Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/306

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

supplied by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and his animal reports, published by that body, have been veritable storehouses of new and valuable information. Dr. Boas has lately prepared an important work upon the Mythology of Albert S. Gatschet. North America, which will soon appear from the press. Dr. Boas is in charge of the Physical Anthropology Section of the Department of Ethnology and Archæology of the World's Columbian Exposition of Chicago. In connection with this work he plans to gather such a mass of anthropometric data concerning the red man as has never before been brought together. Within the next few months he hopes to have fully twenty thousand Indians of different tribes carefully measured. Important facts may be discovered from a careful study of the material thus secured. Dr. Boas at present lectures to a class of students upon statistics in anthropology and other sciences; how to secure, tabulate, and use them. Special graduate students are put at work in his laboratory, which is fairly equipped, upon some line of original research and study, the results of which may be published as contributions to science.

Museums in ethnography and anthropology are not yet numerous in America. Collections of considerable size and worthy of special notice exist at Cambridge, Salem, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Davenport. Of very great importance is the Peabody Museum of American Ethnology at Cambridge, connected with Harvard University, and under direction of Prof. Frederick W. Putnam. At first a zoölogist, especially interested in fishes. Prof. Putnam has long since laid aside everything except archæology. The present work and importance of the museum are mainly due to him. Nine large rooms are filled with valuable collections, a great part of which have been gathered under his personal supervision. No man has done so much to bring about the careful and systematic method of excavation of mounds now followed as he. To refer to all the objects of