The features which distinguish one ethno-geographic province from another are chiefly, according to Bastian, meteorological, and they permit, he claims, a much closer division of human groups than the general continental areas which give us an African, a European, and an American subspecies. It is possible that more extended researches may enable ethnographers to map out, in this sense, the distribution of our species; but the secular alterations in meteorologic conditions, combined with the migratory habits of most early communities, must greatly interfere with a rigid application of these principles in ethnography. The historic theory of “centres of civilisation” is allied to that of ethno-geographic provinces. The stock examples of such are familiar. The Babylonian plain, the valley of the Nile, in America the plateaux of Mexico and of Tiahuanuco are constantly quoted as such. The geographic advantages these situations offered,—a fertile soil, protection from enemies, domesticable plants, and a moderate climate,—are offered as reasons why an advanced culture rapidly developed in them, and from them extended over adjacent regions. Without denying the advantages of such surroundings, the most recent researches in both hemispheres tend to reduce materially their influence. The cultures in question did not begin at one point and radiate from it, but arose simultaneously over wide areas, in different linguistic stocks, with slight connections; and only later, and secondarily, was it successfully concentrated by some one tribe,—by the agency, it is now believed, of cognatic rather than geographic aids. Assyriologists no longer believe that Sumerian culture originated in the delta of the Euphrates, and Egyptologists look for the sources of the civilisation of the Nile valley among the Libyans; while in the New World not one, but seven stocks partook of the Aztec learning, and half a dozen contributed to that of the Incas. The prehistoric culture of Europe was not one of Carthaginians or Phœnicians, but was self-developed. INDEX Acclimatisation, 194 Adaptability, 58 African, 27, 79, 89, 133, 134, 136, 138 Alcoholism, 99 American Indian, 70, 142, 153, 159, 162 Ammon, 87, 128 Annamite, 132 Arab, 99, 102, 196 Aristotle, 15 Arizona, 134 Aryan, 130, 161, 166 Asia Minor, 117 Assyria, 156 Asthenia, 117 Atavism, 151 Australian, 52, 105, 136, 137, 142, 159, 168, 174 Aztec, 71, 199 Bache, 132 Baker, 152 Baldwin, 75 Bastian, 15, 153, 158, 197, 198 Berendt, 145 Black Death, 102, 162 Blackstone, 169 Boas, 153 Boole, 14 Bowditch, 152 Brachycephaly, 129 Brain, 126 Brazilian, 24, 108 Broca, 153 Browning, Mrs., 66 Buckle, 87, 158 Buschan, 160 Bushmen, 88, 134, 135 Byron, 138, 144 Cakchiquel, 145 Capitan, 83 Castren, 113 Cattell, 132 Caucasus, 187 Centralisation, 39 Chauvinism, 115 China, 68, 79, 137, 176 Chippeway, 52 Climate, 192