This enables us in a measure to define the limits of the region known to the human race at this, its earliest epoch; with our present deficient knowledge we can do so only partially and by exclusion. It is safe to state that in Europe Palæolithic man did not occupy the central alpine area of Switzerland and its surroundings, nor the plains of Russia, nor any part of the Scandinavian peninsula, Scotland, Ireland, nor Iceland. In North America he had no habitations north of the forty-first parallel of latitude except perhaps close to the shores of the two great oceans;[34] it is not probable that his foot pressed the soil of any of the West Indian Islands; but when the great Austral Glacier was in its recession depositing the fertile loam of the pampas of Buenos Ayres human beings with their rude Palæoliths were following up the retreating line of ice, as in the Northern Hemisphere. Ages uncounted and uncountable have passed since then, but man has left indestructible evidences that even in that early morn of his existence he had explored and conquered that continent which a late generation has chosen to call “the New World.” ON THE ALLEGED MONGOLIAN AFFINITIES OF THE AMERICAN RACE.[35] Were the question I am about to discuss one of merely theoretical bearings, I should not approach it; but the widespread belief that the American tribes are genealogically connected with the Mongolians is constantly directing and coloring the studies of many Americanists, very much as did at one time the belief that the red men are the present representatives of the ten lost tribes of Israel. It is practically worth while, therefore, to examine the grounds on which the American race is classed by these anthropologists as a branch of the Mongolian, and to inquire whether the ancient culture of America betrayed any positive signs of Mongolian influence. You will permit me to avoid the discussion as to what constitutes races in anthropology. To me they are zoölogical sub-species, marked by fixed and correlated characteristics, impressed so firmly that they have suffered no appreciable alteration within the historic period either through time or environment. In this sense, Blumenbach, in the last century, recognized five races, corresponding to the five great land-areas of the globe, and to their characteristic faunal and floral centres. This division was an eminently scientific one, and still remains the most in accord with anatomical and linguistic research. About twenty years after the appearance of Blumenbach’s work, however, the eminent naturalist Cuvier published his great work on “The Animal Kingdom,” in which he rejected Blumenbach’s classification, and proposed one dividing the human species into three races,—the white or Caucasian, the black or Ethiopian, and the yellow or Mongolian. In the latter he included the Malays and the American Indians.