Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/309

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ANTHROPOLOGICAL WORK IN AMERICA.
295

Alaska, which is perhaps the best collection from the Tlingits; the Sturgis collection from the South Seas, recently purchased by the museum, and far larger than any other in America, and surpassed by few in Europe. Besides these collections belonging to the museum, and on display, there are in the building two remarkable and extensive series belonging to private collectors—men of wealth—Mr. James Terry and Mr. Andrew E. Douglass. The Terry collection is mainly the personal gathering of the owner, and is particularly rich in Pacific coast specimens. The Douglass collection is made up of exceedingly choice stone implements from every part of the United States, and it is unsurpassed in the number of rare and beautiful objects—banner-stones, bird and bar amulets, hematites, and grooved axes. These two collections will no doubt ultimately become the property of the museum. Notwithstanding its treasures in material collections, the museum has never published one line of contribution to anthropological science, nor has it undertaken, apart from a few Prof. Edward S. Morse. lectures to its membership any educational work in the subject.

In Philadelphia a vast amount of work has been done by a few individual workers, with no pecuniary return, and with but very little financial backing. What is there has been brought about by truly heroic work from love of the cause. The work is mainly done at the Philadelphia Academy of Science or at the University of Pennsylvania. At the academy is the Morton collection of crania, gathered by our earliest great anthropologist, and at that time one of the largest in the world; here, too, are the collections in archæology gathered by Poinsett, Vaux, and Haldeman. For several seasons, including the present one, Dr. D. G. Brinton has presented at the academy courses of lectures upon some ethnological subject. The most active work in Philadelphia at present, however, is at the university. In reference to it, Mr. Culin, who is one of its heartiest supporters, writes us:

"The chief center is the new Department of Archæology and