Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/575

Rh is none other than evolution, which has dawned upon the investigators and thinkers of to-day.

appears to have struck upon an undeveloped mine of linguistic research. Philologists have told us of monosyllabic, agglutinative, and inflectional languages, and of analytic and synthetic languages, and we have means in the libraries of books they have written upon them of learning all about them. The American languages, according to the present author, present entirely different types—those named in the title above—which have so far been only vaguely described, probably because they were only vaguely understood. Polysynthesis, according to Dr. Brinton, is a method of word-building which employs juxtaposition of words with the modifications they usually undergo when brought together, and also words, forms of words, and significant phonetic elements which have no existence apart from the compounds into which they enter. By incorporation, the nominal and pronomial elements of the proposition are subordinated to the verbal elements, and either have no independent existence in the form required by the verb, or are included within the specific verbal signs of tense and mood. By the use of these methods, of which various illustrative examples are given from several languages, the whole sentence is woven into a single word. These peculiarities constitute the American languages a distinct and independent class.

inquires into the validity of the belief that consanguinity of parents is in and of itself detrimental to offspring. He finds the evidence usually presented in favor of that opinion insufficient to demonstrate it. He presents evidence collected by himself, which, while he is far from regarding it as decisive, seems to go a great way toward justifying a negative view of the case.

was offered in England, known as the "Pears Prize," of one hundred guineas for the best essay on the depression of trade. Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the celebrated naturalist and philosophic thinker, who anticipated the chief work of Durwin, competed for it. It was, of course, thought singular that a traveling naturalist, a collector of butterflies, and an investigator on the origin of species, should have the assurance to strike into the great field of finance and international trade relations with a view of determining the causes of the present extensive hard times. But Mr. Wallace was not unprepared for the task. In his early life he had spent twelve years as a land surveyor and valuer, when he had much observation of agricultural life, and became familiar with a wide range of facts which had a bearing upon the land question now 80 prominent, and all of which gave a turn to his thought that well prepared him to take up the present discussion. But Mr. Wallace did not get the prize. His independent handling of the general subject, the deviation of many of his views from orthodox lines, and the introduction of new and more comprehensive causes of the prevailing bad times, probably explained the failure of his essay before the committee of award.

But the book is none the less valuable because uncrowned with a golden prize, and he did well to have it printed. In reviewing his previous works we have had repeated occasion to speak of his power as a clear thinker and lucid writer, and the present volume illustrates these traits as signally as anything he has previously done. He first states the general problem, and then considers the popular explanations for the extensive business depression, which is followed by the criteria indispensable to a true explanation. In successive chapters he takes up the baneful influence of extensive foreign loans, both upon England