It is to be regretted that many stores of early information have been neglected. The list of classical (Greek and Latin, writers which have perished since the thirteenth century is sufficiently extensive. That of indigenous chronicles, annals, and legends, especially in the north of Europe, since the same period, is even more considerable. Some few may yet remain unknown; and though the general history of events may not be greatly impaired, we still have to deplore the loss of much that concerns the nationality, the manners, opinions, and traditions of our remoter ancestors, which, after all, are quite as valuable, nay, even more so, than the commemoration of crime and barbarity which has been preserved. Of the class we mean, there are still a few remaining, which, although they be distorted by ill-directed zeal, by imposture, and by ignorance, furnish curious hints in their way. Such, for example, is the song of the Lombards, also known as that of the Ost and West Friesen or Frisons, found by Mr. Bonstetten, at Copenhagen. In the Land-urbar, or Costumier of the Bernese Swiss, there is likewise a legendary record of the fair-haired tribes of Ober-Hasli, Schwytz, Gessenay, and Bellegarde, printed as early as 1507, by Etterlin, in the chronicles of Lucerne. The Song of Hasli, of about one hundred and eighty stanzas, relates the migration of these clans, their battles, and their arrival near the Brochenberg, where they built Schwytz; and, it appears, they fought in the cause of Arcadius and Honorius, about the year 387.

Here we terminate this inquiry into the origin and filiation of the races of Man, a subject, zoologically viewed, we thought more novel, than to repeat what has already been said by other writers, and especially by Dr. Prichard, with his accustomed industry and learning.

As for us, we are compelled, for want of space, to abstain from entering into many important particulars, which would be

more necessary for the elucidation of the general theory now advanced, if readers were not now very commonly well informed on most of the points brought here under consideration. Want of space compelled us, from the beginning, to mass our superabundant materials into groups, which on many occasions may appear too much generalized, and on others marked with repetitions, which sometimes we thought requisite to refresh the memory of the reader. The basis of the questions chiefly investigated was laid in a series of lectures on the same subject, read to the Plymouth Institution, between the years 1832 and 1837. The materials were exclusively sought for in scientific researches and profane history; and the successive discoveries and conclusions of other writers since that period, have, in general, strongly supported the main points of our own convictions, to which we attach no further personal importance than what continued research will disprove, or in due time assent to, when the basis of sev eral conclusions offered in these pages will have acquired more ample notoriety and consequent solidity.