be confined to an inquiry as to how far these influences obtain among our North American Indians, since we possess more reliable data concerning this than that of the negro race.
Quite recently I had the opportunity of making an investigation into the type of respiration as it exists in the Indian female, and I then unexpectedly found that a large proportion of the Indian girls which were examined had white blood coursing through their veins, and that this not only modified the color of their skin, but also had a marked influence on their mode of breathing. It is well known that, as far back as 1774, Boerhaave observed a different type of respiration in civilized man and woman—the former breathing principally with the diaphragm or abdomen, which is called the abdominal type; while the latter breathes principally with the upper portion of the chest, which is called the costal type. This investigation was carried on in the Lincoln Institution of Philadelphia—a school for Indian girls—and was undertaken with a view to ascertain whether the Indian female, who is not accustomed to the wearing of corsets and tight clothing around the abdomen, has the same type of respiration as that which obtains among our civilized females, and in all I examined the chest-movements of eighty-two Indian girls by means of a pneumograph devised by me somewhat after that of Paul Bert. In each case I took an abdominal and a costal tracing. Of the eighty-two girls which were examined, and whose ages ranged between ten and twenty years, there were only thirty-three full-blooded Indians; five were one fourth, thirty-five were one half, and two were three-fourths white. Seventy-five girls showed a decided abdominal type of breathing, three a costal type, and in three both were about even. Those who showed the costal type, or a divergence from the abdominal type of breathing, came from the more civilized tribes, like the Mohawks, Chippewas, etc., and were either one half or three fourths white, while in no single instance did a full-blooded Indian girl possess this type of breathing. This is significant in showing that, so far as the Indian is concerned, the abdominal type is the original type of respiration in both male and female, and that the costal type in the civilized female is acquired through the constricting influence of dress around the abdomen. That which is of still greater importance, however, is the fact that only those girls who were either one half or three fourths white, and who were hence under the greater domination of the inherited characteristics of civilized blood, possessed the costal or an approach to the costal type of respiration.
An examination of the pupils of the Lincoln Institution, therefore, not only shows that a rapid amalgamation is taking place between the white and the Indian races, but that the latter is
