tongue were sufficient to establish entire new sets of words. These separations were apt to occur frequently when methods of subsistence were crude and difficult, migrations frequent, and population sparse. As races developed memory grew to better proportions, and after the introduction among the Amerinds of mnemonic records and other memory devices their languages became more crystallised, till within the later centuries changes have come about slowly. That many more languages once existed on the American continents than we have any trace of is, therefore, probable. By intercourse, by intermingling, by the crossing and absorbing of stocks was finally produced what we find to-day, or did find yesterday, a reduced number of different stocks, but still so many that the archæologist views the field with amazement, and the layman looks upon it with incredulity. [Illustration: TERRA COTTA STOOL, CHIRIQUI] [Illustration: ALTAR Q, COPAN, HONDURAS From photograph by M. H. Saville, Museum of Natural History ] And these Amerind languages are as remarkable for their separation in a body from the Old World languages as they are in their separation from each other. This in itself seems to bestow upon the Amerind people a vast antiquity in their isolation from other peoples, and adding to it the testimony of their art works, their implements, and their pictographs and hieroglyphs, there seems to be no escape from granting them to be a division of mankind by themselves. Not only does the differentiation of the stock languages indicate antiquity, but that of the dialects adds strong testimony. Brinton cites Dr. Stohl’s opinion that “the difference which is presented between the Cakchiquel and the Maya dialects could not have arisen in less than 2000 years.”[20]