the original oral speech of man.
It is only next in difficulty to the old persistent determination
to decide upon the origin of the whole Indian "race," in which most
peoples of antiquity in the eastern hemisphere, including the
lost tribes of Israel, the Gipsies, and the Welsh, have figured
conspicuously as putative parents.

_IS THE INDIAN SYSTEM SPECIAL AND PECULIAR?_

This inquiry is closely connected with the last. If the system of
signs was invented here in the correct sense of that term, and by a
known and existing tribe, it is probable that it would not be
found prevailing in any important degree where the influence of the
inventors could not readily have penetrated. An affirmative answer
to the question also presupposes the same answer to another question,
viz, whether there is any one uniform system among the North American
Indians which can therefore be compared with any other system. This
last inquiry will be considered in its order. In comparing the system
as a whole with others, the latter are naturally divided into signs of
speaking men foreign to America and those of deaf-mutes.

COMPARISONS WITH FOREIGN SIGNS.

The generalization of TYLOR that "gesture language is substantially
the same among savage tribes all over the world," interpreted by his
remarks in another connection, is understood as referring to their
common use of signs, and of signs formed on the same principles, but
not of precisely the same signs to express the same ideas. In this
sense of the generalization the result of the writer's study not only
sustains it, but shows a surprising number of signs for the same idea
which are substantially identical, not only among savage tribes, but
among all peoples that use gesture signs with any freedom. Men, in
groping for a mode of communication with each other, and using the
same general methods, have been under many varying conditions and
circumstances which have determined differently many conceptions and
their semiotic execution, but there have also been many of both which
were similar. Our Indians have no special superstition concerning the
evil-eye like the Italians, nor have they been long familiar with the
jackass so as to make him emblematical of stupidity; therefore signs
for these concepts are not cisatlantic, but even in this paper many
are shown which are substantially in common between our Indians
and Italians. The large collection already obtained, but not now
published,