OCTOBEE 9, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



507 



ical administrator in tropical places where 

 Eastern and "Western folk have met, and 

 where the inevitable clash between the two 

 has occurred. 



In such places and circumstances the re- 

 sult has too often been that sooner or later 

 the weaker folk — ^those whose ancestors 

 have been age-long "savages"- — ^have died 

 out in the presence of those whose ancestors 

 long ago turned from "savagery" to civ- 

 ilization. This dying out of the weaker 

 folk has happened even when the stronger 

 people have done their best to avoid this 

 extirpation. 



The real ultimate cause of "the decrease 

 of natives" when in contact with civilized 

 folk lies, perhaps, in the difference in hered- 

 itary mentality — in the incapacity of the 

 "savage" to take on civilization quickly 

 enough. However sedulously the mission- 

 ary, the government official, and others 

 who take a real interest in so doing, may 

 teach civilized precepts to the essential 

 savage, the subject of this sedulous case — 

 however advanced a savage culture he may 

 have attained — will, at least for many 

 generations, remain a savage, i. e., for just 

 so long as he is under influence of the 

 civilized teacher he may act on the utterly 

 strange precepts taught him, but away 

 from that influence he will act on his own 

 hereditary instincts. 



The manner in which the native dies out — 

 even when well looked after — ^varies. He 

 may be killed out by some disease, perhaps 

 trifling but new to him, with which he does 

 not know how to cope, and with which — if 

 he can avoid so doing — he simply will not 

 cope in the ways which the civilized man 

 would teach him; or he may be killed out 

 by the well-meant but injudicious enforce- 

 ment on him of some system of unaccus- 

 tomed labor ; or, again, he may die out be- 

 cause deprived of his former occupations 

 [e. g., fighting and the gathering of just so 



much food as sufficed for him] and thus 

 restricted to a merely vegetative existence ; 

 or in many other more or less similar forms 

 his extermination may come about. 



But all such effective causes are reducible 

 to one, which is that he is not allowed to 

 act on his own hereditary instincts, that he 

 can not at aU times have, and often would 

 not use, judicious and disinterested guid- 

 ance from civilized folk, and that conse- 

 quently he, the "savage," can not and too 

 often does not care to keep alive when in 

 the presence of civilized folk. 



EVEEAED IM THUEN 



GEOBGE MABCGBAVE, A P08TSCBIFT 

 In the Popular Science Monthly for Septem- 

 ber, 1912, I published a biographical sketch of 

 " George Marcgrave, the First Student of 

 American Natural History." A copy of this 

 paper was sent to Dr. Alfredo de Oarvalho, 

 Pernambuco, Brazil, president of the Institute 

 Archeologico e Geographico of that city, and 

 a profound student of the history of his coun- 

 try and especially of that period during which 

 the Dutch occupied Pernambuco and the ad- 

 jacent parts of Brazil. He wrote me of his 

 study of Marcgrave, who did his natural his- 

 tory work at and around Pernambuco, or Eecife 

 as it is called by the Brazilians, and sent 

 me a copy of his article — " Um Natura- 

 lista do Seculo XVII, Georg Markgraf, 1610- 

 1644 " — in Bevisia do Insiituto Archeologico e 

 Geographico Pernamhucano, Vol. XHI., pp. 

 212-22, 1908. I greatly regret that this paper 

 was not included in my bibliography of George 

 Marcgrave. 



In speaking of Marcgrave's death it was 

 stated in my sketch that this occurred on the 

 Gold Coast of Africa, by which term was 

 meant all that pestilential region around the 

 Gulf of Guinea. However, the Gold Coast 

 proper is a section of the coast lying west of 

 the Bight of Benin, and there is good reason 

 to believe that Marcgrave died in Angola at 

 or near San Paulo de Loanda, some distance 

 south of the mouth of the Congo. 



In my paper all the intimate and personal 



