Archeology and Anthropology. 851 
Prof. Morse said this would make a different language for ever 
fish-pond around which the prehistoric man assembled, and Pais 
the value of language in determining racial affinities in prehistoric 
times. 
Major Powell answered by declaring his theory of language as a 
racial test had no application to man earlier than we had knowledge 
of his language. 
Dr. Brinton sought to close the discussion by saying that differ- 
ent races might employ the same language, and that according to 
his theory, Major Powell could prove, what we know from history 
and from our senses to be an absurdity, to wit: that because they 
spoke the same language, the white and the black man now occu- 
pying the United States belonged to the same race. 
Major Powell had the final word to say that his opponents had 
constructed a man of straw that they might enjoy the pleasure of 
thrashing him. His own position was, that in the beginning all 
men sprang from the same stock, or if not, they at least found 
themselves in the same condition ; that there were then no distinct 
or separate races of men, and that the divisions and subdivisions of 
race, blood, language, culture or physique had been accomplis 
little by little, and they had thus finally developed into the different 
races with their different languages and cultures. But that they 
still all shaded off into each other and ran together; and, whether 
counted sideways through the collateral branches in the present day, 
or counted backwards, each through his own ancestors, it was 
Impossible to find an exact dividing line between races. all the 
world was now, as it ever had been, akin, of one race and one blood; 
and that the subdivisions into races was but arbitrary ; the work of 
man and not of God. 
is discussion was the most impetuous and interesting of any 
in the section. The speakers were able, ardent, fluent, and at times, 
Major Powell especially, arose to eloquence. 
r. Hilborne T. Cresson was down for two papers, but he was 
absent and they were read by abstract. They related to his dis- 
shown but the implements themselves were not present. 
Friday, August 17th.—Colonel Garrick Mallery, of the 
Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., read a pa 
entitled “ Recent Discovered Algonkin Pictographs.” Colonel 
Mallery has been engaged for ten years in the investigation 
of the sign language of the North American Indian, and is the 
highest authority on the subject. Colonel Mallery has just 
returned from a month’s visit among the Micmacs of Nova 
