denied that any such structures were used by Indians, in the East. They insisted that these wigwams were confined to the plains and to the prairies and treeless countries, and did not exist, or were not found, and had never been used in the timbered countries-that in the timbered country Indian houses were made of wooden logs with upright sides and a flat or sloping roof. While I knew that many of these were made among the Iroquois of the East, and that this form was adopted in making the long houses (as they were called), I doubted whether they were so built among the nomadic and wandering tribes of Pennsylvania and the West Ohio, Indiana, etc. Can you give me any enlightenment thereon? If so, I will be obliged."

While it is not improbable that the shape of "wigwams," like burial customs varied considerably among the forest Indians, and while any camper out feels that a shelter often temporary, framed in the woods with available boughs, would vary in shape according to circumstances and suggest variation in more permanent structures, no one need hope to speak with final authority upon this subject, who has not ransacked the records of explorers, the narratives of individuals captured by Indians, the relations of the Jesuits, and the significant sketches of travellers in the last two centuries.

Dr. Daniel G. Brinton informs me that certain of the Brazilian forest Indians use the tepee form, and speaking of the Lenni Lenape, and quoting Nelson's History of New Jersey, writes: "William Penn describes the dwellings of the Delaware Indians as houses of mats, Pastorius

or barks of trees, set on poles, hardly higher than a man.' states that 'young trees would be bent towards a common centre and the branches interlaced and fastened together as a frame work, and covered with bark.' Wassenaer says, 'they would construct a circular matted hut, with either angular or rounded top, thatched or lined with mats, a rent hole in the top serving for the escape of smoke.' This last description is strictly that of a tepee and shows that the angular pointed hut was in use by the Mohigan and Lenape Indians. Wassenaers' History is printed in Vol. III New York Documentary History."

The above quotation from Penn, however, if given correctly in Watsons' Annals of Philadelphia Vol. II. p., 153 reads distinctly against the tepee form. Their houses were made of mats or barks of trees set on poles, in the fashion of an English barn, but out of the power of the winds for they are hardly higher than a man." And we find a rectangular structure again ascribed to the work of a band of Lenapes squatting in the suburbs of Philadelphia about 1770-80, in

Watson Vol. II. p. 31 where a person 80 years old in 1842 relates that he well remembers seeing colonies of Indians of twenty or thirty persons, often coming through the town (Germantown) and sitting down in Logan's woods, others in the present (1842) open field southeast of Griggs' place. They would make their huts and stay a whole year at a time and make and sell baskets, ladles and tolerably good fiddles. He has seen them shoot birds and young squirrels there with their bows and arrows. Their huts were made of four upright saplings with crotch limbs at top. The sides and tops were of cedar bushes and branches. In these they lived in the severest winters. Their fire was on the ground and in the middle of the area."

As the barn structure with its ridge pole would take six upright crotched saplings, this rectangle set up by half civilized indians with only four, was not barn shaped but single sloped like the simplest form of shed. The form described above by Pastorius judging from the tendency of elastic saplings when pulled together at the top to bow outward, would probably have resulted in & round roofed structure of the bee hive pattern if round at the base, or if rectangular, in such a building as De Brys' picture made in 1690 refers to Virginia Indians (Contributions to N. A. ethnology Vol. IV) or Captain John Smith carefully draws over the head of the sitting Powhatan in the upper left hand corner of his map of Virginia (see Narr. and Critical History of Am., III, 166.) But if we believe Wassenaer who distinctly describes the Sioux Tepeè we must allow the latter form to the Delawares.

Too much importance need not be ascribed to the minute realistic outlines of habitations made to stand for Indian villages upon certain old maps drawn on a large scale as for instance in Dumont de Montigny's map of Louisiana (1746), when all Indian villages are marked with tepee like points from the Illinois River to New Orleans and from the Mobile to the Misissippi Rivers. On the other hand Du Prats, in a similar map (1758) gives the barn shape. In other maps the structures seem too carefully and designedly drawn to be without archæoloical value. As when Father Abrahams Almanac Map 1761 (Narrative and Crit. Hist. V, 497) marks seven indian towns in the tepee shape near the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, and Hennepin in his map (1740) of the Mississippi valley and lakes (Narr. and Crit. Hist. IV 252 and 249) and again in his map of the lake region (1683) clearly shows pointed wigwams about the head waters of the Mississippi, as against small rectangular figures for the lower val ley. Hawkins describes a communal Indian house seen in Florida as 2 Narrative and Critical History of America Vol. V. p. 66.

like a great barn in strength, not inferior to ours. Lescarbot's map of Montreal 1609. (Narr. and Crit. His. IV 304) shows the palisaded Indian village of Hochelaga with barn-shaped round-roofed rectangular structures as in John Smith's cut, and in a map of Lake Ontario and the Iroquois Country 1662-63, (from one of the Jesuit relations) the indian villages are barn-shaped and with pointed roofs. La Hontain suggests the same shape in his map of the lake region 1709 (Narr. Crit. Hist. IV 281-261-258) and several Indian lodges of the circular bee-hive pattern surrounded by cultivated enclosures are given by Champlain in his map of Plymouth Harbor 1605. (Narr. and Crit. History IV 109). While not only the round bee-hive pattern, but also the long rectangle with round roof, as in Smith, are carefully drawn by the same explorer in his map of Nauset Harbor, 1604-05 (Land fall of Leif Erickson by Eben Norton Horsford p. 78).

More interesting is the direct evidence of the Indians themselves. The Lenape Stone, found in the Lenape region in 1872, and whose authenticity after ten years observation I have been unable to doubt, shows three pointed figures near trees, unmistakably referring to tepee shaped habitations in the right of the drawing, and another figure similarly outlined on the reverse, (See the Lenape Stone or the Indian and the Mammoth by H. C. Mercer, Putnam, N. Y. 1885). Another stone figured by me from the same locality. (See Lenape Stone p. 94) seems again to be inscribed with three tepee like forms. No less explicit is the tepee figure upon the so called Winnipeseogee Stone found on the shores of Lake Winnipeseogee. (See Abbotts' Primitive Industry p. 362). George Copway (See Bureau of Ethnology Report 1888-89 p. 493 and 242) shows us Ojibway drawings which doubtless refer to the same pointed form of habitation.

That the sides of the barn shaped structures when built as by the Iroqois were invariably made of logs, is not to be supposed from the statement above quoted from Wm. Penn., and the drawing by Captain John Smith. All things considered, we have reason for supposing, subject to correction from documentary investigation, that though the barn shaped and round roofed rectangular structures were common, not only the bee hive, but the true tepee form were in use by Indians in the Pre-Columbian forest east of the Mississippi.

HENRY C. MERCER.

PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES.

Novia Scotian Institute of Science.-The 13th of April.-The following papers were read: Preliminary Notes on the Orthoptera of Nova Scotia. By Harry Piers, Esq. Notes on the Newt (D. viridescens) and on the Ring-Necked and Garter Snakes (D. punctatus and E. sirtalis.) By A. H. MacKay, Esq., LL. D., F. R. S. C., Superintendent of Education. On the Calculation of the Conductivity of Mixtures of Aqueous Solutions of Electrolytes having a common ion. By D. MacIntosh, Esq., Physical Laboratory, Dalhousie College.— HARRY PIERS, Secretary.

Boston Society of Natural History.-March 18th.-The following paper was read: Prof. Charles R. Cross, "The X rays." With experimental illustrations.

April 1st. The following paper was read: Prof. William Libbey, "The Hawaiian Islands."

April 15th.-The following papers were read: Mr. M. L. Fuller, "A new occurrence of Carboniferous fossils in the Narragansett Basin. Prof. Alpheus Hyatt, "The evidence of the descent of man from the ape. A discussion upon the subject of Prof. Hyatt's followed, Prof. Thomas Dwight, Prof. C. S. Minot, and others participating.-SAMUEL HENSHAW, Secretary.

American Philosophical Society.-March 20th.-An obituary of Rev. W. H. Furness, by Jos. G. Rosengarten, was presented; Mrs. Cornelius Stevenson read a short paper on " Remains of Libyan Invaders of Egypt," discovered in 1895 by Mr. Flinders Petrie.

April 10.-Prof. Cope made some observations on the figures on a tablet from Nippur, pointing out the physical characters of the men and animals represented.

Academy of Natural Science, Philadelphia.—A meeting of the Anthropological Section was held the 13th of March.-The following papers were read: Prof. F. Edge Kavanagh, addressed the Section on "Right Handedness," was the subject discussed by Drs. Mills, Allen and Brinton, Professors Witmer, Culin, Jastrow and Gudeman.

Anthropological Section was held at the Academy on Friday, April 10th. The following paper was read: Prof. Lightner Witmer on "Psycho-physical Measurement."-CHARLES MORRRIS.

New York Academy of Sciences.-Biological Section, March 9th. Mr. F. B. Sumner read a paper on "The Descent Tree of the Variations of a Land Snail from the Philippines," illustrated by a lantern slide. Mr. Sumner described the range in variation in size and markings in the shell, and arranged the varieties in the form of a tree of three branches diverging from the most generalized type. It was shown that these several varieties occupy the same geographical region and Mr. Sumner was of the opinion that their occurrence could not be explained by natural selection since if the colorations were supposed to be protective it would be impossible to explain the evolution of these three types. Prof. Osborn, in discussion, was inclined to take the same view. Dr. Dyar, however, thought the explanation by natural selection not necessarily excluded, since the variations seemed analogous to the dimorphism in sphinx larvae, which has been shown by Poulton to be probably due to this factor.

The other paper was by Dr. Arnold Graf on "The Problem of the Transmission of Acquired Characters."

Dr. Graf discussed the views of the modern schools of evolutionists and adopted the view that the transmission of acquired characters must be admitted to occur. He cited several examples which seemed to support this view, and especially discussed the sucker in leeches as an adaptation to parasitism and the evolution of the chambered shell in a series of fossil Cephalopods.

Prof. Osborn remarked in criticism of Dr. Graf's paper that this statement does not appear to recognize the distinction between ontogenic and phylogenic variation, or that the adult from any organism is an exponent of the stirp, or constitution. The Environment. If the environment is normal the adult would be normal, but if the environment (which includes all the atmospheric, chemical, nutritive, motor and psychical circumstances under which the animal is reared) were to change, the adult would change correspondingly; and these changes would be so profound that in many cases it would appear as if the constitution, or stirp, had also changed. Illustrations might be given of changes of the most profound character induced by changes in either of the above factors of the environment, and in the case of the motor factor or animal motion, the habits of the animal might, in the course of a life time, profoundly modify its structure. For example, if the human infant were brought up in the branches of a tree as an arboreal type instead of as a terrestrial, bi-pedal type, there is little doubt that some of the well known early adaptations to arboreal habit (such as the turning in of the soles of the feet, and the grasping of the