Deaths in small children from intes- | tration systems. In this respect the tinal diseases increased, and infantile United States has lagged far behind paralysis, during the epidemic of 1916, a number of the leading European claimed a very large proportion. Fa- countries. A beginning was made in talities due to accident markedly in- this country in 1915, however, and creased above those of the two pre- statistics are now available relating ceding years, in spite of the "safety- to an area having a population of onefirst" campaign. third of that of the whole country. During the year the state of Maryland was added to the birth registration area. The table on page 669 gives the birth-rates and infantilemortality rates for the calendar year 1916.

Birth Rates.-The collection of both birth and death statistics was authorized by the permanent Census Act, approved March 6, 1902, to be obtained from the registration records of such states and municipalities as possessed records affording satisfactory data. Since the passage of this act the Census Bureau has made annual collections of mortality statistics from a steadily increasing area, but until recently very few of the states have maintained reliable birth-regis- I

International Statistics. In the preceding tables are given birth and death rates per 1,000 persons living in the principal countries for which complete and accurate statistics are available, those for most of the warring countries not being available for 1915.

XXVI. ANTHROPOLOGY, ETHNOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND

PHILOSOPHY

ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY

GEORGE GRANT MACCURDY

General Survey.—Anthropology | is by Huei Shen, a Chinese monk, who and ethnology are among the sciences in 499 A.D. gave a fabulous account that are affected adversely by war of Fu-sang. He speaks of the breedconditions, and now that the United ing of horses, cattle and reindeer States also is in the war, these un- combined. There is but one known toward conditions are corresponding- locality where such a combination ly accentuated. And yet progress is exists, namely, the region of Lake being made even in unexpected di- Baikal, particularly among the Sorections, such, for example, as the yot. This Laufer believes to be the founding of new journals and new original center of reindeer domesti professorships of anthropology. In cation. From the Samoyed it spread July, appeared the first number of eastward to the Tungusions, and from the International Journal of Ameri- the latter to the Yakut, Chuckchi, can Linguistics (New York, Douglas and Koryak; and westward it spread C. McMurtrie), a quarterly, edited to the Ugrian tribes of the Ural and by Franz Boas and Pliny E. Goddard, the Lapp. The woodland reindeer with the assistance of William Thalbitzer of Copenhagen and C. C. Uhlenbeck of Leyden. The principal article in the first number is on the Mexican dialect of Pochutla, Oaxaca, by Professor Boas. Dr. Truman Michelson of the Bureau of American Ethnology has been appointed to the new professorship of ethnology in George Washington University, retaining, however, his position in the Bureau. In war-ridden Europe similar progress is to be noted. A new journal of anthropology, entitled Giornale per la Morfologia dell' Uomo e dei Primati, has been founded by Prof. G. L. Sera of the University of Pavia. At the University of Geneva a new chair of anthropology has been founded, with Prof. Eugène Pittard as its first occupant.

Domestication of the Reindeer. According to Dr. B. Laufer (Mem. Am. Anthrop. Assoc., iv, No. 2, 1917), the domestication of the reindeer is a comparatively recent event. There is no trace of it in aboriginal America; hence, Old-World domestication of the reindeer must have taken place after the peopling of America. The first notice of domesticated reindeer

were first domesticated; they were gradually replenished by the captur ing of wild tundra reindeer with the movement toward the north, until fi nally the "latter breed" preponder. ated or prevailed exclusively.

Antiquity of Man.-The question of the antiquity of man at Vero, Fla., came up for discussion in the last is sue of the YEAR BOOK (p. 658). Since then further light has been thrown on the problem. Prof. Edward W. Berry of Johns Hopkins University has made a study of the plant remains associated with human bones and artifacts and fossil animal remains. His conclusion is that there is no appreciable difference between the ages of the middle and the upper layer (the two in question), and that they represent a maximum age of three or four thousand years. He is sure that the two deposits are rela tively very young, although some of the plants are indicative of conditions somewhat different from those prevailing at the present time in that part of Florida. N. C. Nelson of the American Museum of Natural History has shed new light on the prob able age of the potsherds from Vero

by a stratigraphic study of a large | Conn., which also contained arrowshell mound on Indian River at Oak Hill, Fla. In the lower part of the mound he found no pottery, although in the middle deposits were abundant evidences of plain pottery of the type from Vero and near the surface appeared a stamped and decorated ware. Vero would seem, therefore, to be contemporaneous with the middle shell-mound epoch. That Vero probably represents a concentration of fossil remains is indicated by the great variety and relative abundance of these remains and by the topographic features of the place. A concentration due solely to natural causes takes time; besides, it opens the door not only to forms then or recently living but also to those of still older epochs. It does not follow, therefore, that man and the Mylodon were contemporaneous at Vero.

heads and a polished stone celt. The same is true of the pottery, which even in its crudest form is never found in the horizon of the archaic argillite culture of the Delaware valley for instance. In a word, there is nothing new or unexpected in the particular combination of cultural and human skeletal remains at Vero. Among the bone implements sent to New Haven for study was the sting of a sting-ray. This sting is a readymade implement well known to the Indians. It is found in prehistoric sites along the Atlantic coast. In the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia there is a good example from a mound near Crystal River, Citrus County, Fla. On April 6 E. H. Sellards reported by letter the finding in the third layer at Vero of a fragment from the head end of a slender bone pin with delicate crisscross incised decoration, also two perforated teeth of the shark. The pin is of the type found in Florida mounds. There is no reason to suppose that the two perforated teeth antedate the mound culture. The antiquity of this combination of remains would seem to be fairly well represented in the age ascribed by Professor Berry to the plant remains from both layers, viz., a maximum of three or four thousand years.

It is generally conceded that cultural remains are a much more sensitive chronometer than are animal remains. A lapse of time indicated by the faunal changes at Vero should be marked by even more profound changes in the character of the artifacts, but we find nothing of the kind. To summarize the evidences of man's antiquity at Vero, the human bones and cultural remains all have every appearance of belonging to one and the same age, as if they might It is only when one considers the have come even from the same village formidable array of extinct animals site or burying ground. They point from the two layers in question that to a period which might well have apparent lack of harmony arises. continued down to the close of the Even in the third layer we still have prehistoric period in Florida. In no Elephas columbi, Mastodon (Mamrespect whatsoever do they resemble mut) americanum, Chlamydothethe remains from the Pleistocene of rium, and a species of horse and of any known part of the world. The tapir. Here is the first element of bone points are of a type that is uncertainty, for even paleontologists widely distributed. They can be du- are not yet in a position to say just plicated in collections from the when these various forms became exsouthern mounds as well as the ru- tinct in Florida. That the Mastodon ined pueblos of the Southwest. They lived on until recent times even in represent the universal sewing imple- more northern climes, there can be ment of savage women and persist little doubt. Of the extinct verteeven to the present day. Their use brate fauna mentioned in Dr. Selis well known in basketry and other lards' last paper, Smilodon, Mylotextile operations. The bone fish don, peccary and camel do not occur hooks are exactly like those from in the third layer, and hence in the scores of sites along the Atlantic opinion of the author might properly coast as well as inland. In the Yale be excluded from the discussion. Museum are two such from an In- the extinct fauna in question was dian grave at Beach Park, Clinton, contemporary with the race that left

If

lithic, and are to be compared with the post-Pleistocene peat bogs of northern France.

the Vero type of culture, evidences | vel deposits that underlie the terres thereof in other parts of the coun- noires. The latter are post-paleotry, where both are known to have existed, would not still be lacking, unless the culture appeared earlier or the fauna persisted longer in Florida than elsewhere. Of these two alternatives the persistence of the fauna is the more easily believable. At all events, in the face of the irreconcilable differences between the combination of anthropological phenomena on the one hand and of paleontological on the other, and until there is forthcoming exact evidence as to the date of disappearance in Florida of the extinct vertebrates in this list, to say that one is assured of the accuracy of the conclusion that the human remains and artifacts from Vero are of the Pleistocene period is to base one's conclusion on a forced correlation.

Another bit of stratigraphic work has been done by Mr. Nelson. In Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, he discovered a stratified relic-bearing deposit ranging from a few inches to about four feet thick and forming part of the floor débris of the large entrance vestibule. This deposit is composed of what is usually termed kitchen refuse-ashes, animal and even human bones, shells, and artifacts of stone and bone. Especially suggestive was the total absence of maize, pottery and the finer forms of polished stone work otherwise so characteristic of the region in question. We have here a type of culture preceding that of the historic Indian.

The Abbé H. Breuil has added to our knowledge of the existence of paleolithic man in Spain by the discovery of numerous sites in the province of Badajoz and of one important station across the border at Arronches, Portugal. They represent the early paleolithic epochs known as Chellean, Acheulian, and Mousterian. He has made also a study of the terres noires of the Laguna de la Janda in the extreme south of Spain. His conclusion, opposed to that of certain Spanish authors, is that the terres noires deposits are more recent than Chellean, Acheulian, and Mousterian artifacts, which are found in these deposits only as derived specimens, and which belong to the ancient gra

Canada and the Northern States.The incomparable ethnological collection gathered by D. Jenness, anthropologist of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, has reached Ottawa. His Eskimo material on folklore and physical anthropology is ready for publication. C. M. Barbeau has made further progress in his researches into Canadian folklore of European origin. His second series of CanadianFrench folk tales has been published in the Journal of American Folklore. Data on the trails of Canada have been compiled by Harlan I. Smith and Wintemberg. The former has completed also a monograph on the shell heaps marking prehistoric seacoast village sites in Canada. A complete series of aboriginal decorative and symbolic motives including several hundred examples is now on exhibition at the Archæological Bureau of the Geological Survey, Ottawa, for the special benefit of Canadian manufacturers. Similar aid has been extended by the American Museum of Natural History to New York and visiting manufacturers, the work being in charge of a textile expert, D. C. Crawford. Thus are the manufacturers of both countries thoroughly awake to the artistic and commercial value of aboriginal American designs.

J. N. B. Hewitt of the Bureau of American Ethnology has made a study of the origin, development and functions of the League of the Iroquois. While thus engaged he was selected as an official delegate from the Council of the Six Nations to attend a condolence and installation ceremony at Muncietown. In this he took a leading rôle, requiring the intoning of an address of comforting in the Onandaga language, and also acted the part of the Seneca chiefs. He also gained valuable information concerning the Iroquois clans.

Donald A. Cadzow, representing the Museum of the American Indian, New York, has completed a collecting trip through the Canadian North

was a large pit of cache bundle reburials, found in the center of a large conical mound. There were various other single burials in the flesh, besides very many interesting features concerning ceremonial fires and sacrificial and repository altars.

west. At Edmonton he collected ma- | esting feature of the burial mounds terial from the woodland Cree. He then visited the Chipewyans of Slave River, the Slaveys at the mouth of the Mackenzie, the Copper Eskimo of the Bear River country, the Eskimo of the Mackenzie delta, and the Loucheux near Fort MacPherson and on the Bat and Porcupine Rivers. A representative collection was obtained from the Copper Eskimo, which includes costumes, fishing and hunting paraphernalia, and ceremonial objects.

J. R. Walker of the American Museum of Natural History has completed his long and exhaustive study of the Dakota Sun Dance and the philosophical and religious beliefs underlying it. His paper, in press at the end of the year, will constitute one of the best and by far the most satisfactory studies of the sun dance so far made.

Prof. Franz Boas, honorary philologist of the Bureau of American Ethnology, has completed his manuscripts on the Ethnology of the Kwakiutl Indians and Kutenai Tales. He has in preparation an extended treatise on the Salishan stock, showing by means of maps the distribution of the Salish dialects at various periods. In connection with this proposed memoir, H. K. Haeberlin has made a detailed study of Salish basketry. Leo J. Frachtenberg, also of the Bureau, has in preparation a memoir on the Quileute, the material pertaining to which is extensive.

New York and New England.— Archeological explorations on Long Island have been made by the staff of the Museum of the American Indian. G. H. Pepper opened an Indian cemetery at Hewlett in which the graves were especially rich in copper ornaments. A number of shell heaps on Long Island were investigated by F. H. Saville. W. K. Moorehead of the Department of Archeology in Andover has mapped the Indian sites on the Vermont shore of Lake Champlain and collected several hundred artifacts. No large prehistoric village sites were found about the shores of the lake. A majority of the villages were on streams some distance from the lake.

Alaska and the Pacific Coast.-The University Museum, Philadelphia, has had two expeditions in Alaska. In the northern part W. B. Van Valin collected specimens and procured motion pictures of the ceremonies of the Eskimo, while Louis Shortridge made a study of the mythology and ancient customs of the Tlingit Indians in the southeastern part. John P. Harrington, for the Bureau of Ethnology, has completed researches among the Chumashan Indians of California, from which important results already appear, one of which is the genetic relationship of Chumash and Washo. Sapir includes Washo in the Hokan group established by Dixon and Kroeber. Harrington had previously announced the genetic relationship of Chumash and Yuman, a typical Hokan group of dialects. Thus the linking of Washo with Chumash becomes an established fact. According to Sapir the Hokan stock can now be stated to include Shasta-Achomawi, Chimariko, Karok, Pomo, Yana, Es. selen, Salinan, Chumash, Yuman, Washo, Seri and Chontal. The elimination of Washo leaves Yuki the only California language that can be called "isolated," and its lone distinction will probably not be for long.

S. A. Barrett of the Milwaukee Public Museum has surveyed an interesting group of 46 mounds on the south shore of Buffalo Lake, Wisconsin. They vary in size from small conical mounds to large effigy mounds. A majority of these mounds he excavated. Dr. Barrett believes that he has found the solution of the problem of the intaglio mounds of the state, viz., that they are the foundations for effigies which were later raised above ground. In other words, the builders first made an excavation of the size and shape required and then built up, stratum by stratum, the mound itself, placing burials, altars, etc., in the mound, and finally raising it to its present level above ground. The most inter