In respect of the person who should be sent on this honourable mission, the Society were for a long time much perplexed, and began to fear the "foundering of their hobby from want of a jockey of required weight." It was necessary that he should be deeply imbued with classic lore, and profoundly skilled in languages, because he was to "detect lingual affinities," and further, might have to read manuscripts, and decipher inscriptions, of the ancient people. He was required to be deeply conversant with military science, in all its details, for he was to report of the nature of Indian tactics, fortifications, and defensive structures; and it was essential that he should be a theologian, for he was not only to sow the Word as he went, but to gather, if possible, from the religious opinions, rites, and observances, of the nations scattered over North America, proofs of a similitude to other people, or to accumulate data for the opposite belief. It was very difficult to discover a man so eminently gifted and taught, and the Society found themselves heavily burthened with the search. Nevertheless one was at length found, imbued to a reasonable degree with the requisite qualities in the person of M. Philippe Verdier, of the city of Nanci. They applied to him to undertake the proposed mission, and he consented, protesting, according to custom, his utter unworthiness, and his belief that France had many sons more competent to the task than himself. M. Verdier had studied in his youth, with the view of becoming a priest, and was profoundly skilled in the learning proper for that vocation. Afterwards, when he had abandoned all thoughts of entering the priesthood, he served in Holland under Conde, and there, and in many other countries, in succeeding wars, acquired the character of a valiant soldier and expert tactician. Excellence in poetry and metaphysics came to him naturally, and a thorough acquaintance with languages, both dead and living, by laborious study and prolonged travel. He had resided some time in the Australasian islands and those of the Pacific Ocean, and had travelled over the Peninsula of Malacca and the Island of Madagascar. He had thence brought numerous things which have since been of great service to philosophers, in explaining difficulties and solving problems connected with the antiquities and history of the western aborigines. His museum of curiosities contained a feathery mantle such as were found enwrapping the American mummies, a pair of mocassins made of the rind of plants, curious carvings which were pronounced by the French _savans_ to resemble much the pieces of sculpture brought by M. Jaques de Numskull from the Ohio, and a human cranium or two, to which were added a Madagascar humming-bird, and a Malacca pepper plant. From the nature of these acquisitions, he was supposed to be well qualified to decide upon the merits of that part of the theory of the indigenous inhabitants