158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



"way, the importance is obvious of deciding how old man is in America, 

 and how long the continent remained united with Asia, as well as how 

 these two difficult questions are bound up together in their bearing on 

 anthropology. Leaving them to be settled by more competent judges, 

 I will only point out that the theory of northern migration on dry land 

 is, after all, only a revival of an old opinion, which came naturally 

 to Acosta in the sixteenth century, because Behring Strait was not 

 yet known of, and was held by Buffon in the eighteenth because the 

 zoological conditions compelled him to suppose that Behring Strait 

 had not always been there. Such a theory, whatever the exact shape 

 it may take, seems wanted for the explanation of that most obvious 

 fact of anthropology, the analogy of the indigenes of America with 

 Asiatics, and more specifically with East and North Asiatics or Mon- 

 goloids. This broad race-generalization has thrust itself on every 

 observer, and each has an instance to mention. My own particular 

 instance is derived from inspection of a party of Botocudo Indians 

 lately exhibited in London, who in proper clothing could have passed 

 without question as Thibetans or Siamese. Now, when ethnologists 

 like Dr. Pickering remark on the South Asiatic appearance of Califor- 

 nian tribes, it is open to them to argue that Japanese sailors of junks 

 wrecked on the coast may have founded families there. But the Boto- 

 cudos are far south and on the other side of the Andes, rude dwellers 

 in the forests of Brazil, and yet they exhibit in an extreme form the 

 Mongoloid character which makes America to the anthropologist part 

 and parcel of Asia. Looked at in this light, there is something sug- 

 gestive in our still giving to the natives of America the name of In- 

 dians ; the idea of Columbus that the Caribs were Asiatics was not so 

 absurd, after all. 



It is perhaps hardly needful now to protest against stretching the 

 generalization of American uniformity too far, and taking literally 

 Humboldt's saying that he who has seen one American has seen all. 

 The common character of American tribes, from Hudson's Bay to 

 Tierra del Fuego, though more homogeneous than on any other tract 

 of the world of similar extent, admits of wide sub-variation. How 

 to distinguish and measure this sub-variation is a problem in which 

 anthropology has only reached unsatisfactory results. The broad dis- 

 tinctions which are plainly seen are also those which are readily de- 

 fined, such as the shape of the nose, curve of the lips, or the projection 

 of the cheek-bones. But all who have compared such American races 

 as Aztecs and Ojibways must be sensible of extreme difficulty in meas- 

 uring the proportions of an average facial type. The attempt to give 

 in a single pair of portraits a generalized national type has been tried 

 — for instance, in the St. Petersburg set of models of races at the Ex- 

 hibition of 1862. But done merely by eye, as they were, they were 

 not so good as well-chosen individual portraits. It would be most de- 

 sirable that Mr. Francis Galton's method of photographs, superposed 



