evolved from pictographs which were primarily derived from the simple picture writing so common among the races of the New World. It seems clearly impossible that any intercourse could have taken place between Asia and America without an interchange of certain social commodities. The "divine weed," tobacco, has been the comfort of the races of the western hemisphere north and south for unnumbered centuries: stone tobacco pipes are exhumed in various parts of the continent; cigarettes made of corn husks are found in ancient graves and caves; the metatarsals of a deer, doubly perforated, through which to inhale tobacco or its smoke in some form, are dug up on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The question naturally arises why tobacco was not carried back to Asia by some of the returning emigrants, or why tea was not introduced into this country by those early invaders. A Buddhist priest without tea or tobacco would be an anomaly. There are many other herbs, food plants, etc., that should not have waited for the Spanish invasion on the one hand, or the Dutch and Portuguese navigator along the Chinese coast on the other. Finally, if evidences of Asiatic contact exist, they should certainly be found in those matters most closely connected with man, such as his weapons, clothing, sandals, methods of conveyance, pottery making and devices thereon, musical instruments, and above all house structure and modes of burial. More remote perhaps would be survivals of language, and if the invaders had a written one, the characters, whether phonetic or ideographic, would have been left in the enduring rock inscriptions. If now a study of the aborigines of the western hemisphere from Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego fails to reveal even a remote suggestion of resemblance to any of these various matters above enumerated, their absence must in some way be accounted for by Asiaticists. FOOTNOTES: [1] Mr. Charles Walcott Brooks presented to the California Academy of Sciences a report of Japanese vessels wrecked on the North Pacific Ocean in which many instances are given. He says: "Every junk found stranded on the coast of North America or on the Hawaiian or adjacent islands has, on examination, proved to be Japanese, and no single instance of a Chinese vessel has ever been reported, nor is any believed to have existed.... There also exists an ocean stream of cold water emerging from the Arctic Ocean which sets close in along the eastern coast of Asia. This fully accounts for the absence of Chinese junks on the Pacific, as vessels disabled off their coast would naturally drift southward." [2] On the Older Forms of Terra-Cotta Roofing Tiles. Essex Institute Bulletin, 1882. [3] Since the above was written Dr. Brinton and Mr. Saville have called my attention to such evidences as would warrant the belief in the existence of a pre-Columbian stringed musical instrument. The devices are, however, of such a nature as to indicate their independent origin.