[139] “Some American Illustrations of the Evolution of new Varieties of Man,” _Journal of Anthropology_, May 1879. [140] The Huron vocabulary prepared by the Jesuit Father, Chaumonot, is, as I have recently learned, still in existence, and will, I hope, be speedily published under trustworthy editorial supervision. [141] _The League of the Iroquois_, p. 2. [142] _Archæologia Americana_, vol. ii. p. 79. [143] _Indian Migrations_, p. 22. [144] _Life and Growth of Language_, p. 261. [145] _Lectures on the Science of Language_, 2nd series, p. 162. [146] Cromwell’s _Letters and Speeches_, Introduction. [147] See p. 110. VII HYBRIDITY AND HEREDITY FOUR centuries have now completed their course since the discovery of America revealed to Europe an indigenous people, distinct in many respects from all the races of the Old World. There, as in the older historic areas, man is indeed seen in various stages: from the rudest condition of savage life, without any knowledge of metallurgy, and subsisting solely by the chase, to the comparatively civilised nations of Mexico, Central America, and Peru, familiar with some of the most important arts, skilled in agriculture, and with a system of writing embodying the essential germs of intellectual progress. The western hemisphere, which was the arena of such ethnical development, had lain, for unnumbered centuries, apart from Asia and Europe; and so its various nationalities and races were left to work out their own destinies, and to develop in their own way whatever inherent capacities for progress pertained to them. But this done, it was abruptly brought into intimate relations with Europe by the maritime discoveries which marked the closing years of the fifteenth century. From that date a constant transfer of races from the Old to the New World has been taking place, alike by voluntary and enforced migration; with results involving a series of undesigned yet exhaustive ethnological experiments carried out on the grandest scale. There alike has been tested to what extent the European and the African are affected by migration to new regions, and by admixture with diverse races. There can now be witnessed the results of a transference, for upwards of three centuries, of indigenous populations of the Old World to a continent where they have been subjected to many novel geographical, climatic, and social influences. There, too, has taken place, on a scale without any parallel elsewhere, an intimate and prolonged intermixture of some of the most highly cultured races of Europe with purely savage tribes, under circumstances which have tended to place them, for the time being, on an equality as hunters, trappers, or explorers of their vast forest and prairie wilds.