156 The West American Scientist. 



increase and furnish specimens of this beautiful snail for future 

 generations of conchologists. 



Owing to the steep and rugged shores, and a lack of suitable 

 conditions, marine mollusks are not plentiful, except a few lit- 

 toral species, which attach themselves to the rugged surface of 

 the basalt rocks. 



A list of the known mollusca of the islands is also in prepara- 

 tion. 



We did not find any ferns upon the Anacapas, but, as adverse 

 circumstances prevented our landing upon the western extremity 

 of the group, where the conditions seem the most favorable for 

 their growth, we cannot state positively that no ferns grow there. 

 An article on the ferns of the Channel Island will shortly be pub- 

 lished. Lorenzo G. Yates. 



. BRIEFER ARTICLES. 



(From§Demorest's Monthly Magazine.) 



Earliest Americans. — The knowledge that America was in- 

 habited by a highly civilized people many centuries before its 

 occupancy by the race of red men which the earliest European 

 settlers found here, is not new. Yet it was not until lately that 

 actual records of information concerning this people were found, 

 and for more than four hundred years all that we have known of 

 them was gathered from a careful study of the relics of their 

 greatness, — the ruins of their edifices, which have been found 

 scattered over the entire western hemisphere. But the earthen 

 tablets found in Peru, Central America, and Mexico, engraved 

 on plastic clay in perfect Phoenician characters, and afterwards 

 burned to render them imperishable, extend back nearly two 

 thousand years before Christ. Accordng to these records, these 

 people, the Toltecs, came from some remote country and settled 

 in South America. They were an eminently civilized and re- 

 ligious people, vesting the laws of their government and their 

 theology in the same persons, and believing in one God, the cre- 

 ator and ruler of all, and in a mediator (Tzuma) who was to come 

 to guide and teach them aright. Two distinct classes existed 

 among them, the "Olptecs," or workers, and the "Orptecs," or 

 thinkers, the latter including not only their priests and rulers, but 

 their architects, artisans, engineers, and nobility. The "Olptecs" 

 were serfs with no voice at all in the government or public affairs. 

 These people rapidly increased, and by the year 400 B. C. had 

 settled nearly the entire South American continent and spread 

 over Mexico, where they found an aboriginal race dwelling on the 

 banks of the streams and living upon the natural produce of the 

 soil and upon fish and game. For over a thousand years the 

 Toltecs occupied the land, until in the last century before Christ, 

 the Aztec invaders sailed up the Amazon, claiming to have come 

 from an Oriental country which they called "Aztlan." The Az- 

 tecs soon overruled the Toltec government, and in the course of 

 two or three centuries the Aztecs were the dominant people. 



