and the fire-screen adorned with gold-work. Mr. Morgan reaches the climax of his theory, and puts his hobby at its highest fence, when he actually declares that the Aztecs "had scarcely anything of value to Europeans." The conquerors set another price on massive chains and plates and idols of gold.
What, then, remains of truth in Mr. Morgan's vision? Merely this: that the communal land tenure, the Syssitia, the limited elective choice of the ruler, and other Aztec institutions, may be highly developed social phenomena evolved out of the ruder institutions of peoples like the Iroquois. Our own institutions—the throne, the Houses of Parliament, and so forth—have been evolved in the same way out of early Teutonic arrangements. But the Aztecs were no more village Indians than we are in the condition of the German warriors of Tacitus. Their "village," Mr. Morgan admits, was peculiar in so far as it possessed "streets and squares." Mr. Morgan's opinion that the Aztecs were of the same race as the Red Men is a dogma which certainly cannot be accepted offhand. It is impossible to reverse history because Mr. Morgan, as a good Iroquois, saw Iroquois all over America.
APPENDIX D.
THE HARE IN EGYPT.
Le 6 avril 1886, M. Le Page Renouf a lu à la Soc. d'Archéol. biblique, un mémoire sur le mythe d'Osiris Unnefer. (Academy du 1er mai 1886, p. 314). M. Le Page Renouf commence par citer la théorie du Dr. Brinton sur le lièvre algonquin comme personnifiant la lumière ou l'aurore; il demande ensuite: Est-ce un cas de tote misme! Or, le Dr.
