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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 573. 



totally distinct languages, each in several 

 dialects; some of these were united in con- 

 federacies, like the Iroquois or Six Nations, 

 and the Dakota or Seven Councilfires, and 

 others lived in an inchoate feudal system, 

 like the Montezuma group of Mexico ; some 

 tribes traced kinship in the female line and 

 gave little thought to paternity, while about 

 an equal number (including many of the 

 wanderers and the most advanced sedentary 

 folk) rested their social laws on paternal 

 kinship ; while the food-sources, implements, 

 customs and habitations varied first with 

 local peculiarities of habitat and in less de- 

 gree with ancestral customs and migrations 

 — the range running from corn-growing 

 dwellers in stone, adobe and palm-wattled 

 houses in the southwest, to hunting and 

 fishing folk living in birch-bark wigwams 

 in the east and thence to walrus-hunting 

 occupants of snow-houses in the north and 

 back to the buffalo hunters of the plains 

 lodging in skin tipis in summer and earth- 

 houses in winter, and thence to the salmon 

 fishermen in single-log boats and hewn- 

 slab houses (both consecrate unto carved 

 and painted totems) in the northwest. In 

 South America the fiducial and linguistic, 

 social and industrial varieties were fully 

 half as many ; and the range from the stal- 

 wart Patagonians of the south to the puny 

 woodsmen of the upper Orinoco, or from 

 the knifeless Guayaqui savages to the aque- 

 duct-building Inca kings, was even wider 

 than that of North America. In Africa 

 there were hundreds of tribes, speaking 

 scores of distinct languages, of which some 

 suggest the inconsequent chatter of Kip- 

 ling's Bandarlog and really express some 

 community of interest and feeling between 

 lowly men and lower monkeys; and the 

 tribes belong to two leading physical types, 

 the shy and secretive aboriginal people of 

 pygmy stature, and their full-size con- 

 querors — sometimes stalwart and strong- 

 limbed and of heroic stature, who long ago 



overspread the dark continent, bartering 

 in iron and ivory and gold and often in 

 slaves, and still live in a curious condition 

 of mutual toleration and interdependence 

 with the half-tamed little people. In Aus- 

 tralia there were at least scores of negroid 

 tribes, or Blackfellows, speaking a dozen 

 or more distinct and notably primitive 

 tongues, in which, as among some of the 

 African pygmies, bird-like clicks and beast- 

 like gutturals and monkey-like chatterings 

 served in lieu of well-defined words, if not 

 of entire parts of speech ; though timid and 

 generally peaceful, the tribes were often at 

 bloody war, and though varying in physical 

 form and feature, they were much alike in 

 that few could count above five, none above 

 seven or nine, and many stopped at three, 

 in that their marriage laws were the most 

 elaborate known, and in that many of the 

 tribes merged sex-differences by ceremonial 

 and surgical devices. On the miniature 

 continent of New Zealand dwelt a com- 

 posite people whose physical types were 

 largely welded through similarity in es- 

 thetic and industrial and philosophic traits 

 and customs, including the world's most 

 elaborate system of heraldic genealogy in the 

 form of facial tattooing; and in Oceanica 

 most of the hundreds of islands and insular 

 groups were inhabited by distinct tribes of 

 two or three dominant physical types, each 

 tribe commonly speaking its own language 

 and pursuing its own special vocations with 

 its own peculiar devices. In Asia there 

 were the world's largest populations in 

 three races, ekch including divers physical 

 types; even the most homogeneous — the 

 Mongolian — comprised a dozen or more 

 divisions whose differences in speech and 

 customs are not yet fully realized, partly 

 because most of them are dominated alike 

 by a vigorous Manchu dynasty and the 

 terrifying Yellow Dragon ; while the north- 

 ern steppes were ranged by a dozen tribes 

 of varying physique and speech and faith, 



