American Ethnology ¹

Abstract

UNDER the able management of Major J. W. Powell the Bureau of Ethnology, recently attached to the Smithsonian Institution, has already done much useful work in the wide field of American anthropology. This first annual report, however, of its proceedings for the year ending July, 1880, appears to be somewhat behind time for, although bearing on the title-page tbe date of 1881, it was not issued to the public till the beginning of the present year. But the delay is doubtless due to the large amount of preliminary work required to be got through in organising the department, and future reports may be expected to appear more punctually. The title, “Annual Report,” is itself somewhat misleading, the actual report of the director really occupying no more than thirty-three introductory pages, and consisting mainly of a digest of the rich materials filling a large quarto volume of over 600 pages. Hence this is, strictly speaking, a first volume of the Proceedings or Transactions of the Bureau, and as such gives fair promise of a long and useful career in an anthropological domain which may be regarded as practically unlimited.