Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/819

Rh be published in the form of monographs, it is the custom to issue, as widely as occasion requires, circulars intended to call attention to special subjects being investigated, and to invite correspondence and to elicit information from specialists and investigators in all parts of the world. Occasionally the importance of the subject has warranted the issuance of such documents in the form designed for the finished work, with the view of setting forth the facts gathered and the progress made in the study. The latter publications, however, are looked upon only in the nature of proof-sheets, being intended for the temporary use of collaborators, and are to be recalled and destroyed when the final reports are published.

—The anthropological investigations which are fostered by this institution are on the biological side. The large collections of skeletons, and especially of crania, make it possible to secure valuable data in anthropometry. Drs. Billings and Matthews have been alive to the richness of the material at their disposal, and their studies in skull measurements and composite photography of crania will be among the most valuable contributions of the United States Government to anthropology.

It is not surprising that with the large number of anthropologists, together with such other students as the public and private institutions at Washington contain, a prosperous Anthropological Society should be in operation. This society, organized in 1879, now has an active membership of sixteen hundred. Of the two hundred and more papers that have been presented, more than half were by persons who were in the institutions already described. Four volumes of "Transactions" have been published, and the society is now issuing a quarterly of ninety-six pages.

The following are the titles of the principal papers in the publications of the Bureau of Ethnology:

Vol. I, Washington, 1881:

 1. "On the Evolution of Language," by J. W. Powell. 2. "Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians," by J. W. Powell. 3. "Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians," by Dr. H. O. Yarrow. 4. "Studies in Central American Picture-Writing," by E. S. Holden. 5. "Cessions of Land by Indian Tribes to the United States," by C. C. Royce. 6. "Sign-Language among North American Indians compared with that among other Peoples and Deaf-Mutes," by Garrick Mallery.

Vol. II, 1883:

1. "Zuñi Fetiches," by F. H. Cushing. 2. "Myths of the Iroquois," by E. A. Smith.