TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. • 903 



of successive tribes^ along this high-way, the importance is ohvious of deciding how 

 old man is in America, and how long the continent remained united with Asia, as 

 well as how these two difficult questions are hound up together in their hearing on 

 anthropology. Leaving them to he settled hy more competent judges, I will only 

 point out that the theory of northern migration on dry land is after all onlv a 

 revival of an old opinion which came naturally to Acosta in the sixteenth century, 

 because Behring's Straits were not yet known, and was held by Buffon in the 

 eighteenth because the zoological conditions compelled him to suppose that 

 Behring's Straits had not always been there. Such a theory, whatever the exact 

 shape it may take, seems wanted for the explanation of that mo3t obvious fact 

 of anthropology, the analogy of the indigenes of America with Asiatics, and 

 more specifically with East and North Asiatics or Mongoloids. This broad 

 race-generalisation has thrust itself on every observer, and each has an in- 

 stance to mention. My own particular instance is derived from inspection of a 

 party of Botocudo Indians lately exhibited in London, who in proper clothing 

 could have passed without question as Tibetans or Siamese. Now when ethnologists 

 like Dr. Pickering remark on the South Asiatic appearance of C'alifornian tribes, 

 it is open to them to argue that Japanese sailors of junks wrecked on the coast 

 may have founded families there. But the Botocudos are far south and on the 

 other side of the Andes, rude dwellers in the forests of Brazil, and yet they exhibit 

 in an extreme form the Mongoloid character which makes America to the anthro- 

 pologist part and parcel of Asia. Looked at in this light, there is something 

 suggestive in our still giving to the natives of America the name of Indians ; the 

 idea of Columbus that the Caribs were Asiatics was not so absurd after all. 



It is perhaps hardly needful now to protest against stretching the generalisation 

 of American uniformity too far, and taking literally Humboldt's saying that he who 

 has seen one American has seen all. The common character of American tribes, 

 from Hudson's Bay to Tierra del Fuego, though more homogeneous than on any other 

 tract of the world of similar extent, admits of wide subvariation. How to dis- 

 tinguish and measure this subvariation is a problem in which anthropology has 

 only reached unsatisfactory results. The broad distinctions which are plainly seen 

 are also those which are readily defined, such as the shape of the nose, curve of the 

 lips, or the projection of the cheek-bones. But all who have compared such American 

 races as Aztecs and Ojibwas must be sensible of extreme difficulty in measuring the 

 proportions of an average facial type. The attempt to give in a single pair of portraits 

 a generalised national type has been tried — for instance, in the St. Petersburg set of 

 models of races at the Exhibition of 1862. But done merely by eye, as they were, they 

 were not so good as well-chosen individual portraits. It would be most desirable that 

 Mr. Francis Galton's method of photographs, superposed so as to combine a group of 

 individuals into one generalised portrait, should have a thorough trial on groups of 

 Iroquois, Aztecs, Caribs, and other tribes who are so far homogeneous in feature as to 

 lend themselves to form an abstract portrait. A set of American races thus 'galton- 

 ised' (if I may coin the term ) would very likely be so distinctive as to be accepted in 

 anthropology. Craniological measurement has been largely applied in America, 

 but unfortunately it was set wrong for years by the same misleading tendency to 

 find a uniformity not really existent. Those who wish to judge Morton's dictum 

 applied to the Scioto Mound skull, ' the perfect type of Indian conformation, to 

 which the skulls of all the tribes from Cape Horn to Canada more or less approxi- 

 mate,' will find facts to the contrary set forth in chap. 20 of Wilson's ' Prehistoric 

 Man,' and in Quatrefages and Hamy, ' Crania Ethnica.' American crania really 

 differ so much that the hypothesis of successive migrations has been brought into 

 account for the brachycephalic skulls of the mound-builders as compared with living 

 Indians of the district. Among minor race-divisions, as one of the best 

 established may be mentioned that which in this district brings the Algonquin 

 and Iroquois together into the dolichocephalic division; yet even here some 

 divide the Algonquins into two groups by their varying breadth of skull. What 

 may be the interpretation of the cranial evidence "as bearing on the American 

 problem it would be premature to say ; at present all that can be done is to syste- 

 matise facts. It is undisputed that the Esquimaux in their complexion, hair," and 



