Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/321

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ANTHROPOLOGICAL WORK IN AMERICA.
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it has always been open to papers in other departments. From the beginning it has been under the editorship of the Rev. Stephen D. Peet, who has worked hard to put it where it now is, and who deserves hearty support in an undertaking which has never been a money success. Mr. Peet has himself been a field-worker and an original thinker. His field of labor is one that was for years left almost untouched, although none is more interesting—the effigy mounds of Wisconsin. Years ago Dr. Lapham prepared a work on the subject, which was very creditable for that time. Mr. Peet has gone over the same ground, and has resurveyed the groups. But he has done much more: he has surveyed many new groups, has made a careful study of the animal forms represented and of their attitudes, and has tried to work out their significance. The theories he suggests are certainly entitled to consideration, and his study deserves recognition and higher praise than it has yet received.

Nor are our Canadian neighbors neglecting anthropology. Sir Daniel Wilson's works, Prehistoric Man and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, were training-books for the present generation of scholars. Very recently he has added an interesting contribution to a curious field in his little book Left-handedness.

Another veteran worker whom we love to recognize is Horatio Hale, who, half a century ago, went around the world as the ethnologist of the Wilkes Exploring Expedition. Of him Dr. Brinton, in the dedication of his recent little book on Races and Peoples, justly says, "His many and valuable contributions to linguistics and ethnography place him to-day among the foremost authorities on these sciences." Both, in advanced years, preserve the zeal for scientific progress, which shows itself in the planning and directing of anthropological investigations, in the founding of collections such as those of Toronto University and the Canadian Institute, and in the development of such students as David Boyle and Mr. Chamberlain. This archaeological collection of the Canadian Institute at Toronto is a surprisingly rich and interesting one, and the annual reports regarding it are becoming valued contributions to archaeological literature. In one of the more recent of these reports Mr. Chamberlain presents a valuable bibliography of Canadian work in anthropology—a long list of valuable papers. We only regret that we have not the space to refer to some of them and to their authors in detail.

Such, briefly sketched, is some of the work Americans are doing in the great field of anthropological science.