guistic researches in South America, comes to a totally different conclusion from Mr. Tylor. The Doctor, in a communication published in Vienna, claims as the result of his researches that America is the Old World, and Europe, Africa, and Asia the New. He declares that the languages spoken by the Indians in Peru and Bolivia exhibit astounding affinities with the Shemitic languages, and especially with Arabic, with which the Doctor is thoroughly acquainted. He claims that the Shemitic roots are universally Aryan, and that the stems of all the varieties of the early Aryan tongues are found in their purest condition in the languages of the Indians of Peru and Bolivia, especially in the Quichua and the Aimara; and he maintains that the high plains of Bolivia and Peru are the central point from which the human race dispersed, which accords with the view expressed by some American archaeologists that America is not only geologically but ethnologically the Old World.
Professor Mudge has gone into a calculation of the number of years to which the existence of man upon the globe may be traced, basing his calculation upon the rate at which the delta of the Mississippi is deposited. He reaches the conclusion that man has been on the earth not less than two hundred thousand years. Such computations, however, are, as Lyell has shown in respect to the deposits of the Nile, very uncertain data upon which to found any exact estimate of time.
The most important events in Arctic exploration have been the dispatching of the steamer Jeanette by James Gordon Bennett, and the accomplishing of the northwest passage around Asia by Professor Nordenskjöld.
The object of Professor Nordenskjöld's expedition was not only to accomplish what had been attempted so many times without success, but also the acquisition of important scientific information, it now being the opinion of meteorologists that the climate of Europe and America is materially affected by the ever-changing ice and other physical conditions of the Siberian seas; and that we shall never get a thorough understanding of the laws which regulate the movements of the winds, and the great currents of the sea, until we obtain a more thorough knowledge of the state of things in the polar basin.
The success of Professor Nordenskjöld in achieving this long sought passage was due to the fact that he is himself an eminent scientific man; that he had a large experience previously in polar exploration, and that before undertaking this expedition he carefully studied everything that had been done, from the first attempt, in the reign of Elizabeth, down to the last expedition. He left Gothenburg on July 4, 1878, and arrived at Yokohama, Japan, on the 18th of the same month, a year later. Two hundred and sixty-four days of this time, the vessels were imprisoned in the ice off Cape Serdze, about one hundred and twenty miles from the Pacific termination of Behring Strait. The results arrived at by Professor Nordenskjöld are that the
