NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 97 



NOTE L. 



Since writing this discourse I have been favoured with " A Discourse on some of the 

 Principal Desiderata in Natural History, and on the best means of Promoting the Study 

 of this Science in the United States," by Dr. Barton, of Philadelphia. I regret that I 

 had not before the benefit of this ingenious and learned work, having been often instructed 

 by other writings of this distinguished author. In this discourse he says, " Nor is the 

 satisfactory decision of the question relative to the origin of the Americans beyond the 

 reach of science. It is, indeed, a question which can only be fully decided by much labour 

 and patience in research, aided by that candour which should be inseparable from the 

 character of a genuine philosopher. For the investigation of this subject, we should 

 lose no time in collecting vocabularies of the languages of the Indians, as well those with 

 whom we have been long acquainted, as those who have recently become known to us, 

 through the medium of the travels of Mr. Mackenzie, Captains Lewis, Clark, Freeman, 

 and others. In this inquiry, too, it will be highly important to have an eye to the reli- 

 gious institutions and the mythology of the Americans. I have elsewhere stated that 

 large fragments of the Asiatic mythology are preserved in a considerable degree of 

 purity, in the most distant or opposite regions of America, on the shores of Lakes Supe- 

 rior and Ontario, and on the confines of the Plata and Maragnon." 



In slating that there are thirly-five languages in Mexico I have followed Clavigero ; 

 Humboldt says there are but twenty. Humboldt's New Spain, vol. 2. 



NOTE M. 



FjinnjEus, in his celebrated Systema Naturae, has divided animals into sis classes : 



1. Mammalia. 



2. Birds. 



3. Amphibia. 



4. Fishes. 



5. Insects. 



6. Worms. 



15 



