ON THE NORTH-WESTERN TRIBES OF CANADA. 175 



ance attaches to the examination of mixed races, especially crosses of North 

 American Indian with European and African, the resemblances and differ- 

 ences between the offspring and the parent stocks, the number of generations 

 during which inherited race-characteristics are distinguishable, and the 

 tendency to revert to one or other of the ancestral types. Both as to 

 native tribes and cross-breeds pathological observations are of value, as 

 to power of bearing climate, liability to or freedom from particular 

 diseases, tendency to abnormalities, such as albinoism &c., and the here- 

 ditary nature of abnormal peculiarities. Medical men have also better 

 opportunities than others of observing artificial deformations practised by 

 native tribes, especially by compression of the skull in infancy. Pacific 

 North America has been one of the regions of the world most remarkable 

 for this practice among the Flatheads (thence so named) and various other 

 peoples ; so that it may still be possible to gain further information on two 

 points not yet cleared np, viz. fii-st, whether brain-power in after-life is 

 really unaffected by such monstrous flattening or tapering of the infant 

 skull ; and second, whether the motive of such distortion has been to 

 exaggerate the natural forms of particular admired tribes, or, if not, 

 what other causes have led to such ideas of beauty. 



To those concerned in these inquiries it may be mentioned that the 

 • Notes and Queries on Anthropology ' issued by the British Association 

 contains a series of Broca's colour-tables, together with descriptions of 

 the approved modes of bodily measurement &c.' 



Senses and Mental Characters. — "With the bodily characters of the 

 Canadian tribes may advantageously be combined observations as to their 

 powers of perception and ratiocination. The acuteness of sight, hearing, 

 and smell, for which the wilder races of man are justly famed, may be 

 easily tested, these being capabilities which rude hunters display readily 

 and with pride, so that they may even serve as an easy introduction to 

 other measurements and inquiries which savages cannot see the reason of, 

 and reluctantly submit to. The observer's attention may be especially 

 directed to settling the still open question, how far these sense-differences 

 are racial at all, and how far due to the training of a hunter's life from 

 infancy. As to mental capacity, among the means of convenient trial are 

 to ascertain facility in counting, in drawing and recognising pictures and 

 maps, and in acquiring foreign languages. Evidence is much needed to 

 confirm or disprove the view commonly held that children of coloured 

 races (Indian, negro, &c.), while intelligent and apt to learn up to 

 adolescence, are then arrested in mental development, and fall behind the 

 whites. Few points in anthropology are more practically important than 

 this, which bears on the whole question of education and government of 

 the indigenes of America, living as they do side by side with a larger 

 and more powerful population of European origin. No amount of pains 

 would be wasted in ascertaining how far mental differences between races 

 may be due to physical differences in brain- structure, how far the less 

 advanced races are lower in mind-power by reason of lower education and 

 circumstances, and how far the falling-ofF at maturity in their offspring 

 brought up with whites (if it actually takes place) may be due to social 

 causes, especially the disheartening sense of inferiority. 



Language. — Introductory to the investigation of language proper are 



' This work is now out of print, and a new edition is being prepared by a Com- 

 mittee of the British Association, appointed in 1886. 



