e colonists, having no longer any communication with the
mother country, soon dwindled away and perished, in accordance with a
well-known law of Nature. "Extinction is the doom of every immigrant
population in an uncongenial climate (habitat) when migration ceases to
keep up and renew the original stock." The same fate is impending over
us. "In our own country various causes have been assigned for the
recognized delicacy, which is steadily advancing in what may be called
the pure American. The growing smallness of the hands and feet, the
shortening of the jawbones, the diminution in the number of the teeth
and their rapid decay, are matters of daily comment." In like manner,
the Caucasian race is melting away in the colonies of Great Britain,
in South Africa, Australia, and the West Indies. "In these uniform
consequences the most obtuse cannot fail to recognise the operation of
a universal law, whose primary effects are to diminish migration, and
whose ultimate results are the extinction of the exotic population." We
suppose none of our readers are obtuse enough not to be aware of the
gradual shortening of their jawbones, a phenomenon especially noticeable
in members of Congress and popular lecturers. As for the diminution in
the number of our teeth, and their rapid decay, we need, alas! no Wilson
to remind us of these melancholy facts.

What we may call the physical evidence in favor of the Aztec
civilization having been thus disposed of by Mr. Wilson, we come now to
his treatment of the written and traditional testimony, the accounts
that have been handed down to us of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and
of the condition of the country at the time when that conquest was made.
Mr. Wilson opens his "Chapter Preliminary" with the statement, that, "in
this work, the standard Spanish authorities have been followed as long
as they followed the truth." This declaration excited, we confess,
painful misgivings in our mind; for, if Mr. Wilson was already in
possession of the truth, independently of historical research,--whether
by communications from the spirits of the _Conquistadores_, or by any
other of the easy and popular methods of solving obscure problems,--what
need was there of his consulting the standard authorities at all? But we
were somewhat cheered, when, a little farther on, we found him stating,
that the writer who enters into these discussions must "con musty folios
innumerable"; that "it will not do to denounce