In this paper it is not designed to pronounce upon theories, and certainly none will be advocated in a spirit of dogmatism.  The writer recognizes that the subject in its novelty specially requires an objective and not a subjective consideration.  His duty is to collect the facts as they are, and this as soon as possible, since every year will add to the confusion and difficulty.  After the facts are established the theories will take care of themselves, and their final enunciation will be in the hands of men more competent than the writer will ever pretend to be, although his knowledge, after careful study of all data attainable, may be considerably increased.  The mere collection of facts, however, cannot be prosecuted to advantage without predetermined rules of judgment, nor can they be classified at all without the adoption of some principle which involves a tentative theory.  More than a generation ago Baader noticed that scientific observers only accumulated great masses of separate facts without establishing more connection between them than an arbitrary and imperfect classification; and before him Goethe complained of the indisposition of students of nature to look upon the universe as a whole.  But since the great theory of evolution has been brought to general notice no one will be satisfied at knowing a fact without also trying to establish its relation to other facts.  Therefore a working hypothesis, which shall not be held to with tenacity, is not only allowable but necessary.  It is also important to examine with proper respect the theories advanced by others.  Some of these, suggested in the few publications on the subject and also by correspondents, will be mentioned.

NOT CORRELATED WITH MEAGERNESS OF LANGUAGE.

The story has been told by travelers in many parts of the world that various languages cannot be clearly understood in the dark by their possessors, using their mother tongue between themselves.  The evidence for this anywhere is suspicious; and when it is asserted, as it often has been, in reference to some of the tribes of North American Indians, it is absolutely false, and must be attributed to the error of travelers who, ignorant of the dialect, never see the natives except when trying to make themselves intelligible to their visitors by a practice which they have found by experience to have been successful with strangers to their tongue, or perhaps when they are guarding against being overheard by others.  Captain Burton, in his City of the Saints, specially states that the Arapahos possess a very scanty vocabulary, pronounced in a quasi-unintelligible way, and can hardly converse with one another in the dark.  The truth is that their vocabulary is by no means scanty, and they do converse with each other with perfect freedom without any gestures when they so please.  The difficulty in speaking or understanding their language is in the large number of guttural and interrupted sounds which are not helped by external motions of