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ledge of the human frame, and to essential improve- 

 ments in the medical art. 



It is to the study of the zoology of America that the 

 efforts of the Institution ought to be chiefly directed. 

 No other country presents greater or more interesting 

 varieties in the animal creation, and none more abounds 

 in fossil remains. Many of the former are fast fading 

 away before the hunters and trappers, who pursue them 

 for food or for furs ; and their extinction will solve the 

 important problem, whether the hunter tribes can be- 

 come purely agricultural, and maintain themselves by 

 the sweat of their brow. The red man of our forests 

 and the hunter tribes of South America, are, as far as 

 I have been able to observe, different from the agricul- 

 tural Indians that inhabit Mexico, Peru and Chile. The 

 former are the descendants of uncivilized men, hunters 

 like themselves, and whether they are susceptible of 

 the moral culture of the agricultural race, remains 

 yet in doubt ; the latter, on the contrary, have tilled the 

 earth, and subsisted on the product of their labor from 

 time immemorial. Physically and morally these two 

 classes have always appeared to me widely different, 

 and I have doubted their having a common origin. The 

 aborigines of Mexico, Peru, and Chile, were found by 

 their European conquerors in a high state of civiliza- 

 tion. In their knowledge of the useful arts, except the 

 art of war, they equalled their invaders, and their agri- 

 culture was carried to great perfection, for Indian re- 

 mains of extensive works of irrigation are still to be 

 found in those territories. There exists evidence, like- 

 wise, of their having been inhabited, for centuries be- 

 fore the conquest, by a race still more highly advanced 



