The above characteristics, however, are exhibited in widely different measure in the case of the numerous native tribes and nations that are found through the whole wide extent of the American continent, though all of them (with the exception of the Eskimos) are classed under the common term Indian. The native races of South America are generally further removed than those of North America from the higher type of the American family, and they become progressively more degraded toward its furthest extremity. Some of the Indian tribes who dwell in the Brazilian forest exhibit a degree of personal ugliness, and a degradation of condition in general, which contrasts strikingly with that of the higher classes of North American Indians, and the native savages of Tierra del Fuego are among the most misshapen and degraded of the human race. In these and some other cases the distortion of feature, and even that observable in the shape of the head, is produced by artificial means, applied in infancy. The Indian family of nations makes, perhaps, nearer approach to the Mongol than to either of the other two great divisions of mankind, and must be regarded as a sub-variety of that family, if three great varieties only be allowed. The Eskimos, who inhabit the extreme northern shores of the New World, are uniformly regarded as of Mongol origin. THE HUMAN RACE --LOUIS FIGUIER What is man? A profound thinker, Cardinal de Bonald, has said: “Man is an intelligence assisted by organs.” We would fain adopt this definition, which brings into relief the true attribute of man, intelligence, were it not defective in drawing no sufficient distinction between man and the brute. It is a fact that animals are intelligent and that their intelligence is assisted by organs. But their intelligence is infinitely inferior to that of man. It does not extend beyond the necessities of attack and defence, the power of seeking food, and a small number of affections or passions, whose very limited scope merely extends to material wants. With man, on the other hand, intelligence is of a high order, although its range is limited, and it is often arrested, powerless and mute, before the problems itself proposes. In bodily formation man is an animal, he lives in a material envelope, of which the structure is that of the Mammalia; but he far surpasses the animal in the extent of his intellectual faculties. The definition of man must therefore establish this relation which animals bear to ourselves, and indicate, if possible, the degree which separates them. For this reason we shall define man: _an organized, intelligent being, endowed with the faculty of abstraction_. By saying that man appeared for the first time upon the globe at the commencement of the Quaternary Period, we establish the fact, which is agreeable to the cosmogony of Moses, that man was formed after the other animals, and that by his advent he crowned the edifice of animal creation.