the testimony furnished by Dr. Abbott in the Delaware valley, Dr. Metz and Mr. Mills in the Ohio valley, and Miss Babbitt on the upper Mississippi-the only evidence of importance yet presented. The result is that a large part of the evidence is wholly thrown out, and the remainder is shown to be so meagre and embarrassed as to leave the affirmative proposition practically unsupported. The indications point to the conclusion that the finds of shaped stones referred to the gravels in place are modern shop refuse, involved in the talus deposits in comparative recent times.

Dr. Topinard, in his review, does not reflect the status of conviction with respect to this question now prevalent among its adherents in America. This position seems to be that of waiting for new and confirmatory evidence. This is indicated by the fact, not observed by our learned visitor, that there was not when he was in Chicago, and there is not there now, one single American specimen concerning which the owner or exhibitor was willing to risk his reputation by calling it definitely a "paleolith."

This new condition of affairs is due largely to the researches of Mr. Holmes, who while demonstrating the total inadequacy of the evidences of glacial paleolithic man in America has presented his views with commendable modesty. The time has come, however, when the earnest student of the history of man should be correctly informed, and this leads me to make, with great diffidence, a suggestion. Dr. Topinard calls Dr. Abbott the Boucher de Perthes of America. No one has been more diligent in his archeological work than Dr. Abbott, and he himself has said that he laid no claims to infallibility in regard to any provisional conclusions to which he had come concerning the geological horizon of the Trenton finds. In the light of what has recently transpired in America it would be well for our friends in France specially to review the grounds of their opinions with reference to such excavations as those at Abbeville and Chelles. I do not come to the hasty conclusion that European archeology is to be written in the light of American discovery, but I do wish to declare that a sufficiency of new light has been thrown upon our work in this continent to make it worth while for our friends abroad to examine afresh the foundations of their belief. It is quite within the limits of possibility that Boucher de Perthes may turn out to have been the Dr. Abbott of France.

Dr. Topinard speaks very kindly with respect to the work of American confrères, and the want of appreciation of the latest archeological labor done here is to be attributed to his own predilections, to his intimate association with the friends of paleolithic man when he was in America, and to his very short stay in the opening month of the Exposition, when so little of the precious material was really arranged.

Dr. Topinard should come again when he can remain longer and when he will have time to go patiently over the evidence brought out in recent explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology.

OTIS T. MASON.

MASHONALAND TEMPLE ORIENTATION.-I have examined two ruined temples of the Zimbabwe period and style, situated at the confluence of the Lotsani and Limpopo rivers, in south latitude 22° 39′ 42′′, east longitude 28° 16' 30". The temples show the same system of orientation and geometrical construction as the great temple at Zimbabwe. I cleared the bush from the more perfect of the two temples of the Lotsani and made a careful measurement of many of the radii of the one curve of which it consists. I oriented directly from the center to the curve and saw the sun from that point set just to the left of the middle of the main doorway. On correcting the position of the sun for its decrease in declination during the seventeen days which had elapsed since the solstice, I found that it would set at the solstice exactly in a line with the center of the arc and the middle of the doorway. This direct measurement and observation should remove any doubt as to the applicability of our theory of the construction of the plans of these temples. Swan, in the Geographical Journal, London, Sept., 1893, pp. 263, 264.

FINGER PRINTS IN INDIA.—The commander-in chief of the military forces of India has approved the proposal to employ impressions in ink of the fore, middle, and ring fingers of each recruit as a means of identification.

BOOK NOTICE.

Boehmische Korallen aus der Goetterwelt: Folkloristische Boerseberichte vom Goetter-und Mythenmarkte. Von Friedrich S. Krauss. (His temporibus satiram scribere non difficile.) Wien, 1893. Verlag der Gebrueder Rubinstein (vii Neubaug, 29). Druck von Philipp & Kramer, Wien. 8vo, pp. viii-147.

The title of this latest work of Dr. Krauss; the distinguished Slavic ethnologist, requires some explanation for western readers. "Bohemian corals" is a term used in Austria to designate brass beads, trumpery jewelry, and other things of deceptive value, about equivalent to that of our own wooden nutmegs. In this book of about 150 pages the doctor has turned aside from his usual labor of love in elucidating the rich folklore and epic traditions of Servia and Croatia to produce one of the bitterest satires it has been our fortune to read for a long time. To those who know the conditions under which Krauss and other gifted men of his race exist in Europe the reasons for much of this bitterness are not hard to understand.

In the first part he discusses at length several philologic "corals." Among others he tells us of a learned professor whose ambition it was to produce a monumental dictionary of the South Slavic dialects, and who was accustomed to make every casual stranger from an out-of-the-way district stand and deliver whatever he had in the way of obscure words or phrases. On one occasion he got hold of the doctor's servant and, according to his usual method, set him down before a bottle of wine, reinforced by fifty kreutzers, and called upon him for "uncommon words." Thus importuned, the rascal, as he himself afterward boasted, set his brains to work to "invent such words as never were heard," and when the doctor afterward visited the professor he found him in ecstasies over having obtained "sixteen entirely new words in a single hour!"

Another instance is that of a Gallo-Roman figure bearing for an inscription the single word Encina, which for some time was the subject of learned controversy among French savants. One asserted that it represented the Gallic god of death, while another proved by

the inscription that it was instead an image of the deity of fate or necessity, and bolstered up his opinion with philologic roots and analogies and rules for consonantal changes, from Sanskrit down to Cornish, to the extent of several pages, until it was discovered that the antique was modern, and that the mysterious inscription was simply the name of the maker, who did business at 56 Boulevard Montparnasse, in Paris.

The rest of the book is largely taken up with a sarcastic criticism of an "Introduction to the History of Slavic Literature," by Dr. Gregor Krek, professor of Slavic philology in the University of Graz. The professor, partly, it seems, from personal animus, had passed strictures upon some of the doctor's earlier works in the same field, and the doctor retaliates by dissecting his book from end to end, challenging not only his acquaintance with Slavic mythology, but also his knowledge of the languages involved.

Incidentally he gives us some curious etymologies of geographic or national nicknames. In Servia the Germans are called Wosokter, from Was sagt er, "What does he say!" the expression most frequently heard from the Germans when addressed in the strange language of the country. The German-American Jews know the Irish as Bezimer, or "egg people," from the fact that their German name Irlaender suggests Eierland, or "egg land." In the same way Slavonia and Croatia are sometimes known as Schweine-land, or "hog land," from a misconception of the meaning of Sauland, an earlier name for that region, from its proximity to the river Sau or Save. This reminds one of the process by which the Spanish Rio de las Animas Perditas became the French Riviére Purgatoire and finally the American "Picketwire."

JAMES MOONEY.

"PIN-WELLS AND RAG-BUSHES."-In a paper on this subject, read before the British Association by E. Sidney Hartland, it was suggested that the object of the usages was union with the divinity, to be achieved by the perpetual contact with the god of some article identified with the worshipper.

THE

CITIZENSHIP PRIZES

OF THE

ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON

NOTICE OF POSTPONEMENT

At the request of many correspondents, it has been decided to extend the time for the preparation of the essays offered in competition for the Citizenship Prizes from November 1, 1893, to March 1, 1894.

In order that competitors whose essays have already been submitted may not suffer by the extension, it has been provided that those who desire may withdraw and modify or rewrite their essays. On application to Mr. Weston Flint, 1101 K street N. W., Washington, D. C., essays already in hand or received up to November 1 will be mailed postpaid to authors, with return postage.

The Commissioners of Award, to whom will be submitted the essays offered in competition for the Citizenship Prizes of THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, are as follows;

Anthropologist: Dr. DANIEL G. BRINTON, of the University of Pennsylvania;

Educator: Dr. DANIEL C. GILMAN, President of Johns Hopkins University;

Jurist: MELVILLE W. FULLER, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court;

Statesman: ADLAI E. STEVENSON, Vice-President of the United States;

Not specified: Dr. ROBERT H. LAMBORN.

All other conditions of the competition remain unchanged.

OTIS T. MASON, President.

W J MCGEE,

Chairman Prize Committee.

WESTON FLINT, Secretary Board of Managers.

WASHINGTON, D. C., October 25, 1893.