152 REPORT—1874. 
found in some of the most widely-spread Indian languages. Professor Rochrig, in 
his tract on the Dacota language, points out the intensitive in adjectives as a remark- 
able instance of resemblance in that Indian tongue to the Mongol. 
Dacota: sa-pa, black; sap-sa-pa, very black. 
Mongol: hara, black; hab-hara, very black. 
While the Dacota resembles in many respects a Tartar language, it places the ad- 
jective after the substantive, in which respect it departs from the Northern Asiatic 
type, and follows the Polynesian, the Siamese, and the Semitic. 
It is this mixture of linguistic principles which forms the key to solve the problem 
of the origin of the North-American languages. The Dacota language is now 
accessible to ethnological inquiry in the exceptionally good dictionary and grammar 
of the Rey. 8. R. Riggs, both included in the Smithsonian series. A predominant 
Tartar structure is the basis of the language; a limited Polynesian element, with 
certain features of home growth, form the remainder of the type. The facts of the 
Dacota are fatal to the theory of some American philologists, who, on @ priori and 
unscientific grounds, refuse to recognize the possibility of a common origin to the 
Ural, Altaic, and Dacota languages. 
The author proceeded to say that a remarkable instance of mixture occurs in the 
case of the Algonquins, in recent times the most widely spread of the North- 
American races. Their language is fundamentally of the northern Asiatic type, as 
may be seen in Howse’s grammar of the Cree; and they have the adjective in its 
right place, but they are more Indian and less Asiatic than the Dacota. In regard 
to religion, however, they have mixed elements. The offerings to ancestors are 
Northern Asiatic and Chinese, Their view of the future state isso much of the 
Southern Asiatic type, that it embraces transmigration, which was unknown to 
China and Tartary before the spread of Buddhism. 
The Patagonian religion, as recently described by M. Glardon, is strikingly like 
that of Siberian tribes, and he grounds upon their beliefs an eloquent defence of the 
doctrine of the unity of the human race. 
The paper concluded with the statement that whether the Mexicans be compared 
with the Southern Asiatics or the existing Indian tribes with the Mongols and 
Turks, the process alike gives proof of degeneracy. 
Longevity at Five score eleven Years. 
By Sir G. Duncan Grsz, Bart., M.D., LL.D. 
The author had brought forward nine examplesat the previous meeting of the Asso- 
ciation of persons who had overstepped the century by several years; and now his 
tenth instance of a female still living at Tring, in Hertfordshire, who had attained 
her hundred and eleventh birthday in April last, was given. He first gave some 
tables, carefully compiled by Mr. Henry Rance, of Cambridge, containing 84 in- 
stances of persons whose age extended from 107 to 175; 40 of these were under 
130, and 44 above that age; and he considered that three fourths of the total 
number might be taken as correct. The proof of that was the instance he brought 
forward of Mrs. Elizabeth Leatherlund, now alive in her 111th year, the baptism 
of whom was given from the register of the parish of Dover in Kent. This was 
further confirmed by the drowning of her son and his family, and other persons, to 
the number of thirty-seven, at Hadlow in Kent in 1853, in the hop country, by a 
catastrophe mentioned and described in the papers of the time. Her son was 
then 59, and if now alive would have been 80, his birth occurring when his 
mother was 29 or 30, Other corroborative circumstances were stated, clearly 
establishing the great age of the old dame, who was of gipsy descent. The author 
then described her condition, the result of a careful personal examination at Tring in 
October 1873. She walked with the aid of a stick, was short in stature, bent with 
age, complexion brownish, countenance a series of thick folds, and she had several 
sound teeth. She chatted away continually in a clear distinct voice, and was in 
possession of all her faculties, though somewhat impaired. She is a little deaf, 
takes snuff, her skin was as soft as velvet, and her hair quite grey. She was thin, 
