So, when we speak of the “death” of a tribe, a nation, or a civilization, the term may be used for either one of two totally different processes, the analogy with what occurs in biological history being complete.  Certain tribes of savages—­the Tasmanians, for instance, and various little clans of American Indians—­have within the last century or two completely died out; all of the individuals have perished, leaving no descendants, and the blood has disappeared.  Certain other tribes of Indians have as tribes disappeared or are now disappearing; but their blood remains, being absorbed into the veins of the white intruders, or of the black men introduced by those white intruders; so that in reality they are merely being transformed into something absolutely different from what they were.  In the United States, in the new State of Oklahoma, the Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Delawares, and other tribes, are in process of absorption into the mass of the white population; when the State was admitted a couple of years ago, one of the two Senators, and three of the five Representatives in Congress, were partly of Indian blood.  In but a few years these Indian tribes will have disappeared as completely as those that have actually died out; but the disappearance will be by absorption and transformation into the mass of the American population.

A like wide diversity in fact may be covered in the statement that a civilization has “died out.”  The nationality and culture of the wonderful city-builders of the lower Mesopotamian Plain have completely disappeared, and, though doubtless certain influences dating therefrom are still at work, they are in such changed and hidden form as to be unrecognizable.  But the disappearance of the Roman Empire was of no such character.  There was complete change, far-reaching transformation, and at one period a violent dislocation; but it would not be correct to speak either of the blood or the culture of Old Rome as extinct.  We are not yet in a position to dogmatize as to the permanence or evanescence of the various strains of blood that go to make up every civilized nationality; but it is reasonably certain that the blood of the old Roman still flows through the veins of the modern Italian; and though there has been much intermixture, from many different foreign sources—­from foreign conquerors and from foreign slaves—­yet it is probable that the Italian type of to-day finds its dominant ancestral type in the ancient Latin.  As for the culture, the civilization of Rome, this is even more true.  It has suffered a complete transformation, partly by natural growth, partly by absorption of totally alien elements, such as a Semitic religion, and certain Teutonic governmental and social customs; but the process was not one of extinction, but one of growth and transformation, both from within and by the accretion of outside elements.  In France and Spain the inheritance of Latin blood is small; but the Roman culture which was forced on those