i6S THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



(1626), how, when the Indians buried kettles and furs with the dead, 

 the bodies of these things remained, but the souls of them went to the 

 dead men who used them. So Father Le Jeune describes the souls, 

 not only of men and animals, but of hatchets and kettles, crossing the 

 water to the Great Village out in the sunset. The genuineness of this 

 idea of object-souls is proved by other independent explorers finding 

 them elsewhere in the world. Two of the accounts most closely tally- 

 ing with the American come from the Rev. Dr. Mason, in Burmah, and 

 the Rev. J. Williams, in Feejee. That is to say, the most characteristic 

 development of early animism belongs to the same region as the most 

 characteristic development of matriarchal society, extending from 

 Southeast Asia into Melanesia and Polynesia, and North and South 

 America. Every one who studies the history of human thought must 

 see the value of such facts as these, and the importance of gathering 

 them up among the rude tribes who preserve them, before they pass 

 into a new stage of culture. All who have read Mr. Hale's studies on 

 the Hiawatha legend and other Indian folk-lore must admit that the 

 native traditions, with their fragments of real history, and their inci- 

 dental touches of native religion, ought never to be left to die out 

 unrecorded. In the Dominion, especially in its outlying districts 

 toward the Arctic region and over the Rocky Mountains, there is an 

 enormous mass of anthropological material of high value to be col- 

 lected ; but this collection must be done within the next generation, or 

 there will be little left to collect. The small group of Canadian an- 

 thropologists, able and energetic as they are, can manage and control 

 this work, but can not do it all themselves. What is wanted is a Cana- 

 dian Anthropological Society with a stronger organization than yet 

 exists, able to arrange explorations in promising districts, to circulate 

 questions and requirements among the proper people in the proper 

 places, and to lay a new burden on the shoulders of the already hard- 

 worked professional men, and other educated settlers through the 

 newly opened country, by making them investigators of local anthro- 

 pology. The Canadian Government, which has well deserved the high 

 reputation it holds throughout the world for wisdom and liberality in 

 dealing with the native tribes, may reasonably be asked to support 

 more thorough exploration, and collection and publication of the re- 

 sults, in friendly rivalry with the United States Government, which 

 has in this way fully acknowledged the obligation of making the colo- 

 nization of new lands not only promotive of national wealth, but ser- 

 viceable to science. It is not for me to do more 'here, and now, than 

 to suggest practical steps toward this end. My laying before the section 

 so dijffiusive a sketch of the problems of anthropology, as they present 

 themselves in the Dominion, has been with the underlying intention 

 of calling public notice to the important scientific work now standing 

 ready to Canadian hands ; the undertaking of which, it is to be hoped, 

 will be one outcome of this visit of the British Association to Montreal. 



