so curt as not to give a clear idea, was collated with the French edition of the succeeding year, which, from some internal evidence, appears to have been published with the assistance or supervision of the author.  Many of the descriptions are, however, so brief and indefinite in both their German and French forms that they necessarily remain so in the present translation.  The princely explorer, with the keen discrimination shown in all his work, doubtless observed what has escaped many recent reporters of Indian signs, that the latter depend much more upon motion than mere position, and are generally large and free, seldom minute.  His object was to express the general effect of the motion rather than to describe it with such precision as to allow of its accurate reproduction by a reader who had never seen it.  To have presented the signs as now desired for comparison, toilsome elaboration would have been necessary, and even that would not in all cases have sufficed without pictorial illustration.

On account of the manifest importance of determining the prevalence and persistence of the signs as observed half a century ago, an exception is made to the general arrangement hereafter mentioned by introducing after the Wied signs remarks of collaborators who have made special comparisons, and adding to the latter the respective names of those collaborators—­as, (Matthews), (Boteler).  It is hoped that the work of those gentlemen will be imitated, not only regarding the Wied, signs, but many others.

4.  The signs given to publication by Capt.  R.F.  BURTON, which, it would be inferred, were collected in 1860-’61, from the tribes met or learned of on the overland stage route, including Southern Dakotas, Utes, Shoshoni, Arapahos, Crows, Pani, and Apaches.  They are contained in The City of the Saints, New York, 1862, pp. 123-130.

Information has been recently received to the effect that this collection was not made by the distinguished English explorer from his personal observation, but was obtained by him from one man in Salt Lake City, a Mormon bishop, who, it is feared, gave his own ideas of the formation and use of signs rather than their faithful description.

5.  A list read by Dr. D.G.  MACGOWAN, at a meeting of the American Ethnological Society, January 23, 1866, and published in the Historical Magazine, vol. x, 1866, pp. 86, 87, purporting to be the signs of the Caddos, Wichitas, and Comanches.

6.  Annotations by Lieut.  HEBER M. CREEL, Seventh United States Cavalry, received in January, 1881.  This officer is supposed to be specially familiar with the Cheyennes, among whom he lived for eighteen months; but his recollection is that most of the signs described by him were also observed among the Arapaho, Sioux, and several other tribes.