Fellow of the American College of Surgery, member of the State and county medical associations, and belonged to some of the leading social clubs of New York. He was a cousin of the famous yellowfever expert of Habana, Dr. Juan Guiteras, whose work is so well known in the United States.

DR. ALONZO D. MELVIN, Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry of the United States Department of Agriculture since 1905, died December 7, 1917, in Washington, D. C. Born in the State of Illinois in 1862, Dr. Melvin received his degree from the Chicago Veterinary College in 1886, and from that time to the day of his death was actively connected with the Bureau of Animal Industry, which had been organized in 1884. During these years he filled various important offices in that department, being placed in charge of the Federal meat inspection at Chicago in 1892, transferred to Washington and made Chief of the Inspection Division in 1895, made assistant chief of the bureau in 1899, and finally placed at its head in 1905. Among his greatest services were the stamping out under his direction of the epidemic of the dreaded foot and mouth disease in the cattle-producing sections of the United States in 1908 and again in 1914; the eradication of the cattle-fever tick from over 51 per cent of the southern section of the country; securing the necessary legislation for efficient meat inspection; and numerous contributions of important publications dealing with meat inspection, various cattle diseases, and the results of his studies of the South American cattle and meat industry. It was in connection with the lastnamed subject that his activities became Pan American in scope. In 1913 he made a tour of the southern continent, and subsequently gave the results of his investigations and studies to the world in two comprehensive articles in the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture. In these he advocated closer cooperation between the live-stock interests of all the American countries for their common benefit. At the second Pan American Scientific Congress in 1915 he presented a comprehensive paper in which he outlined a plan for dealing with animal diseases so that trade in live stock and animal products could be fostered and at the same time protection afforded against contagious diseases. He favored an organization and the enactment of laws in each country to control and eradicate animal diseases, to protect domestic animals from foreign contagion, and the exchange of information and a general cooperation among the countries through a central organization. His constructive plans were on broad lines, and his work, taken up by others, will no doubt bear rich fruit in the future. Aside from his official position, Dr. Melvin was prominent in veterinary and scientific organizations. He was president of the American Veterinary Medical Association, honorary associate of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons of London, and a member of the advisory board of the Hygienic Laboratory of the United States Public Health Service.

The South American Indian in His Relation to Geographic Environment is the title of an interesting paper by Dr. William Curtis Farabee, appearing in the proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, volume lvi, 1917, as follows:

Man, of whatever race, as we know him to-day is to such an extent a product of his environment that we can have very little idea of what he was in his primitive state. We sometimes speak of primitive men, but we mean men in a low stage of culture without any reference whatever to time or age. There are no primitive men, neither is there primitive culture. Both have been so modified by their environment that they give us very little idea of what the first men and their culture were like. From the beginning both have developed in complete agreement with their environment.

It is said that man differs from the other animals in that he is able to overcome his natural environment. Man has been able to profit by his knowledge of nature's laws, but he has not overcome them. He must depend upon natural products for sustenance, and hence is limited in migration and habitat. In the cold climates of high altitudes and high latitudes he is limited by his food supply to the line fixed by nature for the growth of plants and animals. In the hot, moist climate of the Tropics he is deprived of energy and ambition and degenerates. He has not yet overcome nature, but he has succeeded better than his fellows in adapting himself to nature's requirements. His individual handicap at the beginning of life makes for the greater development of his race. His prolonged period of growth allows the persistent forces of environment to act upon his developing body and fit it for its habitat. If his migrations do not take place too rapidly or do not extend over too wide a range of geographic conditions these body changes become habitual and the race survives. The new characters developed are retained. There is some question as to whether or not the characters acquired by the ancestors are inherited, but it is certain that the habitat with all the geographic factors which have produced those characters is inherited.

If the effect of environment is upon the individual and does not become permanently fixed in the race, and if it acts only as an inhibitor in the development of characteristics, it has the force of an inheritance, because it never ceases to operate. Hence the race develops true to the environment. Primitive man must have originated in a tropical but not a jungle country, where the environment made little demand upon his growing intellect. The search for food probably took him temporarily outside of his first habitat. After a time the pressure of numbers would prevent his return. His customs and habits would change to meet the new conditions. So, no doubt, he has slowly moved through the long period of his history, from one stage to another, from one environment to another, and from one development to another. These developments were not necessarily from a lower to a higher plane. He had little choice; the quest for food or the pressure from numbers either called or drove him onward from the old to newer fields. He followed the animals, and may have learned from them to build his shelter and to store his food against a future need. Necessity developed forethought and made him an inventor. The forces of nature were first feared and then followed. He became as mobile as the wind and the water by whose aid he traveled. After he had thus occupied the habitable globe each section continued to develop a culture peculiar to its own

The Waiwai Indians also inhabit the section of northern Brazil immediately adjoining the Guianas. Several villages are located on the Essequibo River and not far from the Akarai Mountains.

29220-17-Bull, 6-5

Photograph by Dr. W. C. Farabee.

TYPICAL DIAU INDIANS OF NORTHERN BRAZIL.

The Diaus inhabit a section of Brazil near the head waters of the Cutari River, just south of the boundary line of Dutch Guiana. The last Diau village on the Brazilian side is called Chalifono. According to Dr. Farabee, it is in latitude 1° 50' and longitude 56° 42′ W. These Indians are among the most backward people of the continent and with a number of other tribes occupy the only mountains in the Amazon Valley east of the Andes "which are high enough to form a barrier or undesirable enough to serve as a place of retreat."

environment. Every geographical factor had its influence in this development. Sea and bay, lake and river, mountain and valley, forest and desert, temperature and humidity, wind and rain, sunshine and cloud, each and all had their effect in isolating or uniting, separating or deflecting, expanding or confining the migrating peoples and in determining their physical development, their forms of culture, their economic and political organization. Man has followed no plan, has had no standards. Whatever advancement he has made has been by chance rather than by choice, by accident rather than by conscious direction.

In the migration of man from his original home, probably in southern Asia, by way of Bering Strait and North America to the Tropics again, he completed the cycle of climatic conditions. His long and varied experience had made him wise. Yet he was continually on the march. Crowded into the neck of the Isthmus of Panama he pushed on through and found another continent, which, like the one he was leaving, lent itself to a north-south migration with the routes well marked. The Orinoco, the great branches of the Amazon and the La Plata, together with the Andes and the coast, all offered direct lines of travel, but they all led to hard conditions. The mountains were too high, the forests too dense, the south too cold, and the Tropics too hot to make a strong appeal. But there was no possibility of retreat until the farthest corner had been reached and turned. By the time of the discovery he had overrun the whole continent and a return migration was in progress across the Isthmus and through the West Indies.

When the first migration entered the continent the people were deflected by the mountains to the two coasts. Those who continued down the west coast, forced to compete with the rank jungle growth for supremacy in a humid debilitating climate, were unable to establish themselves and develop a high culture. So they moved on to the interior plateaus, where they found more congenial conditions and where they left evidence of an advanced culture.

Those who made their way to the coast south of the Equator must have been surprised to step out of the jungle into an immense desert country, the most arid in the world, stretching away for nearly 2,000 miles as a narrow fringe along the sea. Here they found fertile valleys, watered by the innumerable small rivers and streams which, fed by the melting of the perpetual snows of the mountain tops, made their way to the sea or lost themselves in the desert. These valleys, separated by trackless sands, offered both food and security. The sea made no call. There were few protected harbors along the great stretch of coast; no outlying islands to be inhabited and no timber for canoes. They became an agricultural people, living in villages and using the rivers for irrigating purposes. Irrigation guaranteed regular crops and hence a constant food supply. It also developed inventiveness and cooperation. Their common dependence upon the same water supply developed social organization and a strong government. As these different valleys had the same products there was very little commerce between them and each was allowed to develop its own culture. The archeological remains show the results of this development from independent centers.

Near the southern end of the continent climatic and topographic conditions are reversed. The coast and western slopes of the mountains are forested, while the interior is a semidesert. The deeply embayed coast has a chain of outlying islands. The steep mountains come down to the sea, leaving little arable land. The forests furnish an abundance of suitable timber for canoes. All these elements of environment unite to force the unfortunate tribes who have been pushed along into this region to become a maritime people. The inhospitable snow-clad mountains prevent contact with the interior tribes. They were shut off also from the people of the northern coast by rough seas and steep harborless shores. They were thus limited to the islands and the channels between. Their isolation and their hard conditions of life, with an uncertain food supply, has prevented them from developing a high culture. They