66 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. ix. 



hold similar views in recrard to the outive races of the Pacific 

 States. The President of the Anthropological Society of Paris 

 lately gave it as his dictum " that the Americans are neither 

 Hindoos, nor Phoenicians, nor Chinese, nor Europeans ; they are 

 Americans." The Darwinian theory of the Descent of Man 

 does not necessarily establish relations between the human inhabi- 

 tants of the New World and those of the Old, yet 3Ir. W. H. 

 Dall, in his remarks on the origin of the lunuit or Esquimaux, 

 published in the first volume of Contributions to American 

 Ethnology, writing from a Darwinian standpoint, is compelled to 

 admit these relations. He says : " The fact that the home of 

 the highest anthropoid apes is in Africa and also that of some of 

 the least elevated forms of man ; that we have none of the higher 

 anthropoid animals, recent or fossil, in America, and none are 

 known anywhere outside of the Asiatic and African regions, tells 

 forcibly against any hypothesis of autochthonic people in Amer- 

 ica." The second explanatiou is that of Mr. Clements Markham 

 in regard to northern, and of the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg 

 in renard to southern families. The ibrmer holds that the 

 Hyperborean Americans are the descendants of Siberian tribes, 

 who within the historical period wholly passed over to this con- 

 tinent ; and, according to the latter, the once civilized tribes at 

 least of Central and South America are the remains of the 

 mythic Atlantides, whose continent formerly extended from 

 north-western Africa to the West Indian Islands. 



Turning now to the third explanation, that, namely, which 

 charges writers who have failed in their attempts to establish any 

 relations between the populations of the Old World, on the one 

 hand, and of America, on the other, with the use of imperfect 

 and unscientific methods of investigation, it will be found thor- 

 oughly in accordance with fact. Careful and full induction is 

 the only true, scientific method to follow in such an investiga- 

 tion ; and this induction should regard, first of all, language in 

 its grammatical processes and simpler verbal forms as well as in 

 its relation to tribal, geographical and mythological nomenclature, 

 then physical features, moral and intellectual character, religion, 

 traditions, antiquities or arts, and manners and customs. It is 

 not too much to say that these conditions of successful investi- 

 gation have not been fulfilled in the case of the vast majority of 

 writers on American origiues. Their aim has generally been to 

 prove the truth of a preconceived theory. Such were the attempts 



