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Show INQUIRIES AND SUGGESTIONS UPON SIGN- LANGUAGE AMONG THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. BY GARRICK MALLERY. INTRODUCTORY. The Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution has in preparation a work upon Sign- Language among the North American Indians, and, further, intended to be an exposition of the gesture- speech of mankind thorough enough to be of suggestive use to students of philology and of anthropology in general. The present paper is intended to indicate the scope of that future publication, to excite interest and invite correspondence on the subject, to submit suggestions as to desirable points and modes of observation, and to give notice of some facilities provided for description and illustration. The material now collected and collated is sufficient to show that the importance of the subject deserves exhaustive research and presentation by scientific methods instead of being confined to the fragmentary, indefinite, and incidental publications thus far made, which have never yet been united for comparison, and are most of them difficult of access. Many of the descriptions given in the lists of earlier date than those contributed during the past year in response to special request are too curt and incomplete to assure the perfect reproduction of the sign intended, while in others the very idea or object of the sign is loosely expressed, so that for thorough and satisfactory exposition they require to be both corrected and supplemented, and therefore the cooperation of competent observers, to whom l S L |