On this side of the world public attention has been called particularly to the admirable plans of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, which has been at work for the past three years on the northwest coast of America and the opposite coast of Asia. During the year just past the first published accounts of its results have begun to appear in a series of handsome monographs from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Professor Franz Boas, the director of the expedition, furnishes the first two memoirs, one on ‘Facial Paintings of the Indians of British Columbia’ and the other on the ‘Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians.’ The first named is of importance because of its bearing on the evolution of decorative designs. The Indians of the northwest coast differ from most other primitive groups in the matter of decoration by their failure to develop geometric designs and their tendency to retain realistic portrayals with certain characteristic modifications. In the adaptation of the decorations to the human face the problem has been difficult and a large number of examples are given showing the method of solution. The memoir on Bella Coola mythology is the first account of the complex conceptions of these Indians which can lay any claim to completeness. The Bella Coola conception of the universe is interesting. They believe in five worlds, one above the other, of which the middle one is the earth. Above this are spanned two heavens and beneath, two underworlds. In the upper heaven resides the supreme deity, who interferes little with the affairs of men; in the lower heaven dwell the Sun and all the other deities who are more intimately connected with mankind. The first underworld is inhabited by ghosts who may rise to the first heaven and be sent again to earth, and in the second underworld dwell the ghosts of those who have died a second death; from this there is no return. Other memoirs in the series are ‘The Archæology of Lytton, B. C.,’ by Harlan I. Smith, descriptive of the work of the expedition in that line; ‘The Thompson Indians of British Columbia,’ by James Teit, which is an exhaustive ethnographical account of that tribe, and ‘The Basketry Designs of the Salish Indians,’ by Livingston Farrand, in which is shown the development of geometric designs from realistic forms among the Indians of the Salish stock, a development which contrasts sharply with that of the neighboring stocks described by Boas. * * * * *