fractional differences, then the distinction between the brachycephalic and the dolichocephalic type of head is, for all purposes of science, at an end; and the labours of Blumenbach, Retzius, Nilsson, and all who have trod in their footsteps have been wasted in pursuit of an idle fancy. If differences of cranial conformation of so strongly defined a character, as are thus shown to exist between various ancient and modern people of America, amount to no more than variations within the normal range of the common type, then all the important distinctions between the crania of ancient European barrows and those of living races amount to little; and the more delicate details, such as those, for example, which have been supposed to distinguish the Celtic from the Germanic cranium; the ancient Roman from the Etruscan or Greek; the Slave from the Magyar or Turk; or the Gothic Spaniard from the Basque or Morisco, must be utterly valueless. But the legitimate deduction from such a recognition, alike of extreme diversities of cranial form, and of many intermediate gradations, characterizing the nations of the New World, as well as of the Old, is not that cranial formation has no ethnic value; but that the truths embodied in such physiological data are as little to be eliminated by ignoring or slighting all diversities from the predominant form, and assigning it as the sole normal type, as by neglecting the many intermediate gradations, and dwelling exclusively on the examples of extreme divergence from any prevailing type. Humboldt has been quoted as favouring the idea of American ethnic unity. It must be borne in remembrance that his observations were limited to tropical America; and that it is therefore no presumption to assume that personal observation in reference to the northern tribes would have modified views thus expressed: "The nations of America, except those which border on the polar circle,

form a single race, characterized by the formation of the skull, the colour of the skin, the extreme thinness of the beard, and straight glossy hair." The formation of the skull has been abundantly discussed here; as to the colour of the skin, extended observation tends in like manner to disclose considerable variations, from the fair Menominees, and olive-complexioned Chippewas, to the dark Pawnees, and the Kaws of Kansas almost as black as negroes. My own earlier observations led me to assume that the name of Red Indian had been applied to the cinnamon-coloured natives of the New World, in consequence of their free application of red pigments, such as are in constant use among the Indians on Lake Superior; until I fell in with an encampment of Micmacs, in their birch bark wigwams, on the Lower St. Lawrence, and then saw for the first time a complexion to which the name of red or reddish-brown may very fitly apply. Again, as to the hair, the evidence of the ancient Peruvian graves furnishes some proof of hair differing essentially both in colour and texture from that of the modern Indian; and Mexican terra cottas and sculptures of Central America indicate that the beard was not universally absent. But it is not necessary thus to discuss in detail a detached remark of Humboldt, in order to prevent his observation from bearing out the inferences it has been produced to support; for he has himself furnished the most conclusive evidence of the totally different inferences drawn by him from those recognised characteristics of the American race. Dr. Nott, when commenting on the Esquimaux skulls engraved in the Crania Americana, remarks: "Nothing can be more obvious than the contrast between these Esquimaux heads and those of all other tribes of this continent. They are the only people in America who present the characteristics of an Asiatic race; and being bounded closely on the south by genuine

200

Old, recorded by the pen of Herodotus, and proved by sepulchral disclosures pertaining to still er ras. British cromlechs show that the very same custom vis followed by their builders in primitive times. ancient barrows of Scandinavia reveal the ke fen and abundant evidence proves the existence of SICI sepulchral rites, in ancient or modern mes. in eart quarter of the globe: so that if the prevalenes of a peculiar mode of interment of the dead may be abil as evidence of the unity of race and meees, it can crit operate by reuniting the lost links which restore to the red man his common share in the genealogy of the s.as of Adam. But ancient and modern discoveries als. prove considerable diversity in the sepulchralines để all nations. The skeleton has been fund in a simme posture in British cromlechs. barrows, and graves, of dates to all appearance long prior to the era of Edcua invasion, and of others unquestionably subseqzeci to that of Saxon immigration; but evidences are fond of cremation and urn-burial in equally ancient times of the recumbens skeleton under the earn, the harrow, in the stone cist, and in the rude sareophagus bewn our of the solid trunk of the oak; and in this as in so many other respects, the British miernegem is but an egiteme of the great world. Norway, Denmark, Germany, an i France all supply the same evidences of varying rites: and ancient and modern customs of Asia and Africa

confirm the universality of the same. In the Tonga and other islands of the Pacific, as well as in the newer world of Australia, the custom of burying the dead in a sitting posture has been repeatedly noted; but it is not universal even among them; nor was it so in America, though atfirmed by Dr. Morton to be traceable throughout the northern and southern continents, and by its universality, to afford "collateral evidence of the

affiliation of all the American nations." So far is this from being the case, that nearly every ancient and modern sepulchral rite has had its counterpart in the New World. Mummification, cremation, urn-burial, and inhumation, were all in use among different tribes and nations of South America, and have left their traces no less unmistakably on the northern continent. Figure 65

illustrates a common form of bier, sketched from a Chippewa grave on the Saskatchewan. The body is deposited on the surface, protected by wood or stones, and covered over with birch-bark. In the neighbourhood of the clearings, as at Red River, the grave is generally surrounded by a high fence. Among the Algonquins, the Hurons, the Mandans, the Sioux, and other tribes, the body was, and with the survivors still is, most frequently laid out at full length on an elevated bier or scaffold, or otherwise disposed above ground, where it was left to decay; and then after a time the

aborigines, they seem placed here as if to give a practical illustration of the irrefragable distinctness of races."1 Dr. Pickering, as we have seen, with no prejudice against the theory of an "irrefragable distinctness of races,” nevertheless came to the conclusion that the Asiatic and American nations of the Mongolian type are one race; and Humboldt, who enjoyed such preeminent opportunities of studying the Mongolian characteristics on the Asiatic continent, remarks in his introduction to his American Researches: "The American race bears a very striking resemblance to that of the Mongol nations, which include the descendants of the Hiong-Nie, known heretofore by the name of Huns, the Kalkas, the Kalmuks, and the Burats. It has been ascertained by late observations, that not only the inhabitants of Unalashka, but several tribes of South America, indicate by the osteological characters of the head a passage from the American to the Mongol race. When we shall have more completely studied the brown men of Africa, and that swarm of nations who inhabit the interior and north-east of Asia, and who are vaguely described by systematic travellers under the name of Tartars and Tschoudes: the Caucasian, Mongol, American, Malay, and Negro races, will appear less insulated, and we shall acknowledge in this great family of the human race one single organic type, modified by circumstances which perhaps will ever remain unknown." It is indeed an important and highly suggestive fact, in the present stage of ethnological research, that authorities the most diverse in their general views and favourite theories as to the unity or multiplicity of human species, can nevertheless be quoted in confirmation of opinions which trace to one ethnic centre, the Fin and Esquimaux, the Chinese, the European Turk and Magyar, and the American Indian.

1 Comparative Anatomy of Races, Types of Mankind, p. 447.