic and Iberian races, remarkably welds together the stone and the bronze age in Europe, and explains their intermixture and "overlap" in the earlier lake habitations of Switzerland and elsewhere. The portion of the paper germane to our notes closes with an endeavor to recall the historical deluge as a force in the production of those physical changes which separate the deposits containing the remains of palæocosmic man from those of later date. The paper appears in full in the Kansas City Review, for January and February. THE AZTEC DICTIONARY OF FATHER AOLNZO DE MOLINA is a most important help for the study of the Aztec or Mexican language, and since it gives the ancient, uncorrupted forms of this sonorous tongue from a time dating but little after the conquest, it is high ly appreciated by all Mexicologists. The number of Aztec terms contained in each of the two parts, Spanish-Aztec and AztecSpanish, cannot fall much short of thirty thousand. The great scarcity of both editions (1565 and 1571) has raised its price rather high, but through Platzmann's recent re-publication of the second edition linguists are now enabled to acquire this "Thesaurus" at a very moderate figure. The new edition reproduces the work in fac-simile and bears the following title: "Vocabulario de la Lengua Mexicana, compuesto por el P. Fr. Alonso de Molina, Publicado de nuevo por Julio Platzmann, Leipzig, B. G. Teubner, 1880, Quarto." The volume is dedicated to the memory of the Empress Catharine II., of Russia, the first sovereign who encouraged linguistic researches within the limits of her vast domains in Europe and Northern Asia. THE INDO-CHinese and OCEANIC RACES.-Mr. A. H. Keene, of whose work the NATURALIST has frequently made mention, commences in the number of Nature for Dec. 30, a series of papers on the Indo-Chinese and Oceanic Races-types and affinities. The following scheme will be followed in the discussion: A. DARK TYPES. I. NEGRITOS: Aetas; Andamanese; Samangs; Kalangs; Karons. II. PAPUANS: Western branch-Sub-Papuans, West (Alfuros). III. AUSTRAL: Australians, Tasmanians? B. CAUCASIAN TYPE (Fair and Brown). IV. CONTINENTAL BRANCH: Khmêr or Cambojan Group. V. OCEANIC BRANCH: Indonesian and Sawaiori or Eastern Folynesian Groups. C. MONGOLIAN TYPE (Yellow and Olive Brown). VI. CONTINENTAL BRANCH: Indo-Chinese Group. VII. OCEANIC BRANCH: Malayan Groups. THE PAWNEE INDIANS.-Mr. John B. Dunbar, of Deposit, New York, contributes to the November number of the Magazine of American History a paper of twenty-four pages upon the Pawnee Indians, describing their trade, food, feasts, hunting, war and medicine. The list of food plants and the discussion of the practice of medicine are especially good. It has been asserted in very high quarters that the Indian of this continent had primarily no knowledge of the medicinal properties of herbs aside from incantation. It might be well for Mr. Dunbar to give this question a little attention. Sooner or later some scholar or group of scholars will publish an encyclopædia of our Indian tribes, and for this work such monographs as the one under consideration are a necessary preparation. THE WESTERN RESERVE SOCIETY.-From our esteemed correspondent, Col. Charles Whittlesey, we have received a tract entitled "The Universal Indian Problem," and No. 50 of the pam phlets of the Western Reserve & No. Ohio Hist. Soc., containing the Indian narrative of Judge Hugh Welch, and Wyandotte missions in 1806 and 1857, both edited by Mr. C. C. Baldwin. The former is a letter to General Garfield on the subject of Indian education, which takes a rather gloomy view of the subject. Of the latter, as well as of all the publications of this society, we take great pleasure in saying that the permanent records of an association can be valuable in the highest degree without being in the least costly or pretentious. THE CENSUS OF ALASKA.-The New York Herald for January 10 and 11, gives a detailed account of the exploration of the Alaskan peninsula for the purpose of enumerating the population, and of studying the habits of the natives. No one better fitted for this service could have been found than Mr. Petroff, who adds to his thorough knowledge of the Russian and English, a practical acquaintance with ethnology, acquired while assisting Mr. Bancroft in the preparation of his great work on the native races of the Pacific States. Mr. Petroff will prepare an elaborate paper on Alaska for the next census and will contribute a memoir to the volumes of the Ethnological Bureau. THE DAVENPORT ACADEMY, IOWA. The Davenport Daily Gazette for January 6, 1881, contains the record of the annual meeting of this thriving society. The retiring president, Mr. Pratt, devoted the annual address to the discussion of the moundbuilders. Mr. J. Duncan Putnam was elected president for the ensuing year, and Dr. C. C. Parry, corresponding secretary. Notice is given that the printing of volume III will be resumed at once. GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY APPARENT GLACIAL DEPOSITS IN VALLEY DRIFT.-While collecting facts regarding the question whether there was in Maine a re-advance of the glacier subsequent to the deposition of the sedimentary Champlain clays and valley drift, the writer observed certain large boulders lying on or in the valley drift which seemed too large to have been deposited by any of the ordinary. forces of valley transportation. Sometimes numbers of boulders were found in pell-mell masses quite morainal in appearance, and I was for a time inclined to regard them as glacial. The smaller stones and boulders might readily be supposed to have been carried down in spring by floating blocks of ice, but the largest of them staggered me, until one day I found a boulder weighing not far from one hundred tons lying on the undisturbed silt of the present flood plain of the Piscataquis river. Its history was as follows: Ever since the first settlement of the country that rock had stood right in mid-channel, a constant object of apprehension and vituperation to the lumbermen, for many were the "jams" of logs which it had caused, some of them of large size. But nothing moved it perceptibly until a few years ago, when, during a midwinter flood, a great ice gorge formed against it and a very high dam soon extended to a considerable distance on each side of the river. When, at last, the ice rushed downwards with irresistible force it wrenched the offending rock from its bed in the till, pushed it up a steep bank twelve feet high, and left it two hundred feet back from the river, together with large piles of stones and boulders. The flood plain, being frozen, suffered but little erosion. Many similar facts have since been observed. Evidently if blocks of granite ten or more feet in diameter can be tossed about like this, then in the case of narrowish valleys subject to floods and ice gorges, the presence in the valley drift of erratics and masses resembling moraines is to be received with great caution as a proof of glacial conditions, unless the deposits are very abundant and continuous, or are supplemented by striæ or other positive indications. So also the development of the aasar or kames seems to show the frequency and great transportive power of ice gorges in the channels of the glacial rivers. During the decadence of the great glacier, transportation of this kind would probably be active all along the line of the terminal moraine, more particularly in the valleys of those streams whose headwaters were in the region covered by the ice, such, for instance, as the valleys of the Delaware, Susquehanna and Allegheny. At least they deserve careful investigation for such deposits.-George H. Stone, Kent's Hill, Maine. He EXTINCT PALEOZOIC FISHES From Canada.-At a recent meeting of the Natural History Society of Montreal, Mr. Whiteaves read a paper on "Some new and remarkable fossil fishes from the Devonian rocks of the northern side of the Baie des Chaleurs." commenced by remarking that until last year a long strip of the northern side of the bay had been mapped as belonging to the conglomerates of the Bonaventure formation, which form the base of the Carboniferous system. Last year, however, Mr. R. W. Ells, of the Geological survey, discovered a fine specimen of a fossil fish belonging to the genus Pterichthys, of Agassiz, in Escuminac bay, a discovery which led to a careful re-examination of the locality by Messrs. R. W. Ells, T. C. Weston, and A. H. Foord. From the researches of these gentlemen, we now know that at this point Devonian rocks crop out from under the Bonaventure conglomerates, and further, that these Devonian rocks hold a rich and extremely interesting series of fossil plants and fishes. The vegetable organisms will be described by Principal Dawson at some future time, but the fossil fishes, of which many specimens were exhibited at the meeting, were shown to belong to the following genera and species:-1. Pterichthys. A fine species, supposed to be new, which has been described in the August number of the American Journal of Science as Pterichthys canadensis. 2. Diplacanthus; a cluster of fin rays only, of a small |