Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/285

Rh admirably. Among some of the more striking and interesting may be mentioned handsome headdresses of feathers, ear decorations of tortoiseshell, boar-tusk and red-bean breastplates, stone pounders for sago, paddles, drums, spears barbed along both edges, narrow shields elaborately decorated with carving and color, quaint carved figures, and wooden headrests or pillows. Two plates are devoted to portraits showing hairdressing, tattooing, and face ornaments. The coloring of the plates is done in Trap's best style. The second part of the work is a study in geographical distribution of the objects. A brief ethnographic sketch of New Guinea (based on Serrurier's classification) is presented. Four tables are then given in which the distribution of each type of objects is shown, and the fact is made plain that there are distinct areas of culture in the great island. A study of some ten pages follows upon the relationships shown by the ornamentation of the various objects. In 1884 Tan Rye prepared a complete bibliography of New Guinea; in Part in of this work Dr. Schmeltz completes this to the present date.

Messrs. de Clercq and Schmeltz are to be congratulated upon their work. The Netherlands Government is also to be greatly commended for the encouragement and aid which it has given to its publication. Public interest in ethnography is keen and intelligent in Holland.

volumes, which are issued by Arthur Winslow, State Geologist, are exhaustive treatises upon the subjects of their titles. Mr. Nason complains in his preface that the lack of railroads and good public roads made the survey difficult; but, nevertheless, his patient work, assisted by the cooperation of the intelligent citizens of the iron-ore districts, enabled him to compile a most interesting as well as valuable report.

In Chapter X of the Report on the Mineral Waters of Missouri Prof. Schweitzer makes some very interesting comparisons between the domestic waters and the mineral waters of Europe, which will be read with profit by those engaged in the merchandising of the Missouri waters. In these comparisons, the author was largely assisted by the observations of Prof. Arthur Winslow. Both volumes are elaborately illustrated. Embodied with Vol. III is a very useful appendix, containing a bibliography of mineral waters, chronologically arranged.

claims that man's first appearance on the American continent was not contemporaneous with but toward the close of the Glacial period—about ten thousand years ago. As to the appearance of this prehistoric individual he quotes other students of the subject to prove that the great French archaeologist is in error when he claims that man, immediately after the Glacial period, was "of great stature." His research enables him to corroborate Dr. Thomas Wilson's summing up of the characteristics of palæolithic man, viz., "He was of short stature and strong of limb."

The author says, in his first chapter, that "In Great Britain. . . we go back of the Celts and Saxons to find the Britons and the Basques, who were comparatively modern." This is an error. Authentic records prove that not only were the Celts pre-Briton, but that the nomenclature of England was derived from the Celts of Ireland and Scotland, and was, at that time, precisely similar.

The chapter entitled The Stone Grave People is of important interest. In this the author devotes several pages to an analysis of the mound-building theory as it applies to America; and from the specimens of pottery that have been taken from the stone graves he builds a probable and interesting presumption of the facial characteristics of the prehistoric dwellers on this continent. In another chapter he seems to recede from his contention that the first appearance of man in America was after the Glacial period; for he accounts for the scarcity of images, etc., in the South by the assumption that during the dissolution of the glacial