November g, 1888.] 



SCIENCE 



227 



Professor Tuckernian's notice), to this memorial to a model scholar 

 and scientist. Whatever money may be contributed will be kept 

 as a fund, of which only the income will be employed in making 

 additions to the collection, or in repairs and rebinding. The sum 

 ■of a thousand dollars would probably suffice as such a fund. 



— An interesting incident of the statistics showing the social, 

 sanitary, and economic condition of women employed in shops 

 and factories of the United States, which are to be published in 

 Col. Carroll D. Wright's annual report of the Bureau of Labor, is 

 that they weie collected by women who were employed as special 

 agents of the bureau for that purpose. More than seventeen 

 thousand women were interviewed. 



— Prof. Aug. Kerckhoffs, of Dutch origin, but who has long 

 been settled in Paris as a teacher of languages in a commercial 

 school, will succeed the late Herr Johann Martin Schleyer as head 

 of the V'olapukists. Father Schleyer published his first book on 

 Volapiik in 1879, and nine years later, at the time of his death, a 

 moderate estimate puts the number of his followers at not less than 

 a quarter of a million persons. Professor Kerckhoffs is the most 

 distinguished of his pupils. 



— In Science, No. 300, p. 207, line 21, for ' ^\^ ' read ' t^is-' 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*^*Correspondettts are requested to be as brief as possible. The ivriter's name is 

 in all cases required as proof of f;ood faith. 



Tiuenty copies of the number conlaiaing his communication mill be furnished 

 ^ree to any correspondent on request. 



T/te editor will be glad to publisit any queries consonant with the character of 

 the journal. 



On the Alleged Mongolian Affinities of the American Race : 

 A Reply to Dr. Daniel G. Brinton. 



A FEW days ago a paper of Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, entitled ' On 

 the Alleged Affinities of the American "^tilC^.' {Science, Sept. 14, 1S88), 

 came to my knowledge. 



This paper, which purports to be a refutation of the asserted 

 Mongolian affinities of the American natives, contains, in my esti- 

 mation, such wrong interpretation of acknowledged facts, and such 

 illogic argumentation, that, although I generally avoid discussions 

 of this kind, I cannot help making an exception this time. 



It woiuld be worth while to examine and criticise thoroughly all 

 the arguments brought forward in Dr. Brinton's paper, but a gen- 

 eral review will sufficiently show the nature and value of Dr. Brin- 

 ton's refutation. 



Unfortunately, for the present I am compelled to discuss the 

 matter in a rather incomplete way, as I am travelling, and do not 

 have the necessary works at hand from which I should like to 

 quote, in order to prove what I say. I have therefore to make all 

 my statements and quotations from memory. 



Let us e.xamine now Dr. Brinton's arguments against the as- 

 serted Mongolian affinities of the native Americans, as existing in 

 language, in culture, and in physical peculiarities. 



First, as to language. In claiming that there is no linguistic con- 

 nection between the American and Mongolian languages, which 

 may be true. Dr. Brinton forgets that also in the (his) Mongolian 

 race the various languages are far from showing any connection 

 one with another, and yet he considers the peoples who speak these 

 different languages as being of one race. Moreover, in the Cau- 

 casian and negro races of Blumenbach's classification, which Dr. 

 Brinton seems to adopt, widely different languages, not showing the 

 remotest linguistic connection, have been grouped together. For 

 instance : the Basques, the Caucasians proper (of the Caucasus), 

 the Semites, and numerous other groups of peoples, are considered 

 to be of one race, the white or Caucasian. The African negroes, 

 the Melanesians, the Negritos of the islands'of south-eastern Asia, 

 and the Australians, are equally regarded as forming another, the 

 black or negro race. Although there is no linguistic affinity be- 

 tween the different groups just mentioned, they are affiliated by 

 physical characteristics, and each forms respectively one great race. 

 .\s long as we accept this, we have a perfect right to group the 

 L'ral-Altaic, and other Mongolian languages, with the native 

 languages of America. 



Second, as to culture. Although I am far from professing that 

 ancient American culture has borrowed any thing from Europe, 

 Asia, or Africa, neither do I positively deny the contrary until fur- 

 ther evidence. 



The science of archa;ology, as Dr. Brinton himself admits, only 

 came into being at a comparatively recent date. If this be true of 

 archjEological science in general, it is more so of American archas- 

 ology in particular, and we are consequently very far from having 

 exhausted it. The different branches of ancient American culture, 

 from the arid regions of the South-west to Peru, have not yet been 

 studied systematically enough, and in connection with ethnology 

 (as they should be), to permit us at present to draw any certain 

 conclusions as to whether they contain any foreign elements, Mon- 

 golian or otherwise. 



There is no need whatever as yet of hurrying Americanists, as 

 Dr. Brinton wishes, to recognize the absolute autochthony of native 

 American culture. The coming-forth of truth from studying a 

 branch of science cannot, and never will, be forced: \\. grows, grad- 

 ually and slowly, in the same proportion as our knowledge in- 

 creases. 



Third, as to physical peculiarities. Putting aside for the present 

 linguistic and cultural affinities between Mongolians and native 

 Americans, to deny that the American aboriginal belongs by his 

 physical characteristics to the Mongoloids is equal to denying that 

 the Basques and the Fins belong somatologically to the white race, 

 or to claiming that the Hottentots and the Negritos do not form 

 branches of the black race. 



The comparative study of physical characteristics is perhaps the 

 only satisfactory way of classifying the human races ; and, although 

 I cannot deny that any other classification, linguistic or sociologic, 

 has its value and right of existence, we never ought to try to har- 

 monize and to unite them, as is often done. As the different clas- 

 sifications have as many absolutely different points of view, their 

 union can only lead to erroneous estimations. This illustrates, 

 that, even admitting that the languages and cultures of the native 

 American are not Mongoloid or Mongolian, nevertheless the physi- 

 cal peculiarities of these races may be the same. 



Before I continue, let me state what I call, on purely somatologi- 

 cal grounds, the Mongoloid race. Mongoloids, or Mongolians, in 

 the widest sense, are, to me, a number of zoological varieties {va- 

 riSti heriditaire, in the sense of A. de Jussien) of the same sub- 

 species or race, distributed promiscuously, and in different propor- 

 tions (in the sense of \s.o\\xn3.x\'% peneiratio : see KoUman's studies 

 on European and American anthropology, in Archiv fiir Anthro- 

 pologic and Zeitsclirift fiir Ethnologie), over parts of northern 

 and eastern Europe, the greater portion of Asia, the Indian Archi- 

 pelago, Polynesia, a part of Madagascar, and originally over the 

 whole American continent with its numerous islands. The term 

 ' Mongoloid,' as I understand it, is in the main synonymous with 

 Oscar Peschel's ' Mongolendknliche P^Mer,' and with the ' races 

 jaunes ' of French anthropologists. 



The varieties of this great race differ somatologically much less 

 among themselves than the varieties of the white and black races. 



I will now consider, one by one, the arguments of Dr. Brinton 

 against the racial relationship between Mongoloids and American 

 natives. 



First, as to color. Dr. Brinton forgets, that, in condemning 

 Cuvier for the confusion of the American with the Mongolian race, 

 because he based his racial scheme principally on the color of the 

 skin, he equally condemns Blumenbach, whose division Dr. Brin- 

 ton first calls ' eminently scientific' We know that Blumenbach 

 divided mankind into a white, yellow, brown, red, and black race, 

 — a division at least just as much an ' a priori hypothesis.' as it 

 pleases Dr. Brinton to call Cuvier's divisions. Blumenbach had 

 probably seen just as few pure Mongolians and American natives 

 as Cuvier ; otherwise he would not have called the Americans red. 

 True ■ redskins ' do not exist. The American aboriginal is as- 

 suredly more yellow than red. 



As far as my own observations among Indians go, in North and 

 South America and in Mexico, and among Chinese, Japanese, and 

 Malays, I have come to the conclusion that they all have the same 

 color of skin, which we might best call yellowish brown, but in a 

 great variety of shades, which often occur among the same people 



