filling them with water, drive the inmates out to take refuge on the roof, where whole families are often huddled together for hours or even days. In making long journeys to remote fishing-grounds the father takes the young children in the kiak and the women follow the low swampy shore on foot, often wading waist deep across estuaries or through marshes. If a storm rages in the night the kiak is turned on its side and the family sleep with their heads alone protected under it and the remainder of their bodies stretched out upon the ground.

The private dwellings are dark so that that they cannot work in them, but they construct large council-houses, or kashimas, lighted by a spacious opening in the roof, and where they assemble and make their weapons and canoes, and work at curious carvings in ivory. Here also the young men gather to listen to the adventures of their elders, and be trained in the pursuits of life. They purposely inure themselves to hardships, such as sitting upright for entire nights to fit them for long watches in their kiaks at sea, and in this process of education the old men are very severe taskmasters. The young man is emancipated from all family connection as soon as he is able to build himself a kiak. He then ceases to be a permanent resident of his village, and roams about as fancy dictates. On the banks of the Togiak the writer had found whole communities, men, women, and children, moving from place to place from May until October or November, without house or shelter except the upturned kiak. One of these serves a whole family; and there are times when as many as four or five hundred such temporary shelters can be seen on bars and along the low banks of the stream where fish and game abound. They present a striking appearance when the members of a family crowd their heads into the circular opening of the kiak with their feet and bodies protruding and exposed to the rain. "Surely," remarked the speaker, "many species of animals employ greater sagacity and energy in providing shelter for themselves and offspring."

These people drink a great deal of water without regard to

quality, taking it often from stagnant pools or ponds, where fish are cleaned and offal is thrown in. In their excursions out to sea they never take supplies of fresh water, but drink sea water. These practices have no apparent effect on their health. They never bathe or wash their bodies, but on certain occasions the men light a fire in the kashima, strip themselves and dance and jump around until in a profuse perspiration. They then apply urine to their oily bodies and rub them until a lather appears, after which they plunge into the river. The sports of children are all aquatic, such as sailing miniature canoes or pieces of drift wood, building fishtraps, throwing spears and arrows at gulls and other birds, and then wading or plunging in to recover them. In winter these people huddle together in their little quarters where they have no form of artificial heat except what is furnished by smoking and flaring oil lamps with wicks of moss. These houses are exceedingly close, and the only avenue through which air can enter is littered up with offal and filth of all kinds.

The paper was discussed by several members.

Prof. Mason inquired whether these people were much subject to diseases, such as consumption and rheumatism, and also relative to their longevity.

Mr. Petroff replied that they were subject to consumption. He thought that 50 years would be about the maximum age attained. by them.

Major Powell remarked that the council-house is an institution common to many tribes, and that in most tribes it is called the sweat-house, or sudatory. He said that the Indian tent is a modern innovation, and that formerly they had dwellings of various kinds and materials. The skin tent was simply their portable shelter, besides which they had permanent ones. He also spoke of the great power of tribes to adapt themselves to their environment, and described the natural development of the pueblo dwellings and fortified villages from a primitive origin in mere temporary piles of loose stones thrown up for protection.

Dr. Reynolds stated that in Portugal, where soap was often very

dear or difficult to obtain, clothes were sometimes washed in urine as a substitute for it.

Dr. Morgan regarded the statement that the Innuits drank seawater as very remarkable and unparalleled; he said he had heard that those shipwrecked sailors who remain in the water hold out longest owing to absorption through the pores of their skin, but they eventually die of thirst.

Mr. Petroff replied that he had employed them to take him out to sea, and seen them drink sea-water, never asking him for any of the fresh water he took with him.

Mr. Guss asked how far out to sea they ever ventured, and Mr. Petroff answered that they frequently went out of sight of land.

Dr. A. F. A. King read a paper entitled "THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE CEREMONIES AND ITS IMPORT," in which he endeavored to show:

1. That primitive man, probably, had no marriage ceremony, but was governed in his sexual relations very much after the manner of brute animals, according to the "law of battle" among males, and the law of "sexual selection."

2. That the beginning of marriage ceremonies grew out of elements appertaining to social evolution and were not due to any anatomical or physiological changes in the organism, and resulted in the practical setting aside of the old law of "sexual selection;" just as at the present day we know marriages are most frequently determined by qualifications as to property, education, social position, political influence, &c., &c.

3. By the same factors the law of what he termed "ostruational selection" or "recurrent sexual coincidence" had been practically set aside. The natural working of this law provided that the human female (like the females of other beings) should only admit approaches of the male at periods more or less coincident with the epochs of ovulation. It, therefore, contributed to promote reproduction and perpetuation of the species. It accorded the female the privilege of consent or refusal. Throughout nature the male was the wooer, the female was wooed. It secured the female the

liberty of refusal during gestation, as well as the power to decline additional males when her physiological wants had recently been satisfied. Female animals were endowed with ample means of protection from the approaches of unwelcome males. It can scarcely be otherwise than that woman originally possessed the same privilege.

In connection with this part of the subject Dr. King referred to the views of McLennan, Lubbock, Spencer, and others, in support of the idea that the social evolution of the human race had been accompanied by phases of development, in which women had been made the slaves of men and had been bought and sold as wives, or betrothed for a consideration when infants, and subjected to marriage consummation regardless of any expressed desire or physiological want. Our own marriage customs were an outgrowth of these early phases of social evolution.

In conclusion Dr. King stated his belief that the present system of marriage among civilized peoples was, all things considered, the best that could possibly be devised. Monogamy, in order to satisfy the physiological wants of civilized males, may necessitate violation of the law of "œstruational selection" and compel the continuance of 'sexual union during pregnancy, and this, in its turn, might add to the ills of woman and multiply the diseases peculiar to her sex; but it was nevertheless a necessity, inseparable from the usages and maintenance of a high civilization. We might as well settle down to the conviction, once and for all, that it was useless to attempt a strict adherence to physiological laws and at the same time regard the requirements of civilized life; and hence had arisen, with the growth of every form of civilization, the enactment of State laws. and the development of religions, without which the control and subjugation of natural instincts, in a way to secure the best results to all individuals composing a community, would be impossible.

Mr. Ward made some remarks on the portion of the paper which referred to the great difference between the sexual habits of human beings and of animals. He applied to the phenomenon as mani

fested by man the term "male sexual selection" which he put in contrast with sexual selection proper as described by Darwin, and which is female sexual selection. This last he claimed was in turn due to natural selection, and the chivalrous deportment of male animals towards the females, which alone enabled the latter to select, had resulted from the natural selection of those species displaying it most by the inevitable extermination of those that sought gratification by force after the manner of uncivilized man. He regarded male sexual selection as a purely psychological phenomenon, and due to the influence of the mind in bringing about changes in the sexual habits of the human female. Both sexes becoming rational through the development of the brain, the males learned by various manifestations of cunning to influence the females in the direction of overcoming the apathies and aversions which nature gives her as a protection to her sex. Man appealed to woman's imagination and to her reason, faculties wanting in the lower animals; through appeals to her imagination he was gradually able to excite sexual feeling in her at times when pure instinct forbade it; through appeals to her reason he was able to secure submission at such times in exchange for other favors which he could confer and of which she in her subject state stood in great need. Even sexual caste, and the reverence of the women for the men by which the latter further secure the submission of the former at unnatural periods, is possible only to beings with developed mental faculties. In these and other ways a complete revolution in the sexual nature of woman had been produced. It must have taken place as gradually as cerebral development itself, otherwise adaptation would have been impossible. By it men, instead of being chosen by women, became the choosers of their wives, and female, had been converted into male sexual selection. Remarkable morphological changes had been the result, and just as in animals under female sexual selection male beauty had been produced, so in man under male selection female beauty had become predominant. He remarked upon the scarcity of scientific data on this