Jui-Y 6, 1883.] 



SCIENCE. 



25 



ancient Indian burying-places or picl^ed up on recent 

 battle-fields; curve II., 917 North Americans, includ- 

 ing the territories of the United States and British 

 America, with the exception of the Eskimo; curve 

 III., 248 Central and South Americans, including the 

 Mexicans on account of their peculiar civilization; 

 curve IV., 127 Eskimo, consisting of all crania from 

 the arctic regions of North America; curve V., 

 20S pre-CoIumbians, discriminated from other North 

 Americans by their manner of burial, i.e., mound- 

 builders and stonegrave people. A study of these 

 teaches, 1°. The plurality of varieties in America; 

 2°. The diffusion of these varieties over the whole 

 continent. As an illustration, the stonegrave people 

 of Tennessee are cited. Their remains are those of 

 a single people, as Mr. Putnam has shown by the 

 correspondence of their customs, and grade of civili- 

 zation; while the me.isurements of their skulls by 

 Mr. Carr show a varying proportion of dolichoceph- 

 ali, mesocephali, brachycephali, and artificially shor- 

 tened crania. A people is an ethnic unity, which, 

 according to the results of craniology, may consist 

 of an anatomical plurality of races; but a race is an 

 anatomically characteristic variety of the human spe- 

 cies. Like the Germans, the mound-builders consist 

 of many races, which have combined to an ethnic 

 unity. The terra ' race,' as here employed, is equiv- 

 alent to a sub-species of the species Homo sapiens of 

 Dr. Kollman's system, illustrated by the following 

 diagram. 



IS 17 16 U 14 13 13 II 10 9 8 7 6 6 4 3 3 1 



T III n II 



\ i ) \} /\\ ; s i 



T ' I 



W 



K i i 



Leptvprosopl ; V 



iLiliclio- Mt»o. Brachy. i Dolicho- Mesu- llrachy- 

 erphuli. cephali. cepliali .S cepbali. cephali. irpbali. 



■hamneprosopo-mesoccphali. 



(Slcm. form.) 



Species ; Homo Hapiene. 



The varieties are distinguished by peculiarities of 

 the hair: 1,4, 7, being smooth-haired, indicated by 

 the sign O; 2, 5, 8, etc., straight-haired, by the sign 

 • ; 3, 0, 9, etc., woolly-haired, by the sign V. So far 

 as is known, only straight-haired varieties have im- 

 migrated into America, of the following sub-species: 

 1. Broad-faced dolichocephali (Eskimo) ; 2. Broad- 

 faced mesaticephali (Indians); 3. Broad- faced brachy- 

 cephali (mound-builders); 4. Long-faced brachyceph- 

 ali (ancient Peruvians). 



Like the European, the American varieties of the 

 species Homo sapiens have long since passed into the 

 condition of permanent types. The time of elasti- 

 city, of the organization of new physically diverse 

 forms, has long gone by. Wherever human remains 

 are found in the glacial formations of Europe, they 

 are as highly organized as today. Undoubtedly they 

 represent men of a lower plane of civilization. It is 

 erroneous at every footstep of advance in civilization 

 to infer a new and more highly organized race. Cra- 

 niology demonstrates that varieties, unchanged phys- 

 ically since the glacial epoch, arc continually making 

 their way to higher grades of civilization. — \ZeUschr. 

 ellinol., IS*::?, 1.) c. a. s. [37 



Madagascar. — The vast island of Madagascar, 

 OOO by :jOli miles in extent, is unique in its proximity 

 to a continent with which it has such feeble connec- 

 tions. Its population is about 4,W0,(>00; but it is 

 subject to great fluctuations through epidemics, witch- 

 craft, infanticide, intertribal wars, and murders. The 

 peculiar formation of the island effects a tropical, 

 malarial climate around the coast, aiul a nearly tem- 

 perate climate elsewhere. All around the island there 

 is a bellof forest, often splitting into two parts, which 

 enclose fertile valleys teeming with people. The na- 

 tives are the Hovas, of Malay origin, and the Malaga- 

 sy proper, of African origin, who for the past hundred 

 years have been augmented by importation of slaves 

 from central Africa. The system of government 

 among the negro tribes is purely African in form. 

 Among the Hovas, however, a queen holds sway, 

 through the agency of a prime-minister, who is ex-offi- 

 cio husband of the queen. The religion of all the 

 Malagasy is fetishism, with a shadowy recognition of 

 a superior power. They believe in ghost-souls who 

 are capable of good or harm to us, and this belief 

 leads to great respect for the dead. Their beliefs, 

 witchcraft, burials, roads, commerce, and language 

 have been carefully studied by Dr. G. W. Parker, 

 who has communicated a paper on the subject to the 

 London anthropological institute. The island became 

 known to the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English 

 early in the seventeenth century; although the Arabs 

 trailed there long before that. At the beginning of 

 the present century the Hovas became the firm 

 friends of the English, — a connection which has re- 

 mained unbroken except during the reign of Queen 

 Hanavalona I. Upon the assassination of her son, 

 Radama II., the present system of queens and prime- 

 ministers began. 



The languages belong to the class of purely spoken 

 tongues, no one of them having ever been reduced to 

 writing by the natives. The vowels are all, ay, ea, 6, 

 "0,- the consonant sounds, b, d, f, <j, li, j, k, I, m, n, 

 nrj, p, r, s, t, v, z ; the diphthongs are eye and ow. 



The number of consonantal combinations is very 

 small, which occasions many euphonic changes in 

 compounds. The meaning of words and sentences 

 depeiuls little on the tone, but much on accent, posi- 

 tion, and the discriminative particle no. 

 ■ Onomatopoeia is common. The grammatic struc- 

 ture is quite regular. A large percentage of the words 

 are traceable to verbal and denominative roots, which 



