animal-mounds appear to be regarded with superstitious reverence by the Indians, and are rarely disturbed except for purposes of sepulture, they lay no claim to them as the work of their fathers. The only theory of their origin is, that they are the work of the great Manitou, and were made by him to reveal to his red children the plentiful supply of game that awaits them in the world of spirits. The idea is a consoling one to tribes whose hunting-grounds have been invaded and laid desolate; and it is fully as philosophical as a theory gravely propounded to the American Scientific Association, that the cruciform and curvilinear earthworks intermingled with the animal-mounds include characters of the Phœnician alphabet, and are half-obliterated inscriptions commemorative of explorations by the great voyagers of antiquity. What then are the inferences thus far deducible as to the races of Northern America in ante-Columbian centuries? Assuming a community of arts, and certain intimate relations in race and social condition, among the ancient people who worked the mines on Lake Superior, and constructed the varied earthworks that reach southward into Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky: there is no reason to suppose that they were united as one nation. While coincidences of a remarkable kind in the construction, and still more in the dimensions of their great earthworks, point to a common knowledge of geometrical configuration, and a standard of measurement: no two earthworks so entirely correspond as to show an absolute identity of purpose. The marked diversity between the truncated, pyramidal mounds of the states on the Gulf, the geometrical enclosures of Ohio, and the symbolic earthworks of Wisconsin, indicate varied usages of distinct communities. A dense population must have centred in certain favourite localities, still marked by evidence of the combined labours of a numerous people; and some supreme rule, like that of the Incas of Peru, must have regulated the operations requisite for the execution of works planned on so comprehensive a scale.