76 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. X. No. 236 



and then he may feel how much more potent has been the lesson 

 than all he has read in pages of abstract ratiocination. 



Prof. Alexander Graham Bell has presented a memoir to the 

 National Academy on the formation of a deaf variety of the human 

 race, in which he shows by tables a series of generations of certain 

 families in which, the progenitors being deaf-mutes, this peculiarity 

 becomes perpetuated in many of the descendants. Recognizing 

 fully the laws of heredity, natural selection, etc., he shows that the 

 establishment of deaf-mute schools, in which a visual language is 

 taught which the pupils alone understand, tends to bring them into 

 close association with each other ; and that naturally, with this 

 seclusion, acquaintance ripens into friendship and love, and that 

 statistics show that there is now in process of being built up a deaf 

 variety of man. 



Dr. W. K. Brooks, animated by the cogency of Professor Bell's 

 reasoning, is led to prepare an article entitled ' Can Man be Modi- 

 fied by Selection ? ' In this paper he discusses the startling proposi- 

 tion of Professor Bell, and recognizes the convincing proof which he 

 furnishes to show that the law of selection does place within our 

 reach a powerful influence for the improvement of our race. The 

 striking character of the tables of facts presented by Professor 

 Bell, and the significant suggestions of Dr. Brooks, lead one to 

 consider how far the influence of selection has had to do with 

 the character of great communities, as to their intelligence or 

 ignorance. , When we see nations of the same great race-stock, — 

 one showing a high percentage of illiterates, a high death-rate, 

 degradation and ignorance, while just across the borders another 

 nation, aparently no better off so far as physical environments are 

 concerned, with percentage of illiterates and death-rate low, intelli- 

 gent and cleanly, — we are led to inquire if here a strict scientific 

 scrutiny with careful historical investigation will not reveal the 

 cause of these conditions. Can it be proved beyond question that 

 the illiteracy and degradation of Italy and Spain, up to within re- 

 cent years at least, is the result of centuries of Church oppression 

 and the Inquisition, destroying at once, or driving out of the land, 

 all independent thinkers, and at the same time forcing her priests 

 to lead ceHbate lives, and inducing others of cultivated and gentle 

 minds to lead cloister lives ? Is it also a fact, as Alphonse de Can- 

 dolle asserts, that by far the greater number of distinguished scien- 

 tists have come from Protestant pastors ? He gives a significant 

 list of eminent men whose fathers were Protestant pastors, saying, 

 that had they been priests of another religion, leading celibate lives, 

 these men would not have been born. 



It is considered an intrusion into matters which do not concern 

 science when such inquiries are made, but the scientist has very 

 deeply at heart the intellectual and moral welfare of the community. 

 If the cause of degradation and ignorance, of poverty, of contagious 

 disease, or of any of the miseries which make a nation wretched, 

 can be pointed out by scientific methods, then it is the stern duty of 

 science to step in and at least show the reasons, even if the remedy 

 is not at once forthcoming. The men who would be reformers and 

 agitators, and who by their earnestness and devotion get the atten- 

 tion of multitudes, are unfit for their work if they show their 

 ignorance, as most of them do, of the doctrines of natural selection 

 and derivation. 



In drawing to a close this very imperfect summary of what 

 American zoologists have accomplished for evolution, many other 

 distinguished contributors might have been mentioned. The work 

 of eminent physiologists and paleontologists has hardly been consid- 

 ered ; nor has the long array of botanical facts for Darwin, as re- 

 vealed in the fascinating study of the relations which exist between 

 flowering plants and insects, contrivances for cross-fertilization, 

 means of plant-dispersion, etc., and the distinguished botanists 

 connected with this work, received attention here. Indeed, the 

 proper limits for an address of this nature have been far exceeded. 



Suffice it to say, that all these students have worked from the 

 standpoint of derivative doctrines. A still greater triumph to Dar- 

 winism are the evidences of gradual conversion still going on among 

 a few isolated workers who still remain stubborn, yet yielding to the 

 pressure of these views by admitting features that ten years ago 

 they repudiated. 



There are two points to be emphasized here in closing : and one 

 is, that American biological science stands as a unit for evolution ; 

 and the other is, the establishment of a great generalization which 

 shows, that, when intelligence became a factor in animals, it was 

 seized upon to the relative exclusion of other characteristics. This 

 generalization offers an unassailable argument to-day for a wider, 

 broader, and deeper education for the masses. The untold misery 

 and suffering of the working-classes as witnessed in their struggles 

 of the last two years would have been avoided had the rudiments of 

 social science, even a knowledge of the value and significance of 

 simple statistics, been appreciated by them. 



The startling paper of Dr. Seaman {Science, viii. No. 190) on the 

 social waste of a great city shows the blundering, criminal way in 

 which municipalities are controlled by coteries ignorant alike of Sci- 

 ence and the beneficent mission she stands waiting to enter upon. 



PREHISTORIC CHRONOLOGY OF AMERICA.' 



The prehistoric period of America dates back from the discovery 

 of the several parts of the continent ; and the problem is to recon- 

 struct the history of the various nations who inhabited both Ameri- 

 cas in this period. A review of the means at our command to ac- 

 complish this, divides them into six classes : — 



I. Legendary. — This includes the legends or traditions of the 

 native tribes. These often bear a strong resemblance to Semitic or 

 other Oriental myths, but the similarity is a coincidence only, and 

 those writers have been led astray who count it for more. The an- 

 nals of the Mexicans, the Mayas of Yucatan, and the Ouichuas of 

 Peru, carry us scarcely five hundred years before the voyage of 

 Columbus, although the contrary is often stated. The more savage 

 tribes practically remembered nothing more remote than a couple 

 of centuries. 



II. Momimental. — The most famous monuments are the stone 

 buildings of Mexico, Yucatan, and Peru. By many these are as- 

 signed an antiquity of thousands of years ; but a calm weighing of 

 the testimony places them all well within our era, and most of them 

 within a few centuries of the discovery. The celebrated remains of 

 Tiahuanuco in Peru are no exception. Much more ancient are 

 some of the artificial shell-heaps along the coast. They contain 

 bones and shells of extinct species, in intimate connection with 

 stone implements and pottery. They furnish data to prove that the 

 land was inhabited several thousand years ago. 



III. Industrial. — The industrial activity of man in America may 

 be traced by the remains of his weapons, ornaments, and tools 

 made of stone, bone, and shell. In most of the deposits examined, 

 specimens of polished stone and pottery testify to a reasonably de- 

 veloped skill ; but in the Trenton gravels and a few other localities, 

 genuine paleolithic remains have been found, putting man in 

 America at a date coeval with the close of the glacial age, if not 

 earlier. The vast antiquity of the American race is further proved 

 by the extensive dissemination of maize and tobacco, — tropical 

 plants of southern Mexico, which were cultivated from the latitude 

 of Canada to that of Patagonia. 



IV. Linguistic. — It is believed that there are about two hundred 

 radically different languages in North and South America. Such a 

 confusion of tongues could only have arisen in hundreds of cen- 

 turies. The study of these languages, and of the gradual growth 

 of their dialects, supplies valuable data for the ancient history of the 

 continent. 



V. Physical. — The American race is as distinctively a race by 

 itself as is the African or white race. Although varying in many 

 points, it has a marked fixedness of ethnic anatomy, and always has 

 had. The oldest American crania, collected from the most ancient 

 quaternary deposits, are thoroughly American in type. 



VI. Geologic. — As the discovery of implements in glacial de- 

 posits locates man on this continent at least at the close of the 

 glacial epoch, this carries his residence here to about thirty-five 

 thousand years ago. But there is no likelihood that he came into 

 being on this continent. He could not have developed from any of 

 the known fossil mammalia which dwelt here. More probably 

 some colonies first migrated along the preglacial land-bridge which 



1 Abstract of an address before the Section of Anthropology of the American. 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, at New York, Aug. 10-17, 1887, by Dr.. 

 Daniel G. Brinton, vice-president and chairman of the section. 



