354 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



While it is interesting to notice that the aborigines of Canada differ in cer- 

 tain physical characteristics from those especially of the Southern States it is true 

 that the tribes of North and South America approximate in many characteristics. 

 Humbolt remarked that " the nations of America, except those which border the 

 polar circle, form a single race, characterized by the formation of the skull, the 

 ■color of the skin> the extreme thinness of the beard, and the straight, glossy hair," 

 and until very recent years this was accepted by every one. Among typical 

 ('anadian skulls, those of the Hurons of the region lying around Georgian Bay 

 have a special value The race was exterminated, or driven out of the country 

 by their Iroquois foes, in 1649, the crania recovered from their old cemeteries 

 giving a fair illustration of the physical characteristics of the race. 



Of all known races of the New World, the Eskimos alone presented, at first, 

 a seemingly marked diversity from the other aborigines, traceable far more to 

 Arctic conditions of life than to any ethnical peculiarities assigned to them. 

 Make Brun, Robertson, Humboldt, Morton, Meigs, Gliddon and Agassiz all con- 

 cur in excepting the polar tribes, or Eskimos, from the assumed American race 

 peculiar to this continent. Latham says of the Eskimos : — " Physically, he is a 

 Mongol and Asiatic ; philologically, he is American, at least in respect to the 

 principles upon which his speech is constructed." One branch of them, the 

 Labrador Eskimos borders on our own eastern settlements on the St. Lawrence. 

 Then there are the East and West Greenlanders, and to the north ©f them are 

 the Eskimos, of the west coast, north of Melville Bay, styled by Sir John Ross 

 the " Arctic Highlanders." This widely scattered race is broken up into small 

 tribes and isolated bands, dispersed for the most part over a coast line extending 

 from Labrador to Behring Strait, upward of 5,000 miles. They are hunters and 

 fishers. The deer, polar bear, wild goose, swan, and other birds are alike ob- 

 jects of the chase, but they primarily depend on seals and cretaceous animals. 

 The Eskimos in one respect, occupy a peculiar position on this Continent. 

 They are the only race common to the Old and New World, and if we accept 

 the conclusion arrived at by the author of " Early Man in Britain," they consti- 

 tuted an Old World race to all appearance before the New World had come into 

 existence. 



Prof. Boyd Dawkins has reviewed the manners and habits of the Eskimos, 

 a race of hunters, fishers, and fowlers, comparing their habits to those of the cave 

 men of ancient Europe. The implements and weapons of both prove that their 

 manner of life was the same, and what strikes him as the most astonishing bond 

 of union between the cave-men and Eskimos, is the art of representing animals, 

 and after noting those familiar to both, he says, "all these points of connection 

 between the cave-men and the Eskimos can, in my opinion, be explained only 

 on the hypothesis that they belong to the same race. The Eskimo's phisiognomy 

 is of a poor Mongolian type. The nose is flat and cheek bones are very promi- 

 nent, the tendency in the skull is narrow and long." The reasonable hmits of an 

 address to this section of anthropology are exceeded, and the various points of 

 differences to the aborigines of the Dominion illustrative alike of the physical 



