256 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



not amenable to positive proofs, yet the inquiry is not without 

 profit; and surely, so long as physiologists continue to admit 

 the maxim, that mankind consists of one species only, it must 

 involve, as a consequence, the necessity of migration, in order 

 to people the earth in all its habitable portions ; or it demands 

 a plural creation of the single species, sufficiently diversified to 

 be adapted to the varieties of climate and circumstances 

 wherein they are found to exist; in which case, the term 

 "species" assumes a different acceptation, and confounds the 

 notions hitherto attached to it, notwithstanding that no positive 

 definition has been undeniably established to guide the natu- 

 ralist. 



Always regarding the flat-headed Paltas, Aturians, or 

 primaeval race of South America, as anomalous, though evi- 

 dently mixed with tribes of a more marked origin, and admit- 

 ting that of them some small clans, such as the so-called Frog 

 Indians, with probably others, are still in being about the val- 

 leys on the east side of the Cordilleras, we cannot but remark, 

 considering the antiquity of the deposits and extensive range 

 where their bones are discovered, (from Brazil to the west 

 coast of America,) that the stock is fast passing away. It has 

 been supplanted for ages, by the Guarany and other nations 

 in Brazil, whose Malay aspect countenances the supposition of 

 their original arrival in the New World somewhere about the 

 Californian coast, whither they seem to have transported, along 

 with legends already pointed out, the practices of boring the 

 septum of the nostrils, the lobes of the ears, and even the lips 

 and cheek-bones, for the purpose of inserting therein bits of 

 bone, of shells, wood, feather, or leaves* These, and other 

 fashions before described, they have in common with many 

 islanders of the South Seas and coasts of the Northern Pacific ; 



* Dr. Burchell, Prince Maximilian of Wied, and many other travellers, 

 entertain similar ideas with ourselves. The present physiologists who 

 draw other inferences, are not always reconcilable to each other when 

 their arguments are generalized. 



