forms.  By such helps it may be learnedly proved, that our trees and plants of every kind are descended from those of Europe; because, like them, they have no locomotion, they draw nourishment from the earth, they clothe themselves with leaves in spring, of which they divest themselves in autumn for the sleep of winter, he.  Our animals too must be descended from those of Europe, because our wolves eat lambs, our deer are gregarious, our ants hoard, &c.  But when, for convenience, we distribute languages, according to common understanding, into classes originally different, as we choose to consider them, as the Hebrew, the Greek, the Celtic, the Gothic; and these again into genera, or families, as the Icelandic, German, Swedish, Danish, English; and these last into species, or dialects, as English, Scotch, Irish, we then ascribe other meanings to the terms, ‘same’ and ‘different.’  In some one of these senses, Barton, and Adair, and Foster, and Brerewood, and Moreton, may be right, every one according to his own definition of what constitutes ‘identity.’  Romans, indeed, takes a higher stand, and supposes a separate creation.  On the same unscriptural ground, he had but to mount one step higher, to suppose no creation at all, but that all things have existed without beginning in time, as they now exist, and may for ever exist, producing and reproducing in a circle, without end.  This would very summarily dispose of Mr. Moreton’s learning, and show that the question of Indian origin, like many others, pushed to a certain height, must receive the same answer, ‘Ignoro.’  You ask if the usage of hunting in circles has ever been known among any of our tribes of Indians?  It has been practised by them all; and is to this day, by those still remote from the settlements of the whites.  But their numbers not enabling them, like Genghis Khan’s seven hundred thousand, to form themselves into circles of one hundred miles diameter, they make their circle by firing the leaves fallen on the ground, which gradually forcing the animals to a centre, they there slaughter them with arrows, darts, and other missiles.  This is called fire-hunting, and has been practised in this State within my time, by the white inhabitants.  This is the most probable cause of the origin and extension of the vast prairies in the western country, where the grass having been of extraordinary luxuriance, has made a conflagration sufficient to kill even the old as well as the young timber.

I sincerely congratulate you on the successes of our little navy; which must be more gratifying to you than to most men, as having been the early and constant advocate of wooden walls.  If I have differed with you on this ground, it was not on the principle, but the time; supposing that we cannot build or maintain a navy, which will not immediately fall into the same gulph which has swallowed not only the minor navies, but even those of the great second-rate powers of the sea.  Whenever these can be resuscitated,