Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 32.djvu/365

Rh bears evidence of this fact, as clearly as the speech of Hispaniola. The broken and distorted vocables, the imperfect and irregular grammar, with many non-Aryan words, show plainly enough that an allophylian people have here adopted the tongue of Aryan intruders, with whom they have amalgamated. This aboriginal people, according to all the evidence we possess, was of Iberian blood; and what the Iberians were we know very well, from their history in Northern Spain and Southern France. Of all the European communities they have displayed the spirit of independence in the strongest degree. Their attachment to their "fueros," or communal rights, has been a steady and unquenchable flame. Under the most absolute of the Spanish sovereigns, their right of self-government was usually respected. Any infringement of it awoke indignation, which, if it smoldered for a time, was sure in the end to break out in a fury of rebellion. Such were the people whose national traits form the groundwork of the Celtic character, more especially in Ireland, where the aboriginal tribes were the strongest. A wise statesmanship, dealing with such a people, would, above all things, have sought to gratify their passion for local self-government and for personal independence. How utterly this sentiment has been disregarded, and with what deplorable consequences, the world knows too well. It would be easy to cite many other examples of the importance of ethnological teachings, shown alike when they are received and when they are rejected. But the ethnology which thus undertakes to teach must be the genuine science, which is based on the only sure foundation—that of language. Anything else which may style itself ethnology is a mere collection of empirical facts, leading to no assured conclusions—and, however entertaining and instructive in some rerespectsrespects [sic], is not really entitled to the name of a science. The true ethnology, on the other hand, is a genuine science of the highest value. Every educated man should be familiar with its principles and their application. It is indispensable alike to the historian who would trace the past of a nation, and to the politician who in any capacity aspires to direct its future.

official report of the operation of the Cruelty to Animals Act gives the number of experiments made upon living animals last year in Great Britain as 1,035. The use of anæsthetics was dispensed with in 458 cases not painful enough to require it; 213 cases were subject to the condition that the animal should be killed before recovering consciousness; and forty operations were painful in their character, while the amount of pain actually inflicted was nevertheless small. Fifty-four of the sixty-four persons holding licenses performed operations. The "Lancet" sees in this return evidence that on the whole the demands of science were reconciled with the infliction of a very small total of pain and inconvenience upon its victims; and it remarks that, when our business and sports come to be conducted with equal consideration for the brute interests involved, we shall be able to congratulate ourselves on having deserved well indeed of the brute creation.