262 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



favourite article of diet. As to clothing, we are told by the 

 authority just cited that ' on the plains all adult males and 

 all children up to ten or twelve went perfectly naked, while 

 the women wore only a narrow strip of deer-skin around the 

 waist.' Need we wonder that, in such a mild and fruitful 

 region, a great number of separate tribes were found, speak- 

 ing language? which a careful investigation has classed in 

 nineteen distinct linguistic stocks ? 



" The climate of the Oregon coast region, though colder 

 than that of California, is still far milder and more equable 

 than that of the same latitude in the east ; and the abundance 

 of edible fruits, roots, river-fish, and other food of easy attain- 

 ment, is very great. A family of young children, if one of 

 them were old enough to take care of the rest, could easily 

 be reared to maturity in a sheltered nook of this genial and 

 fruitful land. We are not, therefore, surprised to find that 

 the number of linguistic stocks in this narrow district, though 

 less than in California, is more than twice as large as in the 

 whole of Europe, and that the greater portion of these stocks 

 are clustered near the Californian boundary. . . . 



"Some reminiscences of the parental speech would probably 

 remain with the older children, and be revived and 

 strengthened as their faculties gained force. Thus we may 

 account for the fact, which has perplexed all inquirers, that 

 certain unexpected and sporadic resemblances, both in gram- 

 mar and in vocabulary, which can hardly be deemed purely 

 accidental, sometimes crop up between the most dissimilar 

 languages. . . . 



"A glance at other Hnguistic provinces will show how 

 aptly this explanation of the origin of language-stocks every- 

 where applies. Tropical Brazil is a region which combines 

 perpetual summer with a profusion of edible fruits and other 

 varieties of food, not less abundant than in California. Here, 

 if anywhere, there should be a great number of totally 

 distinct languages. We learn on the best authority, that of 

 Baron J. J. von Tschudi, in the Introduction to his recent 

 work on the Khetshua Language, that this is the fact. He 



