A few students of American Anthropology have solved the question of the origin of the ancient population upon the hypothesis of its having developed from a lower order in the animal kingdom, itself indigenous to the Western Continent. One of the most distinguished representatives of this school, perhaps, is Frederick von Hellwald of Vienna, who states his views as follows: “I am unable to give in my adhesion to the theory which assumes that the original seat of the human races must be sought in higher Asia or somewhere else, whence mankind are supposed to have spread themselves gradually over the whole globe; an assumption which is contradicted in the most decisive manner by the peopling of the new world. It is impossible to enter here into all the hypotheses which have been framed for the explanation of a fact so perplexing to the Biblical students of the sixteenth century, and of course later times; it is enough to say that thus far not one of them have been found to correspond even approximately to the demands of science, and that theory is probably in every point of view the most tenable and exact which assumes that man, like the plant, a mundane being, made his appearance generally upon earth when our planet had reached that stage of its development which unites in itself the conditions of man’s existence. In conformity with this view, I regard the American as an Autochthon.”[282] This subject resolves itself into two questions: (1) Is the origin of the human race by the processes of development from a lower order of animal an ascertained fact? (2) If so, does the American continent furnish any species of ape or any known fauna from which man could have developed? It is taken for granted that the reader is fully familiar with Darwinism (the origin of species by means of natural selection, the joint result of the independent researches of Darwin and Wallace) and Lamarckism (the theory of man’s descent from the ape),[283] both of which have been so enthusiastically advocated by Spencer, Huxley, Hæckel and many others. Their works and the magnificent array of facts which their patient researches have accumulated command our admiration, even if full assent cannot be given to all their conclusions.