OUTLINES OF ANTHUOPOLOGY. 445 



but little removed from the level of ;i purely animal existence. 

 A better acquaintance with the aboriginal tribes still found in 

 America, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the islands of the Pacific 

 has thrown much light upon the difficulties with which mankind 

 had to contend at the beginning, and also upon the moral and 

 intellectual conditions which appertain to the earliest stages of 

 the human race. Thus, the sea-built village still flourishing in 

 New Guinea and the Malayan Archipelago, bear a striking 

 resemblance to the pre-historic lacustrine villages, the remains of 

 which have been discovered in the lakes of Northern Italy, 

 Switzerland and Ireland. The age of stone has continued from 

 the time of the cave-men down to the present inhabitants of New 

 Guinea, the Admiralty Islands and other islands in the Pacific, 

 who have only recently become acquainted with the use of iron. 



Among the most remarkable triumphs of anthropological re- 

 search are the discoveries made by Dr. Schliemann and his 

 fellow-excavators upon the site of ancient Troy and subsequently 

 at Myceme and Tiryns, the cylopean ruins of which overlook the 

 Gulf of Argos, once alive \\'ith the sails of Agamemnon's host. 

 The French and American Institutes established in Athens for 

 the pursuit of antiquarian exploration are at the present moment 

 engaged in their important labours, and the soil of Olympia and 

 Delphi has yielded many valuable specimens of ancient Greek 

 sculpture. The Museums of Rome and Naples continue to be 

 enriched by the fragments of ancient art buried for centuries in 

 the bed of the Tiber, or under the lava-streams which overwhelmed 

 Herculanum and Pompeii. The researches carried on for years 

 by the English Society for the Exploration of Palestine have 

 placed the most precious materials at the disposal of the student 

 of Biblical History. Egypt has had to give up the bodies of her 

 Pharaos entombed for ages in the rocky caves of the Nile Valley, 

 and the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, founded near Cairo, 

 merits the attention of the Australian traveller upon his pilgrim- 

 age to the home of his fathers. The Anthropologists of the 

 United States threaten to outstrip their European rivals by the 

 energy displayed in their investigation of the ancient monuments 

 of Morth and Central America; not a moment too soon, for we 

 hear now and then of the death of some old man or woman, the 

 last of their tribe, and the last who bad not forgotten their native 

 tongue. Thanks to these labours, we are now beginning to obtain 

 a glimpse of the process of immigration and transmigration by 

 which the American continent has been populated. 



A vast field of inquiry still lies open to the philological student 

 who has set himself the task of deciphering the manuscripts and 

 monumental writings of Babylonia, Egypt. Etruria, or Mexico. 

 There are some critics who assert that tlie rules of interjii-etation 

 applied until now are unsatisfactory, and will not readily bear the 

 scrutiny of such as are accustomed to the strictly deductive and 



