SEPTEMBER. 225 



that the great subject of the origin of races is, and is 

 likely to be, in a miserably chaoticf state. The craniolo- 

 gist, the philologist, and archaeologist agree only to disa- 

 gree ; and the student of general anthropology can not 

 yet, it is quite certain, blend the strong arguments of 

 these specialists, and reach to a plausible conclusion. The 

 stronger the argument of any one phase of anthropologi- 

 cal science, the more decidedly contradictory is it of the 

 assertions of the others. It was not a cheering outlook 

 when, at a recent scientific gathering, an eminent anato- 

 mist remarked that he " did not care a rap for languages 

 as a means of race identification," to which a philologist 

 replied, " What is so variable as the shape of a skull ? " 

 ' But the shape of a skull seems to have some bearing 

 on the question of racial origin in connection with the 

 Serpent Mound. The recent exhaustive examination- of - 

 the broaid plateau stretching southeastward from the- 

 earth- work has yielded, among others, the very Mgnificaht- 

 f act that two peoples have used the place as one of burial, 

 and that one antedates the other ; and it is further very 

 significant that the evidently more recent occupants were 

 historic Indians. After all, the shape of the skull does 

 mean something — is a tangible fact ; and the difference 

 between the crania of Indians and of the earlier mound- 

 builders is too persistent to be denied or explained away 

 as a mere coincidence. In the burial place that I have men- 

 tioned, the more ancient interments — those, that is, that 

 may be safely referred to the time of the Serpent Mound 

 and its builders — are of a short-headed people, that were 

 of the same stock as the ancient Mexicans. I would not be 

 understood as saying that the mound-builders were Mexi- 

 cans or vice versa, but that they were both offshoots from 

 a brachycephalic race that reached America by a trans- 

 pacific route. This is the view that has been' expressed 

 by Prof. Putnam in recent lectures, and his most recent 



15 



