Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/458

 NOTES AND NEWS 399

January 7th, without warning, Sr Perez Zeledon, the Minister of Public Instruction, under pretext of economy, closed the Institute Fisico-Geogrdfico at San Jose*, of which Professor Pittier was director, and summarily dismissed its entire staff. As this institute was practi- cally the only means afforded by the Costa Rica republic for the dis- semination of knowledge regarding its wealth of archeology, ethnology, and linguistics, the wisdom of the minister's action is difficult of ap- preciation by students who have watched with interest the excellent results of Professor Pittier de F&brega's directorship.

Brintoniana — Yielding to the suggestion of the late James C. Pilling, whose bibliographies of North American languages are so well and favorably known, Dr Daniel G. Brinton has recently published, for private distribution, " A Record of Study in Aboriginal American Languages" (Media, 1898, 8°, 24 pp). Even one not already familiar with the work of Dr Brinton along this line during the last forty years cannot fail to be impressed with the enormous amount of energy which he has expended in behalf of American linguistics, and with the high value of the results achieved. This personal linguistic bibliography, which aggregates 71 titles, comprises : 1, General articles and works (15 titles); 11, North American languages north of Mexico (14 titles) ; m, Mexican and Central American languages (32 titles) ; and iv, South American and Antillean languages (10 titles). It is hoped that Dr Brinton 's next step in this direction will be a complete record of his non-linguistic studies.

British Association — At the Bristol meeting of the British Asso- ciation for the Advancement of Science, a resolution was submitted to the council of the association, requesting further action with regard to the establishment of a Bureau of Ethnology for the United Kingdom, by renewing correspondence with the trustees of the British Museum. The council was also recommended to issue the collected reports on the northwestern tribes of Canada in a single volume, at a moderate price, reprinting as many of the reports as may be necessary. Sir William Turner, professor of anatomy in the University of Edinburgh, has recently been elected president of the Association for the Bradford meeting in 1900.

Siberian Archeology — In volume xxxn, numbers 1, 2, 3, of the Memoirs of the Kazan (Russia) Society of Naturalists, Dr S. Tschungu- noff describes some deformed skulls found in the kurgans or burial mounds of Siberia. The article forms the ninth part of this authority's " Materials for the Anthropology of Siberia," the first eight contribu- tions having appeared in parts 6, 7, and 10 of the Proceedings of Tomsk

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