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inhabitants, or among the long-buried débris of remote ages.

In the classification of modern races the colour of the skin and eyes, and the colour and texture of the hair, as well as the form of the skull, shape of the nose, and proportions of the body, are taken into account; but the two distinct forms of skull, the dolichocephalic and the brachycephalic, as traced in the earliest pre-historic times, are still relied upon as the most distinctive mark of race, and the various modifications of these forms are held to denote admixture at some period.

Tracing these two distinct types to modern_times we may do well to quote Professors Huxley and Flower, as to their present distribution. The former says—“ Draw a line on a globe from the Gold Coast in West Africa to the steppes of Tartary. At the south and west end of that line there live the most dolichocephalic and prognathous, curly-haired, dark-skinned of men-the true negroes. At the north and east end of the same line there live the most brachycephalic, orthognathous, straight-haired, yellow-skinned of men-the Tartars and Calmucks. The two ends of this imaginary line are indeed, so to speak, ethnological antipodes. A line drawn at right angles, or nearly so, to this polar line, through Europe and South Asia to Hindostan, would give us a sort of equator, around which round-headed, oval-headed, and oblong-headed, prognathous and orthognathous, fair and dark races, but none possessing the marked characters of Calmuck or Negro, group themselves." After remarking the differences of climate between the countries inhabited by the extreme types, Professor Huxley continues-"From Central Asia eastward to the Pacific Islands and sub-continents on the one hand, and to America on the other, brachycephaly and orthognathism gradually diminish, and are replaced by dolichocephaly and prognathism, less however on the American continent (throughout the whole of which a rounded type of skull prevails largely, but not exclusively) than in the Pacific region, where at length, on the Australian continent, and in the

adjacent islands, the oblong skull, the projecting jaws, and the dark skin reappear, with so much departure in other respects from the Negro type, that ethnologists assign to these people the special title of Negritos." 1 Professor Flower, in his excellent Hunterian lecture delivered in 1879, amplifies the sketch of Professor Huxley, and gives in addition to the cranial characteristics, the classification suggested by hair, and by the features of the face, particularly the nose, which has come to be regarded as a very distinctive mark of race. Classing mankind according to hair, two great divisions are observable-the woolly-haired and the straighthaired. According to noses, they have been divided by Broca into leptorhine, mesorhine, and platyrhine.

The lower races may generally be classed as dolichocephalic, woolly-haired, and platyrhine, which were probably characteristics of the earliest pre-historic races, and of primeval man; but in what way this early type became modified so as to produce the variety of races now observed, who can determine? Yet if we are to accept the theory of the unity of mankind, the origin of races has to be accounted for, and the very early period at which the three principal types became stereotyped, so as to be distinctly portrayed on Egyptian monuments of at least 4000 years ago, seems to demand an enormous time for the necessary development, unless indeed we call to our aid a series of miracles.2

It may be well to point out that although the modification of races is extremely slow, as testified by the Egyptian monuments, yet it seems to be going on under our eyes at the present day. Dr. Wilson, at the meeting of the British Association in Dublin, demonstrated the formation of a new race in Canada, and a similar case of the Griquas in South Africa is well known; but these variations are attributable to admixtures, which could not have been a primary factor in the

1 Man's Place in Nature, p. 153.

2 Mr. Busk pointed out that four types appear on some of the Egyptian monuments. See Journal of Anthropological Institute, April 1875.

formation of the strongly-marked ancient races. Nevertheless few will doubt that the European type is slowly changing in North America, without admixture, and the same may be said of our colonists in Australia and the Cape of Good Hope. In the latter case it may be interesting to note, that although the Bushmen, who may be regarded as aborigines, are among the smallest and least hairy of races, the European settler almost invariably becomes taller than the average Englishman, and develops an unusual amount of beard, whilst the Kaffir, also a modern settler, is tall and well-formed, although the beard is tardy of development, or altogether wanting. Hence it would appear that climate and soil have various effects upon different races. This fact

was pointed out by Latham in his article on Ethnology in the 8th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He says "That two localities, one in Africa, and the other in South America, may so closely resemble each other in their physical conditions of heat, light, altitude, moisture, land and water relations, as for the purposes connected with the modification of the human organism to be considered as identical, is highly probable. What, however, if the human organisms thereof notably differ? not the inference that physical conditions either act irregularly or not at all, but that the objects on which they acted in cases under notice, were different. The negro that (say) from Central Asia reaches the Lower Niger, is the descendant of ancestors whose organizations were acted upon by the physical influences of a line drawn through South-western Asia and Northeastern Africa, while the Indian of the Lower Amazons is the descendant of ancestors whose organizations were acted upon by the physical influences of a line drawn through Siberia, the Arctic circle, North America, Central America, and the north-western part of South America."

It is here that Darwin's doctrine of the survival of the fittest comes into play, for there can be no doubt that emigrants to a climate entirely different to that in which they were born require some generations to

become thoroughly acclimatized, and if the change be too sudden, very few will survive; but those few will naturally be the most robust and hardy, and their descendants born in the new environment will probably develop new physical features, and originate a new variety; and this in all probability holds good both as regards men, animals, and plants. Sir Richard Temple, in a speech delivered at the Royal Colonial Institute in 1888, asserted that Europeans in India after two generations began to assume the American type, becoming lank and weedy, and unless recruited by fresh blood from Europe, generally died out in the third or fourth generation; and yet unless ethnologists are greatly at fault, this migration is only a return to the ancient home of the race, although probably to a more southerly latitude; but the Aryan, whose physical organization has been acted upon for many centuries by the colder and more bracing airs of Europe, cannot compete with those Aryan congeners who, starting from the same race-cradle, have gradually acclimatized themselves to India. In like manner natives of tropical countries, suddenly removed to our cold and humid climate, often fall victims to consumption and other diseases from which they are wholly free in their own land. Hence we learn that migrations, which have been successfully carried out, must have been gradual, and the change of type resulting therefrom would of course be gradual also. Doubtless in later times small bands of wanderers, accidental emigrants, or conquering tribes, have by intermarriage with aborigines caused great and sudden variations of type; but this could only have happened after the various races of man had become highly differentiated by long severances, and would not have affected to the same extent the original peopling of the world from one common source.

It would therefore seem probable that the more remote peoples, such as the Australians, cut off for centuries from outward influences, although doubtless

1 The recent ideas upon the home of the Aryans will be treated of later.

somewhat changed by their environment, would yet represent the original stock from which they sprang much more nearly than other races which have had from time to time communication more or less frequent with other races. Whether the gradual spread of mankind over the earth from a common cradle, with the consequent gradual change of climate, soil, and food, could have been effectual for the production of the various races we see, is a problem unsolved if not insoluble. It would be unwise and unphilosophic to deem it impossible; nevertheless, the early time at which these changes became fixed and stereotyped into the three grand divisions, seem to throw back their common origin to such a remote epoch that we can hardly wonder at the hesitation felt in its adoption. Meanwhile the solution can only be arrived at when the geology of distant lands becomes as thoroughly worked out as that of Europe has been. Every year adds to the number of fossils discovered, serving to link more closely the living with extinct forms, and we know not how soon the semi-human ancestor of man may be found, but this will hardly be in Europe, for it would appear certain that both man the ape became developed from the parent stock either in Africa, Central Asia, or the islands of the Indian Ocean, and were from the first immigrants in Europe.

and

But the problem of the geographical distribution of the human race is further complicated by the existence on all the great continents of pigmy races, differing in colour, form of skull, and bodily proportions from the races supposed to be typical of the continent in which they are found. Thus in Africa, the typical home of the stalwart Negro, and therefore designated the Black Continent, we find the Bushman and Hottentot in the south, and the Akkas and Niam-Niams in the centre, very small in stature and yellow in colour. In Asia, the typical continent of the yellow Mongols, we see the tiny black Andamanese, known as Negroids. In Northern Europe there are the small Mongoloid Lapps;

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