66 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. II. No. 29. 



Pliny and Strabo, but also tbe experience 

 wMcb, as lie says himself, is tbe mother of 

 all things. 



The nest Spanish works on navigation to 

 be mentioned are those of Fernandez* 

 (1520), Faleiro (1535), Medinaj (15^5), 

 and Cortes % (1551), through the numerous 

 translations of which the science of the 

 Spanish pioneers spread all over the civi- 

 lized world. Joseph de Peeott. 



Claek Univeesity. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY [XL). 

 RACIAL AND ETHNIC TRAITS. 



Time was when Nott and Gliddon and 

 their colleagues and disciples undertook to 

 prove the fundamental diversitj^ of the races 

 of mankind, physically and mentally. The 

 pendulum has now swung to the other ex- 

 treme, and various leading ethnologists 

 denjr the existence of any such things as 

 racial or ethnic traits, tendencies or capaci- 

 ties. For instance. Dr. Otto StoU, in his 

 thoughtful work, ' Suggestion and Hypuo- 

 tismus' (cap. xx.), calls racial psychology 

 a 'deceptive appearance' (Trugbild); Dr. 

 S. E. Steinmetz, in the introduction to his 

 ' Entwicklung der Strafe,' quotes with ap- 

 proval the opinions of those who say that the 

 only psychical differences in races are those 

 arising from their surroundings, etc. 



If such expressions — not always clearly 

 enunciated — mean merely that the traits of 

 races and nations are the slow results of 

 their milieu, and are as permanent as the 

 physical results, color, hair, etc., they are 

 truisms which nobody denies ; but if, as is 

 apparently the case, they intend to say that 

 at present the Fuegian or the Bantu has 

 the intellectual endowment of the Euro- 

 pean, and all that he requires to make use 



* Translated into French. 



fThe Frencli translation had five editions, the 

 Oerman six, the English one, the Italian two, and 

 the Flemish one. 



X Translated into English. 



of it to as good effect is to be given an 

 equal chance, this is contradicted by uni- 

 form and repeated experience. The men- 

 tal traits of races and peoples are as much 

 their peculiar characteristics as are their 

 bodily idiosyncrasies, and are just as impos- 

 sible to change by any quick process. The 

 theories of education and government which 

 have been based on the opposite view have 

 steadilj^ failed. The changes in the men- 

 tal are strictly correlated to those in the 

 phj'sical system. It is vain for ethnologists 

 to seek to forget this elementary physiolog- 

 ical fact. 



THE progressive DEPOPULATION OF 

 NORTHERN REGIONS. 



The last census of Eussia showed that its 

 northern province, Archangelsk, had lost 

 over ten thousand of its already sparse pop- 

 ulation within a decade, not from any gen- 

 eral or violent cause, but from the inde- 

 pendent migration of families to more genial 

 climes toward the south. Mr. H. C. Bryant 

 and other Arctic travelers assure me that 

 there is no doubt about the advancing extinc- 

 tion of the natives of the extreme north of 

 America and Greenland. Dr. A. Jacoby, 

 in the ' Archiv fiir Anthropologic' for No- 

 vember last, draws a painful picture of the 

 degeneration and disappearance of the Sam- 

 oj^eds and other boreal tribes of Siberia. 

 N"early everj'where the arctic and sub-arctic 

 zones have fewer inbabitants than a half 

 centurj' ago. 



The general causes are obvious. One is 

 the destruction of the native tribes by the 

 introduction of new modes of life, new dis- 

 eases, alcohol and idleness ; another is the 

 removal of all who can go, to climates of 

 less severity. The arctic regions, like moun- 

 tains, were not originally chosen by prefer- 

 ence as homes, but were the refuges of con- 

 quered aud dispersed bands. Now that the 

 pressure is removed such inhospitable 

 climes will certainly be occupied less and 



