Medicine. In the "Alkaloidal Clinic" (Chicago), vol. vi. (1897), C. S. Moody discusses (pp. 560–562) the "Obstetric Customs of Northwest Indians."
Music. In the "American Anthropologist" for November, 1897 (vol. x. pp. 377–380), writing of the "Geographical Distribution of the Music Bow," Professor O. T. Mason notes its presence among the Mayas of Yucatan, in the interior of Brazil, in California, and in New Mexico. His general conclusion is that "stringed musical instruments were not known to any of the aborigines of the Western Hemisphere before Columbus." The name for the musical bow in the interior of Brazil, umcunga, seems the Angolese n'kungo, and we have here "a musical instrument imported by negro slaves, given to the Indians with its native African name, and abandoned by the negroes themselves" (p. 380).—In the "Land of Sunshine" (Los Angeles, Cal.) for June, 1897, Professor J. C. Fillmore writes of "The Scientific Importance of the Folk-Music of our Aborigines."
Religion. In the Second Series (1896–1897) of "American Lectures on the History of Religions" appears Dr. D. G. Brinton's "Religions of Primitive Peoples," a work in which the American Indian forms of faith and expressions of the religious sentiment find sympathetic and scholarly treatment. The Six Lectures of which the book (pp. xiv., 204, 8°) is composed discuss the following topics: The Scientific Study of Primitive Religions; The Origin and Contents of Primitive Religions; Primitive Religious Expression: in the Word; Primitive Religious Expression: in the Object; Primitive Religious Expression: in the Rite; The Series of Development of Primitive Religions.
Shamanism. In the "Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc." (Philadelphia), vol. xxxv. (1897), Mr. J. C. Morris discusses (pp. 179–183) the "Relation of the Pentagonal Dodecahedron found near Marietta, Ohio, to Shamanism."—The paper is followed by "Remarks on Shamanism" (pp. 183–192), by F. H. Cushing.
Totems. To the "American Antiquarian" for July–August, 1897 (vol. xix. pp. 190–210), Rev. Stephen D. Peet contributes an illustrated article on "Mythologic Totems," dealing with the system in relation to kinship, to native mythology; totemic classification and representation. The author styles totemism "a system of religion" (p. 194).
A. F. C.
