life, even if the impressions made by most elements are inappreciable. Those surroundings noted, however, with others described by E. G. Squier, stand in a close and obvious relation to whatever transpired among communities within their circuits. The hydrographic basins and multitudinous watered vales he speaks of afforded opportunities for settlement whether they were made available or neglected. So, likewise, "coast alluvious, generally densely wooded;" elevated quebradas opening out into broad, fertile savannas; high temperate plateaus clothed with open forests of pine and oak; great plains where plants belonging to different zones grew together; the labyrinth of ravines lying among hills covered with tree or scrub jungle. Amid scenes thus diversified, communities ranging through various progressional phases might fish, hunt, cultivate; develop or stand still; evade enemies and go forth to conquer; according as circumstances, combined with inherent ability, determined. At all events, nature placed no insuperable obstacles in the way. But opportunity neither constrains nor so much as invites men to amendment; and here, partially anticipating what must be presented with greater detail subsequently, it may be remarked that fortunate surroundings gave no initial impulse to Honduran groups which is recognizable. Savages once inhabiting better districts, and then driven into less auspicious areas, of course retained the original social inferiority hereditary unfitness implicated; while comparatively cultured peoples brought all their more valuable mental possessions with them and are not known to have gained anything thereafter-changes taking place ulteriorly being nonessential, or in some instances degenerative. Probably the most persistent, widely diffused, and potent cause of failure in this hemisphere has been an insufficient food supply. Preventive or deteriorative results accompanying innutrition have received considerable attention throughout these chapters upon native races because the subject is vitally and fundamentally important, as also because anthropologists neglect it to a degree that seems incomprehensible while dealing with stasis, disaggregation, dispersal, and extinction among American aborigines.

No imperfectly organized society can be properly fed; but apart from deprivations attaching to dietetic deficiencies caused by ignorance, carelessness, and poverty, Honduran fared better than most indigenes, whether leading nomadic or sedentary lives. This country did not, indeed, harbor feral species that would yield constant and sufficient meat supplies, and its domesticated animals were derived from foreign sources; yet the absence of gregarious quadrupeds was little felt by most inhabitants, who possessed resources which measurably prevented such abnormal results as must necessarily have ensued if flesh famine here had existed to an extent that prevailed within many other zoological provinces. The native fauna is rich in species avail

a States of Central America. N. Y. 1858.

able for economic purposes, and neither artificial means permitted their rapid destruction, nor was there so great a plethora of consumers as might have occasioned excessive diminution. Considering the numbers requiring food and the means for feeding them, pre-Columbian Indians here occupied an exceptionally fortunate position among New World aborigines.

Edible marine or fluviatile creatures of many kinds abounded on coasts and in innumerable streams permeating this "profusely watered country." Great flights of migratory birds resorted to its breeding grounds. Good feathered game in profusion made it a home. Large amphibians, whose capture counted for much as alimentary contributions, were plentiful. Forest and stream, or widely expanded plains with contiguous highlands, afforded habitats to numerous animals that supplied nutritious food. Squirrels, hares, raccoons, and opossums lived everywhere within portions of the abovementioned areas. Monkeys, which indigenous tribes eat without hesitation, as also the iguana, waree, armadillo, bear, peccary, and deer," provided meats that, if not of the first class, were competent to prevent any serious physiological derangement.

Like all Pueblo Indians in America, those centers where considerable populations concentrated became markets in which less numerous and socially advanced communities occupying neighboring sites disposed of game that had been more or less completely extirpated around large towns and cultivated tracts. Methods for its preservation, however, did not enable these peoples to keep flesh very successfully, and the absence of domesticated animals, with an inability for accumulating such meat supplies as could be obtained, no doubt produced some disproportionality between alimentary substances habitually used, which was detrimental. Since anthropobiology is a fact, its laws are only susceptible of limited modifications through slow adjustments, and men can not become vegetable feeders without detriment. A de Candolle (History of Cultivated Plants) undoubtedly announced a general truth when he said that mankind scarcely ever availed themselves of all those dietary resources their country's soils enabled them to procure,

a Since Spanish colonization, horses, hogs, and cattle have reverted to feral states on a large scale; but considering how much exploration by naturalists has taken place here, many mistakes about the Honduran fauna still persist. Cariacus ranges into Central America, and some not very well known varieties of Cervus mexicanus inhabit isthmian provinces. Cariacus virginianus, however, never gets so far south, and its alleged presence is an error. Similarly, the antelopes and gazelles reported are wholly imaginary. Antilocapra has but one species on this continent--the cabree or pronghorn—and that does not extend beyond Mexico. There is no red deer in the New World except Cervus canadensis, whose range lies far north of these latitudes, and Ovis montana, Rocky Mountain goat, and fallow deer never existed here. E. A. Alston (Biologia Centrali-Americana), F. W. True (A Provisional List of the Mammals of North and Central America), and R. Ramsay Wright, together with other authorities, make those assertions about distribution referred to untenable.

and our first acquaintance with these tribes through early Spanish chroniclers suggests that this was the case here. The information contributed by missionary priests or military adventurers, is always scanty and often incorrect as respects important matters connected with modes of life which at a time when their observations were made had undergone no change. Yet despite this it may be fairly claimed that those societies lived less well than the means within reach rendered possible. Without now going into explanations of causes for an unnecessarily poor regimen, it suffices to state the unusually desirable position Honduraeans occupied so far as food growths were concerned. Agricultural peoples gathered two harvests each year from fields planted with America's best natural staples-manihot, cacao, beans, maize, and potatoes. It depended solely upon themselves how much provision could be garnered, and besides those edibles specified they partially cultivated other productions (banana, plantain, etc.), around which a civilization might have developed, as it did about the date palm in Northern Africa." Furthermore, this country gave its inhabitants esculent roots, tubers, seeds, and fruits perhaps too lavishly for their interests. If they had possessed less, possibly these indigenes would have done more. Land tenure, social organization, ritualism, and religious cults are chiefly displayed here in connection with Indian corn,' but its influence upon human beings who could gain support from different sources must needs have lost some of that intense character and varied suggestiveness attaching to single objects by whose means existence becomes possible.

To speak more exactly concerning regions and their populations, the area included between Atlantic coasts, Copan and Grita ranges, with discontinuous or broken spurs branching from a central system eastwardly, contains less tilled land and larger numbers of savages than are found elsewhere. This district was not wholly unreclaimed, however, nor were all its inmates equally primitive. On two sides of Indian tribes whose origin is unknown lay invading families comparatively recently settled, before which dispossessed aborigines had fled into less promising territories than those they previously inhabited. Both on the west and north, also, Huaxtecan or Nahuatlan immigrants encroached upon these fugitives, probably to some degree modifying them culturally, as likewise through creolization. There was little in those seaboard provinces that invited aggression, so that neither native conquerors, nor Hernando Chavas, Cortez himself, or his partisans and Spanish opponents disturbed, communities from whom nothing was to be gained. Afterwards, deported St. Vincent Caribs, escaping negro slaves, together with kidnapping European buccaneers, carried ruin along "the pirate coast" or its offlying islands, a G. A. Barton. Semitic Origins, Social and Religious. New York, 1902. Edward John Payne. History of the New World Called America. Oxford,

1899.