tribes with whom or near whom the Shawnees lived-the Delawares and some of the Illinois tribes. The box-stone graves must be accepted as an ethnic characteristic of the Shawnees.

In Tennessee, where the nation long had their home, cemeteries of box-stone graves are habitually associated with mounds; such graves are frequently found in mounds, and mounds are sometimes little more than a cover over tiers of graves. In Illinois the same contiguity and intermingling are found. It is certain that the mounds which contained such stone graves were built by the men who made the graves. That being admitted, there is little room left to doubt that the associated mounds and connected works were built by the same people. Hence it follows that the Shawnees, when a sedentary people, habitually made mounds and associated earthworks.

One of the Etowah group, a considerable mound, but dwarfed by the grandeur of the great one of the group, when carefully excavated was found to have been built over a group of stone graves. In some of these graves were found copper plates, incised, or stamped or hammered with outlined figures. These when found baffled conjecture. The care with which the excavation was made by practiced hands left no room for suspicion of fraud. They were, then, placed there by those who made the graves.

At first sight the figures stamped upon the copper plates seemed Mexican or Central American; but closer examination showed that while the figures in general were of the Mexican type, there were some differences. Some of the figures are winged; the wings are represented as part of an entire bird skin enveloping the figure as in the Indian designs, but are made to spring from the body behind and between the shoulders, which is a European conception. The drawing of the limbs is European, not Indian. On one plate are distinct marks of a sharp metallic tool. Another is made of pieces welded together. Several are fastened by small rivets, neatly wrought. The workmanship was European; the plates were made by Europeans to represent Indian designs. The question remained, How did they get to the northern part of Georgia when none are found south of that point?

In the seventeenth century Spaniards had settlements and worked gold mines in northern Georgia and contiguous territory. Portions of their work remain and contemporary records exist. Father Lalemont, in the Jesuit Relation for 1662, giving an account of the

Outoagaunha or Shawnees, brought by the Iroquois from an incursion into their country, says: "Their villages lie along a fine river that empties into a great lake, as they call the sea, where they have commerce with Europeans who worship God as we do, use rosaries, and have bells to summon to prayers. From their account we sup

pose these Europeans are Spaniards." According to De la Potherie, a Shawnee prisoner taken in 1665 gave a somewhat similar account. The Shawnee builders of these graves might have got these plates from their Spanish neighbors. There are other circumstances which corroborate this view.

M. F. FORCE.

THE WHISTLE LANGUAGE OF THE CANARY ISLANDERS.-M. Joseph Lajard has printed in the Bulletins of the Society of Anthropology of Paris (Tome Deuxième, IVe Série, 3e et 4e Fascicules, 1891) two very interesting accounts of the whistle language of the Canary islands and of the use of whistling as a means of communication elsewhere. The knowledge of scholars regarding this means of converse was hitherto meager. The whistle language of the Canaries appeared to constitute a special phonetic system without any analogy with forms now known; but a sojourn of M. Lajard in the Canarian archipelago gave him the opportunity to determine the nature of this language. Its use is confined to the poorer classes and to shepherds, for even many of the islanders are ignorant of its existence. The methods of producing the whistled sounds are divided into three classes, according to the organs employed in their production, namely: a, by means of certain fingers of one hand applied to the mouth in one of five different attitudes; b, by means of certain fingers of both hands applied to the mouth in one of two different attitudes; c, by the means of the lips and tongue only.

The first thing decided was whether there was a musical basis for this system; but it was found that the same word is produced by notes executed differently according to the whim of the whistler. Some began with a grave or deep sound, ascending and afterward descending; others would choose a point of departure much higher and then descending back to the starting point. Every one uses a different register; there is analogy, but not identity. This observation clearly excludes the musical hypothesis. The whistled

sounds correspond exactly to the syllables of the spoken word; but there is one more whistle syllable in names than there are in the spoken name; it is an exclamatory hailing syllable; hence, the pretended whistle language is of the Canaries nothing more or less than whistled Spanish, constituting no distinct system of speech. The use of whistling is adapted to mountainous surroundings and not to level tracts.

It being possible to whistle other languages, it would be astonishing should it be found that they are not; but a small number of observations shows that they are, but only in a very rudimentary manner. A sojourn in Corsica was the means of enabling M. Lajard to show that the shepherds there whistle with great ability, there being an analogy between their whistling and that of the Canary islands. It is very singular, he adds, to find it in cultured communities, even in Paris itself.

Workers at the same trade or occupation have this means of intercourse. Carpenters and stone-masons respectively have their language of whistled sounds. Beside that of the honorable professions, there is another, endowed with a rich vocabulary, found among thieves. Whistle language is highly appreciated among the poaching, marauding, and ex-convict gentry.

Evil-doers have borrowed names, and these are the ones whistled. This kind of sobriquets composes the bulk of the whistle language in Paris, which is very different from what is true in the Canary islands, where the entire language may be whistled. In cultured communities conventional signs compose the bulk of the whistle language.

"It appears," says M. Lajard, in closing, "from the sum of the facts that whistle language has a very wide distribution; it will without doubt be found in many different places. At the present time, it is enough that we have discovered certain rudiments of it at Paris and elsewhere. Despite the enormous distance which separates the complete system of the Canaries from the simple traces of it seen in our streets, it appears to me useful to notice the features by which one may compare them, even should the comparison result only in the complete eradication of the ancient errors regarding that of the Canary islands. The special medium where it may flourish has been noticed, as well as certain analogies relative to those who employ it, in the condition and needs of their lives." J. N. B. HEWITT.

THE

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST.

VOL. VI.

WASHINGTON, D. C., APRIL, 1893.

No. 2.

THE POET-IS HE BORN, NOT MADE?*

BY ROBERT FLETCHER, M. D.

Thomas Fuller, in his terse English, said: "He must be well mounted who is for leaping the hedges of custom." There is perhaps no custom more deeply rooted in general confidence than the belief in apothegms. You make some statement which seems a little bold-which questions some received tenet-" Oh," says one, "but you know what the proverb says!" and, quoting it, seems to think the matter settled as certainly as if the reply came from the Delphian oracle of old. We should not now give any heed to the hysterical utterances of the priestess of Delphos. Let us inquire a little into the truth of a saying which has been placidly quoted through many ages, and to which our assent is so frequently demanded.

The saying in question, Poeta nascitur, non fit, the poet is born, not made, is attributed to one Florus-not the historian-but a writer of whom little is known, except that a few epigrams and fragments ascribed to him have been preserved. One of these epigrams, also relating to the poet, is this:

"Consules fiunt quotannis, et proconsules;

Solus poeta non quotannis nascitur."

Ben Jonson has introduced this in his play of "Every Man in his Humour," where Justice Clement, speaking of the poet, says:

"They are not born every year, as an alderman. There goes more to the making of a good poet than a sheriff."

* Read before the Anthropological Society of Washington, December 6, 1892.

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There is another version of this epigram which has been rather cleverly paraphrased by Taylor, the water poet:

"When Heaven intends to do some mighty thing,

He makes a poet-or at least a king."

At the outset it must be understood that it is the second part of this adage that I assert to be untrue. No doubt the poet must be born a poet; the divine cestrum must be his as a birthright. You cannot by any known process of training or teaching make a poet of a man without this birthright; but it is equally true that the higher the teaching bestowed upon him, the broader the field of operation opened to him, the greater becomes the poet in proportion; and not only that, but it may be asserted that without such training, be it greater or less, the divine gift mostly comes to nought. What that training is, or should be, shall be presently considered.

Sir Philip Sydney, in his Apologie for Poetry, quotes the proverb in another shape: "A poet no industry can make if his own genius be not carried into it, and, therefore, it is an old proverb, 'Orator fit; pocta nascitur." But he does not fail to protest against the implied meaning that genius is all that is needed to make the poet, for he continues: "Yet confess I always that as the fertilest ground must be manured, so must the highest flying wit have a Dedalus to guide him. That Daedalus, they say, both in this and in other, hath three wings to bear itself up into the air of due commendation ; that is, art, imitation, and exercise."

The "spontaneous theory," as it may be termed, is not only of great antiquity, but it is continually reasserted in our own day. In a recent article in one of the English reviews, it was stated that Coleridge had stamped this doctrine with his high authority, and the following passage was quoted in proof:

"The man that hath not music in his soul' can indeed never be a genuine poet. Imagery . . ., affecting incidents, just thoughts, interesting personal or domestic feelings, and with these the art of their combination or intertexture in the form of a poem, may all by incessant effort be acquired as a trade by a man of talents and much reading, who has mistaken an intense desire of poetic reputation for a natural poetic genius, the love of the arbitrary end for a possession of the peculiar means; but the sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, is a gift of imagination; and this, together with the power of reducing magnitude into unity of effect, and modifying a series of thoughts by