and the equalizing temperature of the Atlantic, tempering his northern latitudes, and exposing him to less violent extremes of heat or cold; and all experience disproves this theory of degeneracy and decrepitude. He is proverbial for his energy, acuteness, and physical and intellectual vigour. The homes of New England approximate to those of the mother country in their genial, domestic attractions; and yet the enterprising Yankee is as indefatigable a wanderer as the sturdy Scot. So thoroughly is he the type of American enterprise, that even among the Indians on the North Pacific coast, where a strange lingua Franca has been developed as the means of intercourse between natives and whites, the designation for an American is Boston, derived from the capital of the State of Massachusetts. And, while he is thus known on the remote Pacific shores, the New England States reveal everywhere the evidence of indomitable perseverance, successful industry, and the proofs of old settlements progressing under the same energy and patience which have united to make old England what she is. Nevertheless, it is most true, that it is easy for any one familiar with the New England physiognomy to point out the Yankee in the midst of any assemblage of Englishmen. He furnishes the indisputable example of a new variety of man produced within a remarkably brief period of time, by the same causes which have been at work since man was called into being, and scattered abroad to people the whole earth. If intermixture of blood has contributed any share in the development of such a physical change, that has been the invariable consequent of all colonization of previously peopled regions. If it is further ascribed to changes of climate, diet, habits, occupation, and intellectual training, all these have been in operation wherever man has wandered forth to seek

a new and distant home in the wilderness. And if two centuries in New England have wrought such a change on the Englishman of the seventeenth century, what may not twenty centuries effect? or, what may be the ultimate climatic influences of Canada, the Assinaboine Territory, or Fraser's River; of Utah, California, or the States on the Gulf? It is only some twelve centuries since the Angle and Saxon migrated as foreign intruders to England, where the remnant of the elder native race still speak, in a language unintelligible to him, of the Saesonach as strangers. The transmigration, though from a nearer coast than that of his New England descendant, was a maritime one, and the climatic change involved in the transfer to the peculiar insular climate of England was not inconsiderable. The Englishman of the present day is distinguishable from all his continental Germanic congeners, and is himself a type of comparatively recent origin. Moreover, the Englishman of the genuine Angle and Saxon districts, to the south of the Humber, is a markedly distinct type from the northern race, from the Humber to the Moray Firth ; while again, in the Orkney Islands, the descendants of its Norse colonists of the ninth and tenth centuries, not only retain distinctive physical characteristics, but their inherited maritime instincts and enterprise are so universally recognised, that the English as well as Scottish Greenland fleets annually strive to complete their crews at Kirkwall, before proceeding to the whale fishery in the northern seas. The Orkney mariner and fisherman is surrounded in his island home by seas peculiarly exposed, and in navigating the Pentland Firth, has to cross an arm of the sea swept by the currents and subject to the tempests of the Atlantic and German oceans. But that this alone would not make a seaman of him, is proved by the proverbial disinclination to all maritime daring

of the hardy Celtic population of the Hebrides and the west of Ireland.

It is in such minute ethnology that the truths of the science must be sought. The simplicity of such systems as that of Blumenbach, with his five human species; of Pickering, with his eleven races of men; or of Borey de St. Vincent, with his fifteen species; or again of Virey, who can overcome all difficulties if allowed two distinct human species; and of Morton, who, for the whole American continent, from the Arctic circle to Cape Horn, admits of only one type of man: is exceedingly plausible and seductive. When we place alongside of each oth Blumenbach's typical Caucasian, Mongolian, Malay, Ethiopian, and American, the physical differences are striking and indisputable; but when we come to examine more minutely, the Caucasian region of Europe has its fair and its dark-skinned races; the little island of Britain has its three, four, or five distinct types; and it seems probable at last, that if we must divide mankind into distinct species, we may find that not five, but five hundred subdivisions, will fail to meet all the demands of extended observation. Well-defined types have perished, and new ones have appeared within the historic period; and if all the intermediate links between one and another of the great subdivisions of the genus homo cannot now be found, the causes for their disappearance are sufficiently manifest. Nevertheless, the science has still many difficult questions to solve. The essential physical differences between the dark, woolly-haired negro and the blue-eyed, fair-haired Anglo-Saxon, are not greater than those others which distinguish the IndoEuropean and monosyllabic languages. On the most ancient historic sites along the shores of the same Indian Ocean, have been recovered the highly-inflected Sanscrit, with its wonderful richness of grammatical forms, its

eight cases, its six moods, and its numerous suffixes; and the monosyllabic Chinese, entirely devoid of inflexions, or even what seem to us grammatical forms. But in the history of the Romance languages, we see how curiously, first by a process of degradation, and then of reconstruction, a whole group of new languages has sprung from the dead parent stock, presenting diversities so great as those which distinguish the ancient Latin from the modern French. Moreover, we witness, on the native area of the monosyllabic Chinese, our own vernacular tongue actually passing through the first transforming stages, in the "Pigeon English" of Hong-Kong and Canton. Its name pigeon, which may serve as an apt illustration of its vocabulary, is the Chinaman's pronunciation of the word business. Mr. James H. Morris, a recent Canadian visitor to China, remarks: "This language has become a regular dialect, and, when first heard, it would appear as though the speaker was parading indiscriminately a few English words before his hearer, whose duty it was to make a meaning out of them. A foreign resident will introduce a friend to a Chinese merchant, as follows: Mi chinchin you, this one velly good flin belong mi; mi wantchie you do plopel pigeon along he all same fashion along mi; spose no do plopel pigeon, mi flin cum down side mi housie, talke mi so fashion mi kick up bobbery along you. To which the Chinaman will reply-Mi savey no casion makery flaid; can secure do plopel pigeon long you flin all same fashion long you." This language is as simple as it seems absurd; but the words must be arranged as the Chinaman has been accustomed to hear them, or he will not understand what is said. It is spoken in all the ports of China open to foreign trade, and there is no disposition to adopt a

purer one.

The languages of Europe are undergoing the very same process of degradation and reconversion into new dialects and languages, on the American continent. The NegroFrench is stripped of all its grammatical richness, and simplified into a dialect scarcely intelligible to a Parisian; and Negro-English, though checked in its progress of degradation by constant contact with the vernacular tongue, has dropped many of its inflexions, altered the irregular tenses in defiance of euphonic laws, and modified the vocabulary in a manner that only requires complete isolation to beget a distinct dialect, and ultimately a new language. Mr. William H. Hodgson, of Savannah, Georgia, showed me a remarkable illustration of this. It consisted of portions of the Scriptures written by a native African slave, in Negro patois and in Arabic characters. The writing was executed with great neatness, but a more puzzling riddle could scarcely be devised to tax the ingenuity of the Shemitic scholar. In Lower Canada, also, French is already written and spoken with many English idioms, and with modified terms of English or Canadian origin. But it is on the North Pacific coast that the most remarkable example of the development of an entirely new language out of the commingling English and native vocabularies, is now in progress. Mr. Paul Kane, during his travels in the North-west, resided for some time at Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia river, and acquired the singular patois which is there growing into a new language. The principal tribe in the vicinity is the Chinook, a branch of the Flathead Indians, who speak a language which so entirely baffles all attempts at its mastery, that it is believed none have ever attained more than the most superficial knowledge of its common utterances. but those who have been reared among them. Pickering remarks, on his approach to the straits of De Fuca,