PHYSIOLOGICAL RESEARCHES. y9 



can antiquities, whose works he had carefully studied in reference to his subject, 

 and states his proposition thus: "What we propose to demonstrate is, that revela- 

 tion and science are both beams of light emitted from the same Sun of Eternal 

 Truth. As truth can never be in opposition to truth, so it has been found that 

 many investigations into the laws of natural science, which were thought at first 

 to conflict with Holy Writ, have been discovered in the end, as will be shown in 

 this inquiry into the unity of the human family, to afford confirmation and eluci- 

 dation of its divine truths." 



He maintains that there is nothing in the position of America that forbids the 

 supposition of an exotic origin of its primitive inhabitants, and that Morton's con- 

 clusion that there are no direct or obvious links between the people of the Old 

 World and the New, can be successfully refuted. In his argument it is not 

 claimed that his facts are new, or the views original. They are mainly derived 

 from the great authorities upon human history, in whose larger field of reasoning 

 the inquirer can seek a solution of the doubts which partial or local observations 

 may engender. "Anyone," says Dr. Forrey, "who allows himself to speculate 

 upon this subject, will, at first view, be inclined to adopt the opinion, that every 

 part of the world had originally its indigenous inhabitants — autochthones — adapted 

 to its physical circumstances. By this hypothesis a ready solution is afforded of 

 some of the most difficult questions presented in the investigation of the physical 

 history of mankind. * * But many of these obscurities will be made to disap- 

 pear before the light of science, like mist before the morning sun ; thus reconciling, 

 in many points, science and revelation." We believe Dr. Forrey first introduced, 

 in this connection, that striking illustration of the tendency of physical organiza- 

 tion to modify its characters in conformity to external circumstances which is 

 found in the fact that fishes, in the sunless waters of the Mammoth Cave, have 

 no eyes. 



The archaeological conclusions of his essay are, that all our aborigines, with the 

 exception, perhaps, of the Eskimaux, have the same origin; that the emigration of 

 the Eskimaux tribes is of comparatively recent date, while the arrival of what is 

 considered an aboriginal race dates back to the earliest ages of mankind, and can- 

 not be said to be derived from any nation, or variety of mankind, now existing ; 

 but it is assimilated by so many analogies to the most ancient type of civilization 

 in the eastern hemisphere, that the character of its civilization cannot be regarded 

 as wholly indigenous. 1 



In 1850, public attention was particularly drawn to these questions, not only 

 by reviews and debates at scientific meetings, but by more elaborate efforts to meet 

 and overcome whatever objections had been started to the commonly received doc- 

 trine of human descent. The treatises of Drs. Bachman and Smyth, having imme- 



1 A brief article by Dr. Forrey, under the title of "Considerations on the Distinctive Characteristics 

 of the American Aboriginal Tribes" is inserted in Vol. IV of Mr. Schoolcraft's general work. The 

 American variety is there regarded as having a relation to the Caucasian and Mongolian, as the Malay 

 variety has a relation to the Caucasian and the Ethiopian, they being merely intervening shades of 

 those leading types. 

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