18.1 



consider Americui civiliziilions indigenous. The idea is here sug- 

 gested that the Ice-period acted as a barrier to inter-communication 

 between Asia and Xorth America. The part allowed hitherto by 

 anthropologists to accidental migration in the peopling of Xortli 

 America will be found, I think, exaggerated. We may conceive 

 that this peopling was effected during the Tertiary ; that the ice 

 modified races of Pliocene man, existing in the north of Asia and 

 America, forced them southward, and then drew them back to tlie 

 locality where they had undergone their original modification. 

 Also we may suggest that other than Arctic man may have existed 

 across the main belt of this continent during the Pliocene,, and 

 that his subsequent intellectual development, as we find it recorded 

 in the West, Mexico, and South America, etc., is the result of his 

 environment acting upon his isolated condition. 



Tlie object of the present paper is to call attention to this 

 liypotliesis which must be studied from the point of view that 

 man's earlier migrations were not distinguishable in kind from 

 tliose of lower animals. It seems to me quite evident that, at a 

 time when instinct was developing into reason, the migrations of 

 man must have had a motive which was not far removed from that 

 influencing certain lower animals under tlie same circumstances. 

 If we concede this, it follows that the objects of man's primitive 

 migrations were more immediate, and of his culture migrations 

 inore remote. This one fact, that the distribution of man over 

 the surface of the globe is more general than that of any other 

 animal, will support the view that, through the fertility of his re- 

 sources, he has been able to outgrow the limitations originally im- 

 posed upon him. But these resources must have been brought into 

 l)lay by experience ; and their cost was surely the premature perish- 

 ment of many of the kind.'' During the process, then, whicli re- 

 sulted in the race modification of tlie Eskimos, their original num- 

 bers must have been decreased by the slow!}' but ever increasing 

 cold of the northern regions, until experience and pliysical adapta- 

 tion combined brouglit them to a state of comparative stability as 

 a race. 



"^ Many birds suffer the ck-atli of their companions by the hunter with indifference when first 

 discovered by man, but ulteiwards, from observation, avail themselves of all their ji.itiiral 

 means to escape from tlie danger. It is possible that it was not difficult for Tertiary man to 

 supply himself with animal food even witli his imperfect weapons. 



T.VL. BUF. SOC. NAT. SCI. (21) FEBRUARY, 1H7T. 



