The kinship tribes first developed by man gradually underwent a change. Tribe coalesced with tribe, and when tribes became too large by union or by natural multiplication they divided. In the consolidation of tribes the plan of union by kinship remained. Two or more tribes allied their fortunes by intermarriage, each furnishing wives to the other; so the chains of affinity were forged, and out of this affinity spring new bonds of consanguinity. In succeeding generations fathers and mothers belong to different clans, and each tribe is made up of individuals, every member of which is kin to both primal tribes. Kinship through affinity and kinship, through consanguinity, was maintained in knowledge by a device of naming, so that the name not only expressed kinship by clan, but also kinship by tribe as composed of clans, and at the same time expressed relative age by which authority was claimed and yielded and primeval equality maintained. In the coalescing of tribes in this manner a new generation became heirs to the activities of the coalescing tribes. They inherited industries, pleasures, languages, institutions and opinions of the ancestral tribes. So tribes coalesced with tribes and divided and coalesced again, until tribal society was lost in the confusion of ancestries. Then nations were born, based not on kinship bonds but on territorial boundaries. The first nation and every other nation since has in its very organization lost its ancestral identity by multiplied admixture of streams of blood. To speak of a nation as of one blood or as derived from one primeval tribe with its primitive industries, pleasures, speech, institutions and opinions is absurd. To search for the origin of a nation in one primeval tribe having some one or all of the primeval activities is a search for the impossible.

It is thus that the study of the human race has led to the discovery of its unity. It is found that we cannot classify men as

biotic kinds with differing forms, functions and genealogies, as the lower animals are classified. An early tendency to such differentiation is discovered, but it is farther learned that this tendency has been partially obliterated and greatly obscured in the later history of mankind. By these discoveries many interesting facts have been recorded of variations in human forms, functions and genealogies. The study is one of interest and proves to be valuable. Thus the old science of ethnology remains as the study of biotic varieties of mankind, and is pursued with more vigor than ever and becoming of more and more import

ance.

In the study of ethnology as the science of biotic races the attempt was early made to supplement biotic characteristics with cultural characteristics from the domain of arts, or, as they are here called, humanities. This has led to the development of a new science pertaining to human activities as herein classified, and to which the term demology is sometimes given, while even the term ethnology is made to include both the biotic and the activital history of mankind. It may be well to keep the term ethnology to the limits of its primitive use and to adopt the term demology for the new science of human activities.

WASHINGTON.

J. W. POWELL.

ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE.

THE EARLIEST GENERIC NAME OF THE GROUND. SQUIRRELS COMMONLY PLACED IN THE

GENUS SPERMOPHILUS.

THE eccentric Rafinesque, who imposed such a multitude of new names upon animals and plants, seems to have been first to name the group of ground squirrels for which the later name Spermophilus of Cuvier (1825) has been in common use for more than half a century. In 1817 Rafinesque published a paper entitled 'Descriptions of new genera of North American Quadrupeds,'

6

in which the Burrowing Squirrel' of Lewis & Clark was made the type of a new genus and species, Anisonyx brachiura.* This animal had been named Arctomys columbianus by Ord two years previously; † and was afterward erroneously referred to the genus Cynomys likewise proposed by Rafinesque for one of Lewis & Clark's animals. Several years ago I showed that the animal in question is a true ground squirrel or spermophile, but refrained from reinstating Rafinesque's genus Anisonyx because it was then believed that a still earlier name would be found. A somewhat exhaustive search through the literature, however, has failed to bring to light anything earlier; hence it seems necessary to publicly reintroduce Anisonya as the proper generic name for the group of mammals now commonly referred to Spermophilus.

THE EARLIEST AVAILABLE NAME FOR THE MOUNTAIN GOAT.

It has been customary of late to refer the Mountain Goat to the genus Mazama of Rafinesque. But Mazama was based primarily on the Temamazame of Mexico, which Rafinesque called M. tema, and which has been since shown to be a deer. The next species mentioned by Rafinesque is our Mountain Goat, which he named M. dorsata. But under this species he makes the following unequivocal statement which seems to have been overlooked: "This species, with the following [M. sericea, which is really the same animal] and the Mazama puda [of Chili], will form a particular subgenus (or perhaps genus) which I shall call Oreamnos, distinguished by the horns slightly

* Am. Monthly Magazine, II., 1817, 45.

Guthrie's Geography, 2dA m. Ed., II., 1815, 292 and 303-304.

Mammals of Idaho, N. Am. Fauna, No. 5, July, 1891, 39-42.

Am. Monthly Mag., II., 1817, p. 44.

|| Biologia Centrali-Americana, Mammalia, 1880, p. 113.

curved backwards or outwards, often rough or annulated, and long hair, besides living in mountains." (Am. Monthly Mag., II., 1817, 44). In view of these facts there seems to be no escape from the adoption of the name Oreamnos as the earliest available generic name for the Mountain Goat, which is the type and only known species of the genus, the M. puda' being a South American deer. The full name for the species is Oreamnos montanus (Ord) 1815, and the type locality is the Cascade Range, near the Columbia River, in Oregon or Washington. C. HART MERRIAM.

WASHINGTON.

THE NEED OF A CHANGE OF BASE IN THE STUDY OF NORTH AMERICAN ORTHOPTERA.

SOME twenty years ago one of the very acutest and most industrious of modern entomologists, the late Carl Stål, of Stockholm, began the publication of a Recensio Orthopterorum. In it and in kindred papers he had within five years laid the foundation of an entirely new system in nearly every family of Orthoptera, offering novel and taxonomically important but easily overlooked points of structure for subdivisions of a high order. A great deal of work has been done since then (the number of species has perhaps doubled), and it has been mainly upon the lines laid down. by him, but in greater detail.

Most American students of Orthoptera, however, have been very poorly acquainted with these modern studies, and the result is that, with a distressing wealth of undetermined species, new forms have been described and referred to genera of ancient name, a procedure which in many cases has given little or a wrong impression of the real affinities of the insects in question, and it has now become impossible to correlate American and European work. Something, indeed much, has been done by European

entomologists, but their autoptic acquaintance with our fauna is relatively poor; and while there are ample materials here, there appears a remarkable paucity of students inclined to serious work in this direction. Lists we have in number, but in them almost invariably figure Acridium, Caloptenus, Oedipoda, Stenobothrus, Mantis, etc., genera which in their now restricted application do not or hardly exist in North America.

There has been some excuse for this, since the broad scope of Stål's work, embracing the Orthoptera of the globe, rendered work upon exclusively American material difficult to one without means of reference to extra-American insects, collections of which are uncommon in this country, though easily obtainable by any one with means. Still, it is strange that no one having access to the museums in our larger cities or universities has undertaken to apply the modern system of classification to one or another of the families or subfamilies of American Orthoptera. He would have earned merited applause from all students in this field.

One attempt, indeed, was made to collate what could be known of the Acrididæ, but it was before Stål began his work, and it may almost be classed as a hindrance. Now, however, the field is open, for Brunner von Wattenwyl, whose collection of Orthoptera is the richest in the world, published a year ago a Révision du Système des Orthoptères, through which, by means of the tables given by him of an exceedingly simple character (sometimes in practice one finds them too limited), one may quickly group his collection in a natural order, and by means of the literature to which reference is briefly made, determine the generic position or affinities of whatever he has before him. The way for a revision of any group is therefore clearer than ever before, and our entomologists will have none but

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

An Elementary Treatise on Theoretical Mechanics.-Part I., Kinematics; Part II., Introduction to Dynamics; Part III., Kinetics. -By ALEXANDER ZIWET, Assistant Professor of Mathematics in the University of Michigan.-Svo.- Macmillan & Co., London and New York, 1893-94. Pp. viii+181, viii+183, viii+236.

Since Lagrange set the model for analytical mechanics in his Mécanique Analytique, a little more than a century ago, there has been no serious lack of good elementary works devoted to that science. Most conspicuous of the latter is Poisson's Mécanique (1811, 2d ed., 1833), which was undoubtedly more widely read and followed than any other work during the first half of this century. It is only recently, however, that the great advantage of the analytical over the geometrical method in mechanics has come to be generally recognized by authors and educators. The influence of Newton has long held English writers to the geometrical form of the Principia. To this, nevertheless, there are a few noteworthy exceptions, the most important of which in the present half century is probably Price, whose volumes on analytical mechanics (Infinitesimal Calculus, Vols. III. and IV., 1862) have done excellent service.

Along with the remarkable growth of science in general during the past thirty years a great impetus has been given to mechanics. This is traceable chiefly to two sources, namely: first, the development of the Faraday-Maxwell view of electricity and magnetism; and, second, the thoughtinspiring qualities of the great work of Thomson and Tait on Natural Philosophy.

The latter treatise and the Electricity and Magnetism of Maxwell have stimulated a wonderful activity in the study of mechanical ideas; and, as a result, a number of highclass elementary books on pure mechanics have appeared during the past decade. The work of Professor Ziwet is one of the best of this class. It is up to date and distinctively in touch with the progressive spirit of the age. In accordance with the modern order of presentation, Part I. is devoted to kinematics, Part II. to statics as a special case of dynamics, and Part III. to kinetics. No one acquainted with the magnitude of theoretical mechanics would expect to find a complete treatise even in the space of 600 octavo pages. It goes without saying, in fact, that he who would now do battle in the fields of mechanics should be armed with a battery of treatises. But it must be admitted that the work of Professor Ziwet covers the ground exceedingly well, giving a fairly good idea of nearly every important principle and process from the composition of vectors to the kinetics of variable systems. The mode of treatment, though distinctly analytical, is tempered by the introduction. of geometrical illustrations and analogues where they serve to give clearness and fixity of ideas. A noteworthy feature of the work is the large number of references to the literature of the science. These references These references alone make the work one of the best that can fall into the hands of the enterprising student. The typography and press work are worthy of the distinguished publishers under whose auspices the volumes appear. A few misprints and a few inaccuracies of expression are visible in the work; but these are inevitable in a first edition of such a treatise. A speedy demand for a second. edition will, we hope, enable the author not only to remove these trifling defects, but also to add an index, which will much enhance the value of the work for purposes of reference. R. S. W.

From the Greeks to Darwin.-An outline of the development of the evolution idea.- By HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN. - Columbia University Biological Series 1.- New York and London, Macmillan & Co., 1894. Pp. 259. $2.00.

This is a timely book. For it is time. that both the special student and the general public should know that the doctrine. of evolution has cropped out on the surface of human thought from the period of the Greek philosophers, and that it did not originate with Darwin, and that natural selection is not a synonym of evolution.

The author divides his work into six sections, entitled respectively: The anticipation and interpretation of nature; Among the Greeks; The theologians and natural philosophers; The evolutionists of the eighteenth century; From Lamarck to St. Hilaire; Darwin.

It is clearly shown that evolution has reached its present completeness as a result of a slow growth during the past twentyfour centuries, and that Darwin owes more to the Greeks than has been hitherto recognized by any of us. The Greek philosophers in biology, as in geology, anticipated, at least in some slight degree, modern scientific philosophy! The doctrine of continuity in the organic and inorganic world, anticipations anticipations of the monistic philosophy, and of the evolution of life, were taught by Thales and Anaximander, while Aristotle spoke of some of the factors of transformation, and even clearly stated the principle of the survival of the fittest, though he afterwards rejected it.

The father of evolution was Empedocles, who believed in spontaneous generation, that plants came first, that animal life long after budded forth from the plants, and in his poetry Osborn finds the germ of the theory of the survival of the fittest or of natural selection. Democritus perceived the principle of adaptation of single organs

to certain purposes, while Anaxagoras attributed adaptations in nature to intelligent design and was thus the founder of Teleology. But as Aristotle was the father of natural history so was he the first scientific evolutionist, being the earliest to conceive of the chain of being from polyps to man, a view afterwards generally held until Lamarck replaced it by his truer simile of a branching tree. The great Greek naturalist and anatomist understood the principle of adaptation of organs in its modern sense, discovered the law of the physiological division of labor, and conceived of life as the function of the organism; was not a vitalist; understood the doctrine of heredity, atavism or reversion; and finally, with all his errors and misconceptions, had vague notions of the unity of type, of nature, of gradations in nature, while the core of his views on evolution was the doctrine of an 'internal perfecting tendency,' which crops out in modern science in the writings of Owen, and even Koelliker, as well as others, including Weismann.

Passing to the evolutionists of the present century, Oken's place is, it seems to us, properly assigned; due credit is given to Buffon, who saw the force of isolation, and full credit to Erasmus Darwin, though sufficient stress is perhaps not laid on the fact that he was not a working zoologist and had no followers. Osborn effectually disposes of the strong suspicion of Dr. Krause that Lamarck was familiar with the 'Zoonomia,' and made use of it in the development of his theory. He clearly brings out the fact, as stated by Martins, that Laplace supported Lamarck in the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired habits, as applied to the origin of the mental faculties of man, both of these authors anticipating Spencer, the doctrine being an old one, and expressed by De Maillet.

The statement of Lamarck's views is full and carefully drawn up, and his preëmi

nence as the founder of modern evolution, though he had no immediate followers, owing to his Cuvierian environment, clearly stated. This being the case, and in view of the fact that the number of Lamarckian evolutionists is now so great and constantly increasing, we should have wished that he had devoted still more space to one of the greatest naturalists of pre-Darwinian times, giving more quotations from his works.

Osborn controverts, and with success, we think, Huxley's dictum that Treviranus should be placed in the same rank as an evolutionist with Lamarck. We certainly do not hear of Treviranians. The statement of the views of Owen is fair, and yet we should scarcely use the word 'hostility' in stating his attitude towards Darwinism or natural selection. Owen refused to attack the Vestiges of Creation when that book appeared, but rather sympathized with the general views of its author. As Osborn states, "Owen was an evolutionist in a limited degree," somewhat in the manner of Buffon, and perhaps a shade more from his wide knowledge of paleontology, but it is to be borne in mind that neither was Koelliker nor were others, Darwinians as such, and there are many still who accept the general doctrine of evolution, but do not regard natural selection as an adequate or efficient cause, or at least consider it as only one of many factors.

While mentioning Darwin and Wallace. as the leading selectionists no reference is made to the botanist Hooker, who, in his Flora antarctica arrived at the doctrine of transformation independently of Darwin, and became one of his two strongest supporters. Also Bates should have been mentioned.

The book should be widely read, not only by science teachers, by biological students, but we hope that historians, students of social science, and theologians will acquaint themselves with this clear, candid and catholic statement of the origin and early