MEANING OF THE WORDS FOR GENS IN THE IROQUOIAN AND ALGONQUIAN TONGUES.-In connection with the subject of Iroquoian totemism it is interesting to note the curious fact that in nearly all the languages of this stock the word o-'tă-ră,' with its dialectic variants, signifies both gens and clay or mud. It is very probable that this dual signification of the word was common to all of the Iroquoian languages, since the term is found among all of them with at least the original meaning of clay or mud. This two-fold usage of the word is probably owing to the employment by the Indians in very primitive times of clay in the manufacture of their tutelar "okis" or totems, and in marking or claying the totemic figure on their persons and on their houses, standards, etc. In those tongues in which gens and clay are expressed by one and the same word, "What is your gens?" is, literally, "What is the outline or contour of your clay?" It must not be overlooked that there are other words that also denote mud, mush, slush or wet earth, but not "potter's clay."

In Algonquian the word ote," gens," from which the word totem is taken, seems to have had also the meaning clay or mud. It is found in nearly all if not in all the languages of the Algonquian stock. In the Nipissing and Chippewayan tongues it means gens, family, family mark, household, village, tribe, and nation. In the words Maskote ("prairie," or "plain," literally, "large earth or clay,'') and Iskote or Iskate ("parched earth or dried clay," literally, "burned or sun-dried clay,'') this stem evidently retains its original signification clay. With these facts in view it seems to me that "clay" is the most probable meaning of the stem ote, that is, its original meaning.

Father Thavenet, however, states that the root of this stem is the word teh, "heart," "because the persons who compose a family are thought to have the same heart, the same sentiments." Of this derivation Father Cuoq justly remarks that "each one is left perfectly free to accept or to reject it, either wholly or in part," he thus being clearly convinced that this is a doubtful etymology.

In connection with this stem ote it may be well to state that it is probably the root of the word otenă, "village or city," which in turn resembles the Iroquoian o-na'-ta' or u-tă'-'ne, but whether the resemblance is merely fortuitous I am not prepared to say. Sufficient and suitable data are wanting for the proper discussion of this latter question. J. N. B. HEWITT.

In this paper there will be no direct attempt to exhume ancient customs from the ruins of the past, nor to describe those found in the low strata of culture represented by savage and barbaric peoples, which also explain details of our own prehistoric past. The present line of thought deals with the customs of our own daily life in civilization. Its object is to notice those which show instructive peculiarities and to ascertain their cause or occasion and their origin, in which attempt antiquarian research and ethnic parallel must be invoked for aid, though approached in a manner rather the converse of the usual anthropologic discussions.

The points to be examined, sometimes minute and particular, are all in the grand division of ceremonial customs. These are not to be confounded with fashions, which are temporary, also generally showing an individual origin and special purpose, although mere fashions may, if meritorious, grow into established and far-extending customs; neither do they include industrial habitudes, which affect only certain classes or perhaps crafts, but not the active social life and common status.

Customs may be clearly distinguished from laws. The former are growths, generally slow and without teleologic intent; the latter. are specific acts, as indeed they are often termed, and have an immediate and professed design. Laws, whether statutory or made by the course of judicial decisions, do not originate customs, but, when successful (i. e., enduring), are declaratory of customs that have grown into prevalence and therefore demand recognition. A statute book-particularly a revised code, from which legislative failures are eliminated—is the record and repertory of successfully established (193)

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customs. Even the changing rules, as of our House of Representatives, are not customs, although it is a law originating in custom that the House shall make its own rules; the House itself is but the creature of old customs and is dependent upon them.

Inventions, themselves the product of evolution, may in time originate or develop customs as well as fashions. An instance will hereafter be noted concerning the special use of the fork. A familiar example is found in the custom throughout civilization of mounting a horse from the left side, which arose from the completed invention of the sword belted on the left side of the wearer for convenience of drawing and requiring mounting from the same direction. Formerly every mounted man habitually wore a sword, though now its use is of exceeding rarity. Even in our cavalry service it is becoming so disused that in the celebrated Custer expedition not a sabre was carried. Yet the custom of mounting on the side technically termed near, as distinguished from off, is so absolute that the reverse proceeding would be awkward to both horse and rider and surely would provoke ridicule among bystanders. Here the custom has survived the invention which induced it.

Savages seem to have had little sense of taste, though that of smell, closely connected with it, is acute. The latter is an assistance to them in the details of their lives, as it is to the sub-human animals, and thus it was developed early. They regarded food, from their necessities, merely as sustenance, and their gratification from it was only in gross repletion.

It is not the highest combination of mental and physical organization in which the principle is "live only to eat," but it presupposes a culture far advanced from the period when the rule was “eat only to live."

There is manifest propriety in the cultivation of the gustatory among the other senses, even though it may never afford the high intellectual pleasures derived from sight and hearing. Without being epicures we can sympathize with the celebrated gourmet who expressed his horror at his friend's "spoiling such a noble appetite with a beef-steak." The tale is always repeated in ridicule, but there is good logic in it. So much more pleasure could be procured from the appetite if properly used as an instrument. I can appeal to musicians for such sympathetic sense of loss as would afflict them if Paganini or Ole Bull had been reduced to playing on a wholesale factory fiddle instead of a Stradivarius or Amati.

It is perhaps not too much to say that a dinner party, thoroughly good in menu, cookery, service, esthetic appliances of sheen and color, culinary chemistry, the conquest over nature shown in condiments from every clime, roses in winter, and in summer ice, and last, though by no means least, in the guests with educated palates, affords altogether the strongest everyday evidence of high civilization. Brutes feed. The best barbarian only eats. Only the cultured man can dine. Dinner is no longer a meal, but an institution. An eminent jurist pronounced that the whole result and aim of the institutions and laws of England was to get twelve men in a It would hardly be a parody to contend that the most obvious result of our modern esthetic and industrial triumphs is to get twelve legs under a table. Few will now assert that asceticism is intellectual. It is now truly regarded as a reversion to the plane of savages, and this is made more clear by the fact that when asceticism as regards food prevailed it was accompanied with filth, and even want of decency in clothing.

A large part of the important work of the civilized world is accomplished or regulated at social dinners. Theodore Hook was reproached for bringing so many dinner details into his novels and he defended himself with the assertion that the dinner was the great theatre of London life. Our fellow-citizens, some decades ago, were foolish enough to procure the recall of Reverdy Johnson as Minister to the Court of St. James on the ground that he was spending all his time at dinners, but it was at them that he was successfully prosecuting his work. In Washington, not only diplomatic but many legislative and official transactions are arranged at dinners. This is in contrast with savage and barbaric life. Feasts were then the means of bringing people together, but the deliberations were before or after, and even ordinary conversation was unknown at the feeds. This perhaps is more strictly true among peoples who did not use alcoholic intoxicants as beverages, for the ancient Persians had a rule to vote in council twice, once sober and once drunk, so as to observe the mooted question from two points of view.

Anciently (and still in the lower stages of culture) no regular hours for meals were observed. The avocations on which subsistence depended were spasmodic, at least in success, or periodic, in terms of seasons, not hours. Savages eat when they can get food and continue to eat so long as the food lasts. The history of civilization, as shown in the establishment of regular pursuits, division of labor,

and inventions (among which improved artificial light is important), may be traced in the changing hours of refection. Confining the examination to Europe since the Middle Ages, the maxim in the reign of Francis I. of France was "to rise at 5, dine at 9, sup at 5, and couch at 9.” Under Henry IV. the Court dined at 11, and noon was the rule in the early years of Louis XIV., though in the provinces distant from Paris the dinner hour remained at 9. In the household ordinances of Henry VIII. of England, the dinner was established at 10 and the supper at 4. This arrangement seems to have been then old, as Froissart mentions waiting on the Duke of Lancaster at 5 in the afternoon, "after he had supped." The dif ferentiated meal, breakfast, with a special character of food, such as we now know it, is of very recent date. A posset or some other confection to stay the stomach was taken on rising without approach to a table, and even now Parisians habitually have their café au lait with a trifle of solid food in their bed chambers and wait several hours after rising before partaking of what they call, as distinct from goûter, the déjeuner, a meal often answering in composition to the old dinner of mid-day. A substantive change even with them is the hour of the latter meal, which is late in the evening, or in the night, instead of early in the afternoon, as it was a few generations ago.

While on this subject I cannot refrain from quoting a direction of Sir John Harington, printed in 1624: "I would not that you should observe a certaine houre, either for dinners or suppers, lest that daily custome should be altered into nature; and after this intermission of this custome of nature hurt may follow." Any man who has served in the field will agree with me that the things next in evil to bad habits are good habits, which also constitute slavery.

The position of the participants at any formal repast has been attended by intricate punctilios, as much probably among savages as in the most ceremonial courts of Europe. Whether the host should be on the right or left of the door of the wigwam or tepee is a traditional ordinance, and the order in which the calumet should be passed is strictly regulated. The most modern and most judicious arrangement of the guests at a dinner party disregards their social or official importance, and seats them with reference to their personal peculiarities, tastes and mutual adaptation. Nevertheless, there still remains a relic of former ceremonials in the apparent necessity for the host and hostess to take into dinner and place at their respective right hands the most distinguished two of opposite