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706 express himself in his own words. Suggestive inquiries are made which make the student and teacher companions in the work of study and investigation. A good text-book requires a good instructor, and this book is no exception to the rule.

In the usual courses of study in the schools of this country, the teacher has some knowledge of the subject; that is to say, he can pass some sort of an examination in algebra, geometry, rhetoric, and similar studies, or, at least, it is assumed he can; but we venture the assertion that not one teacher in a hundred, into whose hands text-books of zoölogy are placed, could tell whether a spider had six legs or eight, or whether it breathed through its mouth or otherwise.

This book, most excellent in its plan and execution, will probably be in the hands of every intelligent teacher of zoölogy, while the ordinary school boards will probably impose the short six-foot cuts across-lots, in preference to longer and more instructive paths. This is not a supposititious case, for some years ago, a gentleman interested in the publications of D. Appleton & Co., on visiting a certain high-school in Indiana, was gratified to find the blackboards covered with drawings copied from Morse's "First Book of Zoölogy." On inquiry, he found that the teacher alone possessed a copy, from which he was really teaching, while the school board had introduced another book which the entire class possessed, and from which they were reciting, parrot-like, the lessons!

nineteenth report is dated April 9, 1886. The interest of the document centers in the report of the Curator of the Museum, in which are recorded investigations made under the direction or with the co-operation of the Museum in various parts of the United States and in Central America. The investigations to which the most attention has been directed were conducted in Ohio, chiefly in the mounds of the Little Miami Valley. A brief exploration was made among the mounds near Chillicothe, and furnished relics forming an important link connecting the people who built the earthworks in the Scioto Valley with the builders of the singular group on the Turner farm in the Little Miami Valley. In the latter region several small mounds and a part of a large cemetery were explored under the direction of Dr. Metz. From the cemetery, which is across the river from the ancient cemetery near Madisonville, many thousand specimens, and many skeletons were obtained. For the first time the large pipes cut in stone in the form of human figures have been found associated with the skeletons—a discovery which connects these articles, hitherto only casually found on the surface of the ground with the people who used them, and which, with other circumstances, throws light on the burial ceremonies of those people. Examinations were made of some mounds on the bluffs of the Mississippi, in Pike County, Illinois, and less thorough ones of mounds in Calhoun County, on the Illinois River, from the results of which the interesting conclusions were drawn that the two sets of mounds were not built by the same people; and that "the burial-mounds of the Illinois bluffs resemble in contents, size, and structure the simple burial-mounds of the Ohio Valley, while those on the Mississippi bluffs have nothing in common with them except that they are burial-mounds." A special paper is given to an account of the exploration of the "Marriott Mound," in the Little Miami Valley, and the description of its contents; and a paper by Dr. W. F. Whitney, "On the Anomalies, Injuries, and Diseases of the Bones of the Native Races of North America." Accounts are given of the discovery of human bones in mounds near Trempealeau, Wisconsin; of Dr. Abbott's continued investigations in the Trenton gravels; of the explorations of shell-heaps in Maine; and of Miss Fletcher's studies of living Indian customs among the Omahas, and her gift to the Museum of the objects which those Indians had carefully preserved for many generations in their Sacred Tent of War." From Dr. Flint, in Nicaragua, have been received four blocks of tufa bearing human foot-prints, which were found under several layers of volcanic material, on the shores of Lake Managua; and several