130 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



the Province. He stated that it was one of the most interest- 

 ing specimens of the kind he had ever seen. 



A letter was read relative to an offer of the remains of the 

 Mammoth lately found at Eglinton. A tooth was at present 

 in the Museum of the Academy of Science at Buffalo, but 

 the owner offered to give it to whoever would find the rest of 

 the body. 



TWELFTH MEETING. 



Twelfth Meeting, 5th February, 1887, the President in the 

 Chair. 



Donations were announced from Dr. Rosebrugh of " The 

 Electrical World for 1886," and from Lieut. A. R. Gordon, 

 R.N., of Seventeen Skins of Arctic Birds, collected on the 

 shore of Hudson's Strait, for which thanks were tendered. 



Exchanges since last meeting, 27. 



The following were elected members : — G. S. Ryerson, 

 M.D., Wallace Nesbitt, A. Percival Will. 



Prof Dunlop read a paper on " The Quichua Language." 



The Quichua language, spoken by the Incas, or ancient native 

 rulers of Peru, previous to the conquest of that country by the 

 Spaniards, under Francisco Pizarro. The paper was strictly philo- 

 logical and dealt altogether with the grammar of the language, going as 

 fullv into a detailed account of its structure as the time would allow. 

 The Quichua belongs to the agglutinate order of languages, and differs 

 greatly from those of the Aryan and Semitic type, as may be supposed. 

 It had its cradle in the districts around the ancient city of Cuzco in 

 Peru, and it was the policy of the Incas to introduce it into every 

 country which they conquered. Thus its use was gradually extended 

 over the vast region from Quito in Ecuador on the north, to the 

 boundaries of Araucania on the south, and from the Pacific to the 

 Atlantic, exclusive of Brazil, an area of some 3,600,000 square miles. 

 The conquered tribes nearly all spoke dialects of Quichua, which 

 occupied, to the literary dialect of the capital, much the same position 



