Oannes, can hardly be traced to Arabia. According to the Biblical writer, Kush was the eldest son of Ham, who was also the father of Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. All these peoples were great builders, and it is very probable, therefore, that they, as well as the Kushites, derived their knowledge from a common source. In this case, and even if Mizraim, Canaan, and Phut were the _descendants_ rather than the brethren of Kush, the civilisation with which the Kushites are accredited was, in reality, that of the earlier Hamites. The probability is that all the peoples belonging to the Hamitic stock possessed the elements of a very ancient civilisation, which was handed down in the most direct line through the Kushites of Chaldea. M. Perrot accepts the opinion of M. Oppert, that when the primitive Chaldeans first settled in the plains of Sennaar they already had a national organisation, and that they possessed writing, the most necessary industries, a religion, and a complete legislation. If this was so we shall have to seek a very primitive source for the Kushite or Hamitic civilisation. What was its origin can only be ascertained when the race ancestry of the Hamites is known. In relation to this point it must not be forgotten that Ham was the brother of Shem and Japhet, and therefore that they were all members of a common family. As the descendants of Noah, they all alike belonged to the great white or Caucasian stock. M. Lenormant, while endorsing this view, says that anciently, as in the present day, there was an anthropological distinction between the Hamites and the Shemites, which he accounts for by supposing the former to have become intermixed with a dark or black race, which they found already established in the country to which they spread, while the Shemites, who stayed behind, preserved the purity of the white race. The facts of linguistic science and anthropology can thus be made to agree, but M. Lenormant has to admit that the Eastern Kushites cannot be brought within that theory, as from the earliest historical period they have spoken a language radically distinct from those of the Shemites and the other Hamitic peoples. He adds that the coast between the Persian Gulf and the Indus appears to have been, from a remote antiquity, the point of meeting and fusion of two distinct races having brown complexions, but inclining more or less to pure black. The Eastern Kushites are thus confounded by a gradual series of transitions with the Dravidians of India. This reference to the Dravidians is perfectly just, as there is no doubt, whatever may be the case now, that originally they partook of the high qualities possessed by the peoples of the Kushite stock. As a race they were noted for their love of art and commerce, and General Forlong, after having examined minutely most of the famous shrines of India, came to the conclusion “that there is nothing to equal those of Dravidia, save some small ones