214 EEVIEWS — INDIGENOUS EACES OE THE EAETH. 



ing chapters of this work, — he will take the edge off some of 

 the finest Anglo-Saxon figures of speech of American oratory ! 



We believe the great majority of the students of this, the young- 

 est of all the sciences, will heartily sympathise in the views which 

 have guided Dr. Meigs of Philadelphia, in the treatment of the im- 

 portant department entrusted to him in the preparation of the volume 

 under consideration. " I have confined myself," he remarks, " to a 

 simple statement of facts, carefully and designedly abstaining from 

 the expression of any opinion upon the prematurely, and perhaps in 

 the present state of our knowledge, unwisely mooted questions of the 

 origin and primitive affiliations of man. Not a little study and 

 reflection, incline me to the belief that long years of severe and 

 earnest research are yet necessary, before we can pronounce 

 authoritatively upon those ultimate and perplexing problems of 

 Ethnology." It is because we entirely concur in this opinion ; and 

 believe that the elimination of the necessary data on which 

 Ethnological science must be built up, and the final recognition of 

 the important truths which it is destined to establish, can only be 

 retarded, by the diversion of its investigators into premature and 

 bootless fields of polemics, that we have occupied so much space, with 

 what we would otherwise have gladly left unsaid. What better 

 can the Ethnologist hope for than that which has already been ex- 

 perienced by the Geologist ; who has had to read in more recent 

 octavos the recantation of his earlier quartos, and to confess on 

 awaking, that, like Alnascar in the Arabian Tales, he had been ex- 

 pending the wealth of a dream in a triumph as baseless. It is facts 

 alone we want at present ; carefully, accurately, and unprejudicedly 

 noted facts. These once accumulated, will fall into their order in 

 due time, and the legitimate conclusions they point to, whatever 

 they may be, will carry conviction to all honest seekers after truth, 

 and find no lack of adherents " morally brave enough to avow 

 them." 



The " Indigenous Races of the Earth," is a work which embodies 

 the results of much zealous industry and careful research. In one 

 chapter, M. Maury discusses " The distribution and classification of 

 Tongues ;" going over ground investigated by Sir Wm. Jones, Jacob 

 Grimm, Humboldt, and later philologists : and placing the important 

 results arrived at in a very concise and agreeable form. Next come 

 the " Inconograhic researches on human Races and their Art," by 

 Erancis Pulszky: an interesting and comprehensive monogram, 

 admitted bv Dr. Nott and Mr. Grliddon into their new volume, with 



