it is done in zoology and botany with the genera and species. In the same manner as the Mescaleros and Lipans are called Mescalero-Apaches and Lipan-Apaches, we can form compound names, as:—Warm-Spring Sahaptin, Piskwaus Selish, Watχlála Chinook, Kwalhioqua Tinné, Hoopa Tinné, Dowpum Wintoon, Gallinomero Pomo, Coconoon Yocut, Kizh Shoshoni (or Kizh Kauvuya), Comoyei Yuma, Ottare Cherokee, Séneca Iroquois, Abnáki Algónkin, Delaware Algonkin, and so forth. The help afforded to linguistic topography by this method would be as important as the introduction of Linnean terminology was to descriptive natural science, for genera and species exist in human speech as well as among animals and plants.
The thorough study of one Indian tongue is the most powerful incentive to instructed and capable travelers for collecting as much linguistic material as possible, and as accurately as possible, chiefly in the shape of texts and their translations. It is better to collect little information accurately, than much information of an unreliable nature. The signs used for emphasizing syllables, for nasal and softened vowels, for explosive, lingual, croaking, and other consonantic sounds must be noted and explained carefully; and the whole has to be committed to such publishers or scientific societies as are not in the habit of procrastinating publications. Stocks and dialects become rapidly extinct in the West, or get hopelessly mixed, through increased inter-tribal commerce, so that the original shape, pronunciation and inflection can no longer be recognized with certainty. The work must be undertaken in no distant time by zealous men, for after "the last of the Mohicans" will have departed this life, there will be no means left for us to study the most important feature of a tribe—its language—if it has not been secured in time by alphabetical notation.
ALBERT S. GATSCHET.
