What tradition hints at, physiology confirms. The races of America differ less in physical character from those of Asia, than do the races either of Africa or Europe. The American Indian is a Mongol; and though marked diversities are traceable throughout the American continent, the range of variation is much less than in the eastern hemisphere. The western continent appears to have been peopled by repeated migrations and by diverse routes; but when we attempt to estimate any probable date for its primeval settlement, evidence wholly fails. Language proves elsewhere a safe guide. It has established beyond question some long-forgotten relationship between the Aryans of India and Persia and those of Europe; it connects the Finn and Lapp with their Asiatic forefathers; it marks the independent origin of the Basques and their priority to the oldest Aryan intruders; it links together widely diverse branches of the great Semitic family. Can language tell us of any such American affinities, or of traces of Old World congeners, in relation to either civilised Mayas and Peruvians, or to the forest and prairie races of the northern continent? With the millions of America’s coloured population, of African blood and yet speaking Aryan languages, the American comparative philologist can scarcely miss the significance of the warning that linguistic and ethnical classifications by no means necessarily imply the same thing. Nevertheless, without overlooking this distinction, the ethnical significance of the evidence which comparative philology supplies cannot be slighted in any question relative to prehistoric relations between the Old World and the New. What then can philology tell us? There is one answer, at the least, which the languages of America give, that fully accords with the legend, “white with age,” that told of an island-continent in the Atlantic Ocean with which the nations around the Mediterranean once held intercourse. None of them indicates any trace of immigration within the period of earliest authentic history. Those who attach significance to the references in the _Timæus_ to political relations common to Atlantis and parts of Libya and Europe; or who, on other grounds, look with favour on the idea of early intercourse between the Mediterranean and the western continent, have naturally turned to the Eskuara of the Basques. It is invariably recognised as the surviving representative of languages spoken by the Allophyliæ of Europe before the intrusion of Aryans. The forms of its grammar differ widely from those of any Semitic, or Indo-European tongue, placing it in the same class with Mongol, East African, and American languages. Here, therefore, is a tempting glimpse of possible affinities; and Professor Whitney, accordingly, remarks in his _Life and Growth of Languages_, that the Basque “forms a suitable stepping-stone from which to enter the peculiar linguistic domain of the New World, since there is no other