Mr.Gallatin's examination of the subject was general, however, and did not take a practical scientific turn until the year 1823, when, at the request of Baron Alexander von Humboldt, he set forth the results of his studies in the form of a Synopsis of the Indian tribes.

This essay, communicated by Humboldt to the Italian geographer Balbi, then engaged upon his "Atlas Ethnographique du Globe,"-- a classification by languages of ancient and modern peoples,--was quoted by him in his volume introductory to that remarkable work published in 1826, in a manner to attract the attention of the scientific world.

Vater, in his "Mithridates," first attempted a classification of the languages of the globe, but the work of Mr.
Gallatin, though confined in subject, was original in its conception and treatment.

In the winter of 1825-26 a large gathering of southern Indians at Washington enabled him to obtain good vocabularies of several of the tribes.

Uniting these to those already acquired, he published a table of all the existing tribes, and at the same time, at his instance, the War Department circulated through its posts a vocabulary containing six hundred words of verbal forms and of selected sentences, and a series of grammatical queries, to which answers were invited.