acquainted with its natural history, it may be affirmed without hesitation, that no other portion of the world of equal extent can rival it in the riches and splendour of its flora. Several years ago more than 15,000 species of flowering plants had been described as belonging to it, besides a proportionate number of cryptogamia. When the northern continent was discovered, one vast and almost continuous forest covered the whole surface, from the St Lawrence and the great lakes to the G. of Mexico, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic, embracing an area of upwards of a million of square miles. Much of this ocean of vegetation has since been cleared away, though, to this day, hundreds of miles of unbroken forest exist in numerous localities; while boundless prairies, destitute of trees, but covered with tall grasses, occupy vast tracts in the north of the continent, and on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. The forest trees are extremely numerous in species, embracing many varieties of oak and pine, with the ash, beech, birch, cedar, chestnut, cypress, juniper, hickory, locust, maple, mulberry, poplar, and walnut. As the traveller passes northwards into the British territories, the variety of species is smaller, embracing mainly pines, larches, aspens, poplars, alders, hazels, and willows; while towards the shores of the Arctic Ocean the trees become fewer in number and more stunted in size, till at length the dwarf-willow, six inches in height, is the sole representative of the gigantic forests of the tropical and temperate regions. Among the more characteristic plants of North America are its azaleas, magnolias, fuchsias, dahlias, and rhododendrons; while the entire cactus tribe is peculiar to its tropical regions. Europe is indebted to the western continent for several of its cultivated plants, more especially maize, cacaobean or chocolate-tree, manioc or cassava, the potato, and the tobacco plant; while, on the other hand, America is indebted to European colonisation for wheat, barley, and the other kinds of corn, as also for rice, the bread-fruit tree, the sugar-cane, the coffee-shrub, flax, hemp, and the cotton-plant. America does not contain a single indigenous species of the heath tribe, nor has a pæonia ever been found in it, except a solitary one observed by Douglas on the Pacific side of the Rocky Mountains. This mighty chain forms an impenetrable barrier between two floras nearly as different in character as if they had been separated by an ocean. Melville Island, lat. 75°, is the most northern point at which vegetation has been observed; while the Red River Settlement, on the southern frontier of the Hudson Bay Territory, is the highest latitude at which the cereals have been cultivated; though doubtless barley could come to maturity as far N. as Fort Chippewyan, lat. 59°, where the heat of the four summer months is four degrees higher than at Edinburgh.

16. Zoology. The types of animal life indigenous to the western continent are in general inferior in size and strength to those of the eastern. The lion of the Old World is represented by the puma, and the tiger by the jaguar; though the gigantic condor of South America is more powerful and formidable than any bird found in the eastern hemisphere.

North America forms one of the six zoological kingdoms into which the land surface of the globe is divided. It embraces two (or, according to some, three) provinces, the first of which embraces North-western, British, and Danish America, and the second the United States. Usually Mexico and Central America are made to form a part of the South American kingdom; but we shall here, for the sake of uniformity, regard

those countries as forming the third or tropical province of the northern continent. The zoology of the first or Arctic province of North America closely resembles, and is, indeed, for the most part, identical with, that of the corresponding province in Europe and Asia. Here the species are comparatively very few in number, and consist generally of the lowest orders of the respective classes; but this is in a large measure compensated for by the extraordinary number of individuals belonging to the different species, and occasionally, as in the case of the whales, by the gigantic dimensions of the forms. The colours are also of uniformly sombre hues. Not a bird is to be seen of brilliant plumage, not a fish nor molluse with varied hues. The most conspicuous MAMMALS of this province are the white and polar bear, the moose and rein-deer, the musk-ox, beaver, white fox, racoon, marten, squirrel, sea-otter, minx, musk-rat, ermine, wolverine, lemming, hare, various seals, and numerous species of whale. Among BIRDS may be enumerated some sea-eagles, a few waders, with an immense number of other aquatic species, -as gulls, cormorants, divers, petrels, ducks, and geese. REPTILES are almost wholly wanting, being represented by a solitary tortoise. The ARTICULATA embrace a few insects of inferior species and numerous kinds of minute crustaceans. The majority of the MOLLUSCS belong to the order Tunicata, the remainder being Gasteropoda and a very few Cephalopoda. Among the RADIATA are a great many jelly-fishes, star-fishes, and seaurchins. The fauna of the Temperate province of this continent also resembles that of the central provinces of Europe and Asia; for, though the species are almost all different, the families, and even the genera, are the same. The number of terrestrial species regarded as identical is constantly diminishing as the progress of science advances. For the particulars, see under United States," "Mexico," &c. The accompanying tables show the distribution of the land Vertebrata in the three provinces of this kingdom :

The

17. Ethnography.-The population of the New World is presently estimated at 84,169,727, two-thirds of whom belong to the northern continent (including Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies), and one-third to the southern. It consists of three pure races-viz., the Indians or aborigines, the Negroes or Africans, the Caucasians or Whites (consisting of Europeans with their descendants), and a mixed race, springing from the union of those of pure blood. European population amounts to about a half of the whole; while the other three divisions are nearly equally represented, each consisting of about 9,000,000. The Indian population, including the Esquimaux of the northern regions, who are few in number, and probably of a different origin from the other aborigines, is about equally divided between the two continents, there being 4,900,000 of them in N. America, and 4,100,000 in the southern continent. In Mexico alone they number 5,000,000, in Central America 1,000,000, and in the United States about one-third of a million. South America, unlike the northern continent, exhibits a preponderance of the aboriginal and mixed races. The Negroes number 4,435,709 in the United States; 2,000,000 in the West Indies; while in Brazil they constitute a full half of the population. Except in the Spanish West Indian possessions and Brazil, the negroes are almost entirely in the enjoyment of liberty.

ANTIQUITIES.-How America was peopled, and what is the real affinity of its aboriginal tribes to the rest of mankind, are questions that are still involved in obscurity, notwithstanding the numerous and able investiga

tions that, during the last half-century, have been instituted in every department of the subject. After a careful examination of much that has been written on this very interesting theme, we incline to the opinion that by far the greater portion of the New World was peopled at different points, and from different parts of Eastern Asia; that these migrations, though all very ancient, took place at distinct and widely-separate periods; but that the ancestors of the present aborigines of the eastern part of North America entered that continent directly from Northern Europe, and swept before them the comparatively advanced civilisation which had been developed there before their arrival. The memorials of a population differing in many important respects from the tribes which roamed in America at the time of its discovery by Columbus-yet in other points strongly resembling them-are found in great numbers throughout the whole length and breadth of the continent. These memorials have been discovered in the extreme north-west of the continent, where, however, they are comparatively few and uninteresting, though apparently of great antiquity; around the western and southern shores of the great lakes, where they have been more carefully examined; along the Gulf of California, where in some places they cover the ground for many leagues; and especially in the broad valley of the Mississippi, with its tributaries the Ohio and Missouri, where they occur in almost incredible numbers and magnitude. Indeed, so far as the northern continent is concerned, the valley of the Ohio would appear to have been at one time-probably about a thousand years ago-the grand centre of power and population of this now extinct or dispersed people. The works of various kinds which they erected, the remains of which still exist (the animal mounds, the conical mounds of sepulture, the sacrificial mounds, the temple mounds, the sacred enclosures, the beacon mounds, and the systems of fortification), are evidences of immense resources for so rude an age; far greater, indeed, than are to be found in any other portion of the continent, except in what would seem to be another and much later centralisation of the same people in Mexico and Yucatan, where they passed the golden age of their history. (See p. 555.) These and other monuments of hoary antiquity in the so-called New World, lead us irresistibly to the inference, that the true aborigines of the basin of the Mississippi had made great progress in the useful and ornamental arts: for not only do we find arrowheads, beads, coarse vessels of pottery, stone axes, knives of flint; but the sculptured figures of various animals, executed with much skill; well-chiselled likenesses of the human head; copper bracelets; extensive remains of mining operations and of the manufacture of salt; and above all, tablets of curious hieroglyphics, apparently recording the great events in their history. Having entered America at its north-west angle, they resided for ages between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies, in every part of which are still seen the memorials of their ancient greatness. At length, driven southward by fresh hordes of immigrants, they ultimately settled in Mexico, where they attained the climax of their civilisation, and erected great cities and other public works which excited the astonishment of Cortez and his companions. How many centuries must have elapsed ere this primeval race, that had made such astonishing progress in so many of the arts, but of whose existence both history and tradition are alike silent-whose colossal public works have been buried for ages under gigantic forests, or deserted by the rivers and lakes in whose vicinity many of them must have stood-could have degenerated into the savage tribes of hunters and warriors that now roam over the forests and prairies of the North American continent!

But the attempt to trace any close connection, by means of these ancient monuments, between the Mexicans and the aborigines of South America, appears to have entirely failel. The Peruvian civilisation, instead of being an offshoot from the Mexican, or an improvement upon it, seems rather to have been spontaneously developed, having its origin and growth within the limits of the southern continent, and attaining its climax under the Incas. Tschudi and others are of opinion that Manco Capac in Peru, and Quetzacoatl in Mexico, were Buddhist missionaries who, about A.D. 1000, visited the American continent with the view of reforming and elevating the natives. If this supposition is well founded, it throws some light on the question, Whence came the earliest inhabitants of North and South America respectively? and corroborates the hypothesis, that the civilisation of the southern continent was not derived from that of the northern. On the whole, it would appear that while the aborigines of North America came originally from Mongolia, those of the southern continent came from China, Japan, the Malay Archipelago, and other countries of south-eastern Asia. The maritime habits of these nations render this supposition sufficiently probable, while their charts and maps give indications of voyages to the New World (which they designate by the name of Too-sang) as early as the seventh century of our era. With chains of islands, not far remote from each other, stretching across the Pacific Ocean from continent to continent-with winds and marine currents setting, often for weeks together, towards the American shoreswith wars to make them flee, and curiosity or cupidity to make them rove -and with casualties to launch them on voyages the direction or length of which they knew not-we need not marvel that the first inhabitants of the New World should have come originally from Eastern Asia. Similar events, though on a smaller scale, have frequently taken place in more recent times. For example, Iceland was discovered in A.D. 861 by Danish mariners, bound for the Faröe Isles, but thrown out of their course by tempests; Greenland was discovered by a Norwegian in 982; Cabral, the commander of a Portuguese fleet, on his way to the East Indies in the year 1501, departed so far from the African coast as to touch the shores of South America, and thus the discovery of Brazil was purely accidental; while in 1833, a Japanese junk was cast ashore on the American coast, at Cape Flattery, opposite Vancouver Island, three men being still alive out of an original crew of seventeen.

LANGUAGES.-The languages spoken by the aborigines of the New World are distinguished from all Oriental tongues by three striking peculiarities. 1. Notwithstanding their great number, they all strikingly resemble each other in grammatical structure-a strong proof of the common origin of the inhabitants. 2. They differ very widely from each other in their roots or vocables, many of them having scarcely a word in common with any other tongue. 3. But their most remarkable feature is their polysynthetic or holophrastic character-that is, they are all characterised by peculiarly complex forms, somewhat resembling our compound words, each term expressing a number of distinct ideas. For example, the word amatlacuilolitquicatlaxtlahuitli signifies "the reward given to a messenger who bears a hieroglyphical map conveying intelligence." In these linguistic features, which so widely distinguish these tongues from all others, we have the best species of evidence that the American continent was peopled at a very remote period of antiquity. In the 'Bible of Every Land' upwards of two hundred languages belonging to this family are enumerated, and these are divided into ten groups (exclusive of the dialects spoken in Mexico and Central America),