The conditions differ in the southern and, to some extent also, in the western portion of the great American continent. Closely related as the various tribes are, the old hypothesis that they migrated from Asia across Behring Strait is untenable. Moreover, in spite of their physical relationship and, in part also, of their linguistic similarities, their culture shows important differences. In the southern and central parts of America particularly, we find widely different cultural levels, ranging from the forest Indians of Brazil, who have made scarcely any essential advance beyond the primitive culture of the Veddahs or of the natives of Malacca, to the tribes of New Mexico and Arizona, who have obviously been influenced by the cultural peoples of the New World, and, under this influence, have undergone an independent development. All advances that they have made, however, clearly depend upon the development of agriculture. In addition to numerous elements of celestial mythology that have found their way from Mexico, we find vegetation cults and agricultural ceremonies. The latter are often closely fused with the borrowed mythology, particularly among the semi-cultural peoples of the central region of America. These cults--sometimes governed by totemic conceptions, while in other cases dominated by celestial mythology--underlie the development of art throughout the whole of America. Whereas the chief expression of the æsthetic impulse in Polynesia is the decoration of the body, particularly by means of tattooing, this practice is secondary, in the case of the American Indian, to the possession of external means of adornment. It is primarily the beautiful plumage of the bird kingdom that furnishes the decorations of the head and of the garment. At the ceremonies of the Zunis and other New Mexican tribes, the altars are decked with the feathers of birds. These festivals exhibit a wealth of colour and a complexity of ceremonial performances that have always aroused the astonishment of the strangers who have been able to witness them. The decoration of garments, of altars, and of festal places is paralleled in its development by that of the pictorial decoration of clay vessels. Here for the first time we have a developed art of ceramics which employs ornamentations, pictures of totemic animals, and combinations of the two or transitional forms. Originally, no doubt, these ornamentations were intended as means of magic, but they came more and more to serve the purposes of decoration. All of these factors exert an influence on the numerous cult dances. All over America, from the Esquimos in the north far down to the south, a very important part of the equipment of the dancers is the mask. This mask reproduces either animal features or some fantastic form intermediate between man and animal. Thus, this culture is of a peculiar nature. Even externally it combines the huntsman's culture with that of the tiller of the soil,