Anthropology in America

Abstract

WE cannot speak very highly of Prof. Otis T. Mason's “Account of Progress in Anthropology in the Year 1881,” which was originally embodied in the Smithsonian Report for that year, and is now issued in a separate form. There is no comprehensive survey of the work done in this wide field during the period indicated, and the bibliography, of which the paper mainly consists, is vitiated by too many subdivisions. These subdivisions are dealt with in the introduction, where a bewildering scheme of classification is proposed “in order to ascertain the opinion of anthropologists as to its merits.” First the science is grouped under three main heads, indicated by terminations furnished by the three Greek words, γραΦη, λόγōσ, and νόμōσ. Then each group is split up into thirteen minor divisions, yielding altogether thirty-nine distinct segmentations, and of course involving the whole subject in dire confusion. The student is expected, for instance, to distinguish between anthropography, anthropology, and anthroponomy; between pneumatography, pneumatology, and pneumatonomy; between hexiography, hexiology, hexionomy, and so on. However in the bibliography the author considerately limits himself to eleven headings, which will certainly be amply sufficient to try the patience of those who may have occasion to consult these alphabetical lists. Thus Nesbit's “Antiquity of Man” is entered under Anthropogeny, while Ameghino's “Antiquedad del hombre in La Plata” must be sought for in the section Archæology. These lists should obviously be fused together in one general catalogue, and all the nice subdivisions left to the fancy or ingenuity of the reader. To show their utter absurdity it may suffice to add that under the heading Hexiology there occurs the solitary entry—Buckley, “Climatic Influences on Mankind.” Why, it may be asked in conclusion, does B. B. Redding's “Californian Indians and their Food,” appear in the section Technology? The interests of science are not furthered by these minute subdivisions and barbarous nomenclatures, which are especially uncalled for in the case of a science whose broad divisions are already marked out with sufficient clearness and accuracy to serve all present practical purposes.