On the Aboriginal Race of America. 141 
most authors; and it is probable that several species are 
confounded under one name. It is unnecessary to compare 
this species with any of those hitherto described, as none of 
them appear to approximate closely to it; nor, if they did, 
would it be practicable to compare them intelligibly without 
describing them anew. I have to add, that in one specimen 
I found a spicular dissepiment at the small end of the tube 
between the siphons. The minute species now brought into 
notice may be characterized thus : 
Teredo subericola. Cork-boring Teredo. 
Minute, about an inch and a quarter in length, scarcely a 
twelfth of an inch in diameter ; with the valves hyaline-white, 
thin, very fragile, anteriorly rectangularly sinuate, posteriorly 
with a rounded reflexed lobe, inferiorly tapering into a very 
narrow, linear-oblong, obtuse process ; the infra-umbonal 
tooth filiform, arcuate ; the palmules broadly obcordato-pyri- 
form, concave, with a submedial ridge, and tapering into a 
styliform pedicle. 
An Inquiry into the Distinctive Characteristics of the Aborigi- 
nal Race of America. By SAMUEL GEORGE Morton, M.D., 
Author of Crania Americana, Crania Aigyptiaca, &e. 
Ethnography,—the analysis and classification of the races 
of men,*—is essentially a modern science. At atime when 
Nature in her other departments, had been investigated with 
equal zeal and success, this alone remained comparatively 
neglected ; and of the various authors who have attempted 
its exposition during the past and present centuries, too 
many have been content with closet theories, in which facts 
are perverted to sustain some baseless conjecture. Hence, 
it has been aptly remarked, that Asia is the country of fables, 
Africa of monsters, and America of systems, to those who 
_ prefer hypothesis to truth. 
* Ethnography may be divided into three branches—1. Physical or 
Organic Ethnography ; 2. Philological Ethnography; and, 3. Historical 
Ethnography. 
