Ethnography offers a species of proof, to determine the migrations and divisions in the original family of man, which is to be drawn from geographical considerations--the relative position of islands, seas and continents--the means of subsistence as governed and limited by climate, and soil; the state of ancient arts, agriculture, languages, &c. Philology denotes the affinities of nations, by the analogies of words, and forms of syntax, and the place of expressing ideas. The remains of arts, monuments, inscriptions, hieroglyphics, picture writing, and architecture, constitute so many means of comparing one nation with another, and thus determining their affinities; and although most of our aboriginal nations had made but little progress in these departments, the state of ruins in Mexico, Central Mexico and Yucatan; the mounds and fortifications of the West; and even the remains of forts and barrows in Western New-York, entitle them to consideration. There is another department of observation on our aborigines, which, from the light it has shed on the mental characteristics of the Algic, and some other stocks, offers a new field for investigation. I allude to the subject of the imaginative legends and tales of the Red Race. Such tales have been found abundantly in the lodge circles of the tribes about the Upper Lakes and the source of the Mississippi. They reveal the sources of many of their peculiar opinions on life, death, and immortality, and open, if I may so say, a vista to the philosophy of the Indian mind, and the theory of his religion.