the invention from a source of instruction common to both.  But this seems not to be the case, with regard to those customs to which no general principle of human nature has given birth, and which have their establishment solely from the endless varieties of local whim and national fashion.  Of this latter kind, those customs obviously are, that belong both to the North and to the South Pacific Islands, from which we would infer, that they were originally one nation; and the men of Mangeea, and the men of the New Philippines, who pay their respects to a person whom they mean to honour, by rubbing his hand over their faces, bid fair to have learnt their mode of salutation in the same school.  But if this observation should not have removed the doubts of the sceptical refiner, probably he will hardly venture to persist in denying the identity of race, contended for in the present instance, when he shall observe, that, to the proof drawn from affinity of customs, we have it in our power to add that most unexceptionable one, drawn from affinity of language. Tamoloa, we now know, is the word used at Hamoa, one of the Friendly Islands, to signify a chief:  And whoever looks into the Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses, will see this is the very name by which the inhabitants of the Caroline Islands distinguish their principal men.  We have, in two preceding notes, inserted passages from Father Cantova’s account of them, where their Tamoles are spoken of; and he repeats the word at least a dozen times in the course of a few pages.  But I cannot avoid transcribing from him, the following very decisive testimony, which renders any other quotation superfluous:—­“L’autoritie du Gouvernement se partage entre plusieurs familles nobles, dont les Chefs s’appellent Tamoles.  Il y a outre cela, dans chaque province, un principale Tamole, auquel tous les autres sont soumis.”—­Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses, tom, xv p. 312.—­D.

Mr Faber, in a prospectus to his work on Pagan Idolatry, has availed himself of the important principle contained in this note, to infer a common origin from the peculiar resemblance of religious opinions and ceremonies among the various systems of paganism.  His reasoning is precisely the same as that which is used in tracing the descent of nations, and it is very distinctly stated by him in the following passage:—­“Things, in themselves not arbitrary, prove nothing whatsoever:  And tribes may be alike hunters, and fishers, and bowmen, though they have sprung from very different ancestors.  But things, in themselves altogether arbitrary, are acknowledged to form the basis of a reasonable argument:  And, if tribes are found to speak dialects of the same language, and to be attached throughout to the same whimsical customs, which are not deducible from the nature of things, but from pure caprice merely, such points of coincidence are commonly and rationally thought to furnish a moral demonstration