The particular branch to which I would refer is what is called “Ethnology,” or the study of the nations of the world. This is comparatively quite a modern science, for it is only quite lately that the world has been thrown open to the investigation of scientific men. The two means by which it has been thrown open have been the steam-engine, and Christian missions. The steam-engine has enabled investigators to travel in all directions, and Christian missions have led to the study of hundreds of languages that were previously unknown. The history of one of these languages is worth recording. When the late Mr. Darwin visited the islands of Tierra del Fuego, in the celebrated voyage of the _Beagle_, he considered the inhabitants to be below ordinary manhood, and to have no language. But a devoted missionary, settled amongst them, has not only found that they have a language, but he has learned it, reduced it to writing, and translated into it the Gospel of St. Luke. It has been printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society, and is now read amongst the people. Mr. Darwin, being a truly scientific man, was so deeply interested at the discovery of his own mistake, that for the last few years of his life he subscribed £5 a year to the South American Missionary Society. Thus the missionary movement has brought about a vast increase of scientific knowledge respecting the languages of the world, and scientific men have had before them a mass of fresh material to which their predecessors had no access whatever. The British and Foreign Bible Society has circulated the Scriptures in no less than 250 languages, by far the greater number of which had never before been reduced to writing. By this means there has been an immense impetus given to the researches of scientific men. The two points to which especial attention has been directed have been the structure of language, and the formation of the skull. On these two points men of science have most carefully collected information from all quarters of the globe—north, south, east, and west; and they have endeavoured to group, or classify, the various scattered nations of mankind.