BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY


 After recapitulating the various concessions and showing up the
weak points developed by the defense, Brinton meets the grammatical
part of the French philologist's reply by stating that he had never
denied the existence of the exceptional grammatical features he had
referred to in American languages, but maintained that it was un-
likely they should all occur in one language. He concludes his argu-
ient by saying that "even if some substructure will be shown to have
existed for this Taensa Grammar and texts (which, individually,
I still doubt), it has been presented to the scientific world under con-
ditions which are far from adequate to the legitimate demands of
students." a
 With this view Professor Vinson, the next contributor to the dis-
cussion, entirely concurs, and in detailing his early association with
Parisot is able to show further discrepancies between the claims of
that individual in earlier and later years.i
 In his letter to the Revue de Lingquistique for January, 1888,
Brinton touches upon Taensa long enough to expose several glaring
blunders in the pamphlet of texts published at Epinal in 1881. This,
occurring in connection with criticisms on certain opinions expressed
by Dr. A. S. Gatschet, brought forth from the latter student the best
defense of the Tainsa Grammar that has appeared. Gatschet agrees
with Brinton, indeed, in his criticism of the Epinal pamphlet," but
attempts to defend the rest, including the texts thrown over by Adam,
although he allows for the possibility of their fraudulent nature by
saying that the eleven songs might be the work of a forger without
the language itself being necessarily unauthentic." To the statement
that the Tainsa did not survive the year 1740 he produces documen-
tary evidence of their existence as late as 1812. Nor was it necessary
that a Spanish monk should have recorded this language, since
any Spaniard straying over from Pensacola, only 10 leagues from the
later location of the Tainsa near Mobile, might have performed that
service. Like M. Adam, Gatschet finds the exceptional grammatical
forms cited by Brinton in various other American languages, and he
meets the obstacle raised by references to various American and
European languages by supposing that they had been inserted by
M. Adam in revision. The mention of sugar cane, rice, apples, pota-
toes, bananas, cattle, and a cart are to be explained on the ground that
the Tainsa had existed long after the introduction of those things.
The month of December was called the white month," not on ac-
count of the snow, but on account of the frost, which the critic him-
self had seen in Louisiana in parishes much farther south than that
in which the Taensa lived. The sugar maple is found not only in the
north, but in mountainous sections of the south.c
 a Amer. Antiq., vit, 276. Ibid.. xxi, 20203-204.
 "Rcvue de Linguislique, xix, 147-160. Ibid., 204-207.
 Ibid., 207.


[BULL. 43