Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/316

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gress of Americanists for 1888. From these years of experience Mr. dishing has gained a stock of information, little of which has yet been published. At present he is again officially connected with the Bureau of Ethnology. We have only suggested the Adolf F. Bandelier. work of this bureau, and have not even mentioned some workers who have done good work.

The collections made by Government workers go to three museums—the material in physical anthropology to the Army Medical Museum, that in ethnography to the United States National Museum, and that in prehistoric archaeology to the Smithsonian Institution. The Army Medical Museum is a great collection, beautifully arranged. There is much material here to interest the anthropologist—many fine anatomical specimens; a wonderful series to illustrate the effects of gunshot wounds and their healing; a goodly number of monstrosities; most important of all are the skeletons and crania of North American tribes more—than two thousand of the latter.

Prof. Otis T. Mason is in charge of the ethnological treasures at the United States National Museum. He is a most systematic worker, and his card catalogue of references to literature of ethnography is well worthy of study. His annual summaries of anthropological progress are exceedingly valuable. More than any other American ethnographer he has carefully studied casing, display, and labeling. Where, as in the Eskimo series, the material from any given region or tribe is large in amount and varied in character, the arrangement is geographical. In general, however, the idea in the arrangement is to show culture history. This idea, so admirably carried out in Oxford, is scarcely found elsewhere in American museums. Some of the series are excellent; the development of the knife, the history of musical instruments, the history of fire-producing instruments are good. Some cases tell the story of a whole technique; thus the case of Guadalajara (Mexico) pottery shows by specimens and by small figures of potters at work every step in the manufacture. A point that