Man and His Migrations

“Had the colony been left to itself, cut off from Europe, for a century or two, it is my belief that the forest and the buffalo, and the Red-Indian, would have pushed him into the St. Lawrence[5].”

I give no opinion as to the truth of the extract; remarking that, whether right or wrong, it is forcibly and confidently expressed. All that the passage has to do is to illustrate the character of the question. It directs our consideration to what will be.

To work out questions in either of these classes, there must, of course, be some reference to the general operations of climate, food, and other influences;—operations which imply a correlative susceptibility of modification on the part of the human organism.

In a well-constructed machine, the different parts have a definite relation to each. The greater the resistance, the thicker the ropes and chains; and the thicker the ropes and chains, the stronger the pulleys; the stronger the pulleys, the greater the force; and so on throughout. Delicate pulleys with heavy ropes, or light lines with bulky pulleys, would be so much power wasted. The same applies to the skeleton. If the muscle be massive, the bone to which it is attached must be firm; otherwise there is a disproportion of parts. In this respect the organized and animated body agrees with a common machine, the work of human hands. It agrees with, but it also surpasses it. It has an internal power of self-adjustment. No amount of work would convert a thin line into a strong rope, or a light framework into a strong one. If bulk be wanted, it must be given in the first instance. But what is it with the skeleton, the framework to the muscles? It has the power of adapting itself to the stress laid upon it. The food that we live upon is of different degrees of hardness and toughness; and the harder and tougher it is, the more work is there for the muscles of the lower jaw. But, as these work, they grow; for—other things being equal—size is power; and as they grow, other parts must grow also. There are the bones. How they grow is a complex question. Sometimes a smooth surface becomes rough, a fine bone coarse; sometimes a short process becomes lengthened, or a narrow one broadens; sometimes the increase is simple or absolute, and the bone in question changes its character without affecting that of the parts in contact with it. But frequently there is a complication of changes, and the development of one bone takes place at the expense of another; the relations of the different portions of parts of a skeleton being thus altered.

A skeleton, then, may be modified by the action of its own muscles; in other words, wherever there are muscles that are liable to an increase of mass, there are bones similarly susceptible—bones upon which asperities, ridges, or processes may be developed—bones from which asperities, ridges, or processes may disappear, and bones of which the relative proportions may be varied. In order, however, that this must take place, there must be the muscular action which determines it.

Now this applies to the hard parts, or the skeleton; and as it is generally admitted, that if the bony framework of the body can be thus modified by the action of its own muscles, the extreme conditions of heat, light, aliment, moisture, &c., will, à fortiori, affect the soft parts, such as the skin and adipose tissue. Neither have any great difficulties been raised in respect to the varieties of colour in the iris, and of colour and texture, both, in the hair.

But what if we have in certain hard parts a difference without its corresponding tangible modifying cause? What if parts which no muscle acts upon vary? In such a case we have a new class of facts, and a new import given to it. We no longer draw our illustrations from the ropes and pulleys of machines. Adaptation there may be, but it is no longer an adaptation of the simple straightforward kind that we have exhibited. It is an adaptation on the principle which determines the figure-head of a vessel, not one on the principle which decides the rigging. Still there is a principle on both sides; on one, however, there is an evident connection of cause and effect; on the other, the notion of choice, or spontaneity of an idea, is suggested.

In this way, the consideration of a tooth differs from that of the jaw in which it is implanted. No muscles act directly upon it; and all that pressure at its base can do is to affect the direction of its growth. The form of its crown it leaves untouched. How—I am using almost the words of Prof. Owen—can we conceive the development of the great canine of the chimpanzee to be a result of external stimuli, or to have been influenced by muscular actions, when it is calcified before it cuts the gum, or displaces its deciduous predecessor—a structure preordained, a weapon prepared prior to the development of the forces by which it is to be wielded[6]?

This illustrates the difference between the parts manifestly obnoxious to the influence of external conditions and the parts which either do not vary at all, or vary according to unascertained laws.

With the former we look to the conditions of sun, air, habits, or latitude; the latter we interpret, as we best can, by references to other species or to the same in its earlier stages of development.

Thus, the so-called supra-orbital ridge, or the prominence of the lower portion of forehead over the nose and eyes, is more marked in some individuals than in others; and more marked in the African and Australian varieties than our own. This is an ethnological fact.

Again—and this is an anthropological fact—it is but moderately developed in man at all: whilst in the orang-utan it is moderate; and in the chimpanzee enormously and characteristically developed.

Hence it is one of the nine points whereby the Pithecus Wurmbii approaches man more closely than the Troglodytes Gorilla[7], in opposition to the twenty-four whereby the Troglodytes Gorilla comes nearer to us than the Pithecus Wurmbii.

Had this ridge given attachment to muscles, we should have asked what work those muscles did, and how far it varied in different regions, instead of thinking much about either the Pithecus Wurmbii or the Troglodytes Gorilla.

However, it is certain problems which constitute the higher branches of ethnology; and it is to the investigation of these that the department of ethnological dynamics is subservient. Looking backwards we find, first amongst the foremost, the grand questions as to—

• 1. The unity or non-unity of the species.
• 2. Its antiquity.
• 3. Its geographical origin.

The unity or non-unity of the human species has been contemplated under a great multiplicity of aspects; some involving the fact itself, some the meaning of the term species.

• 1. Certain points of structure are constant. This is one reason for making man the only species of genus, and the only genus of his order.
• 2. All mixed breeds are prolific. This is another.
• 3. The evidence of language indicates a common origin; and the simplest form of this is a single pair. This is a third.
• 4. We can predicate a certain number of general propositions concerning the class of beings called Human. This merely separates them from all other classes. It does not determine the nature of the class itself in respect to its members. It may fall in divisions and subdivisions.
• 5. The species may be one; but the number of first pairs may be numerous. This is the doctrine of the multiplicity of protoplasts[8].
• 6. The species may have had no protoplast at all; but may have been developed out of some species anterior to it, and lower in the scale of Nature, this previous species itself having been so evolved. In this case, the protoplast is thrown indefinitely backwards; in other words, the protoplast of one species is the protoplast of many.
• 7. The genus Homo may fall into several species; so that what some call the varieties of a single species are really different species of a single genus.
• 8. The varieties of mankind may be too great to be included in even a genus. There may be two or even more genera to an order.
• 9. Many of the present varieties may represent the intermixtures of species no longer extant in a pure state.
• 10. All known varieties may be referable to a single species; but there may be new species undescribed.
• 11. All existing varieties may be referable to a single species; but certain species may have ceased to exist.

Such are the chief views which are current amongst learned men on this point; though they have not been exhibited in a strictly logical form, inasmuch as differences of opinion as to the meaning of the term species have been given in the same list with differences of opinion as to the fact of our unity or non-unity.

These differences of opinion are not limited to mere matters of inference. The facts on which such inferences rest are by no means unanimously admitted. Some deny the constancy of certain points of structure, and more deny the permanent fecundity of mixed breeds. Again, the evidence of language applies only to known tongues; whilst the fourth view is based upon a logical rather than a zoological view of species.

The doctrine of a multiplicity of protoplasts is common. Many zoologists hold it, and they have of course zoological reasons for doing so. Others hold it upon grounds of a very different description—grounds which rest upon the assumption of a final cause. Man is a social animal. Let the import of this be ever so little exaggerated. The term is a correlative one. The wife is not enough to the husband; the pair requires its pair for society’s sake. Hence, if man be not formed to live alone now, he was not formed alone at first. To be born a member of society, there must be associates. This is the teleological[9]—perhaps it may be called the theological—reason for the multiplicity of protoplasts.

Its non-inductive character subtracts something from its value.

The difficulty of drawing a line as to the magnitude of the original society subtracts more. If we admit a second pair, why not grant a village, a town, a city and its corporation? &c.

Again, this is either a primitive civilization or something very like it. Where are its traces? Nevertheless, if we grant certain assumptions in respect to the history of human civilization, the teleological doctrine of the multiplicity of protoplasts is difficult to refute.

And so is the zoological; provided that we make concessions in the way of language. Let certain pairs have been created with the capacity but not the gift of speech, so that they shall have learned their language of others. Or let all, at first, have been in this predicament, and some have evolved speech earlier than others—a speech eventually extended to all. It is not easy to answer such an argument as this.

The multiplicity of protoplasts is common ground to the zoologist and the human naturalist, although the phænomena of speech and society give the latter the larger share. The same applies to the doctrine of development. The fundamental affinity which connects all the forms of human speech is valid against the transcendentalist only when he assumes that each original of a species of Man appeared, as such, with his own proper language. Let him allow this to have been originally dumb, and with only the capacity of learning speech from others, and all arguments in favour of the unity of species drawn from the similarity of language fall to the ground.

The eighth doctrine is little more than an exaggeration of the seventh. The seventh will not be noticed now, simply because the facts which it asserts and denies pervade the whole study of ethnology, and appear and re-appear at every point of our investigations.

All known varieties may be referable to a single species; but there may be other species undescribed.—What are the reasons for believing this? Premising that Dilbo was a slave from whom Dr. Beke collected certain information respecting the countries to the south-west of Abyssinia, I subjoin the following extract:—

“The countries on the west and south-west of Kaffa are, according to Dilbo, Damboro, Bonga, Koolloo, Kootcha, Soofa, Tooffte, and Doko; on the east and south-east are the plains of Woratto, Walamo, and Talda.

“The country of Doko is a month’s journey distant from Kaffa; and it seems that only those merchants who are dealers in slaves go farther than Kaffa. The most common route passes Kaffa in a south-westerly direction, leading to Damboro, afterwards to Kootcha, Koolloo, and then passing the river Erow to Tooffte, where they begin to hunt the slaves in Doko, of which chase I shall give a description as it has been stated to me, and the reader may use his own judgement respecting it.

“Dilbo begins with stating that the people of Doko, both men and women, are said to be no taller than boys nine or ten years old. They never exceed that height, even in the most advanced age. They go quite naked; their principal food are ants, snakes, mice, and other things which commonly are not used as food. They are said to be so skilful in finding out the ants and snakes, that Dilbo could not refrain from praising them greatly on that account. They are so fond of this food, that even when they have become acquainted with better aliment in Enarea and Kaffa, they are nevertheless frequently punished for following their inclination of digging in search of ants and snakes, as soon as they are out of sight of their masters. The skins of snakes are worn by them about their necks as ornaments. They also climb trees with great skill to fetch down the fruits; and in doing this they stretch their hands downwards and their legs upwards. They live in extensive forests of bamboo and other woods, which are so thick that the slave-hunter finds it very difficult to follow them in these retreats. These hunters sometimes discover a great number of the Dokos sitting on the trees, and then they use the artifice of showing them shining things, by which they are enticed to descend, when they are captured without difficulty. As soon as a Doko begins to cry he is killed, from the apprehension that this, as a sign of danger, will cause the others to take to their heels. Even the women climb on the trees, where in a few minutes a great number of them may be captured and sold into slavery.

“The Dokos live mixed together; men and women unite and separate as they please; and this Dilbo considers as the reason why the tribe has not been exterminated, though frequently a single slave-dealer returns home with a thousand of them reduced to slavery. The mother suckles the child only as long as she is unable to find ants and snakes for its food: she abandons it as soon as it can get its food by itself. No rank or order exists among the Dokos. Nobody orders, nobody obeys, nobody defends the country, nobody cares for the welfare of the nation. They make no attempts to secure themselves but by running away. They are as quick as monkeys; and they are very sensible of the misery prepared for them by the slave-hunters, who so frequently encircle their forests and drive them from thence into the open plains like beasts. They put their heads on the ground, and stretch their legs upwards, and cry, in a pitiful manner, ‘Yer! yer!’ Thus they call on the Supreme Being, of whom they have some notion, and are said to exclaim, ‘If you do exist, why do you suffer us to die, who do not ask for food or clothes, and who live on snakes, ants, and mice?’ Dilbo stated that it was no rare thing to find five or six Dokos in such a position and state of mind. Sometimes these people quarrel among themselves, when they eat the fruit of the trees; then the stronger one throws the weaker to the ground, and the latter is thus frequently killed in a miserable way.

“In their country it rains incessantly; at least from May to January, and even later the rain does not cease entirely. The climate is not cold, but very wet. The traveller, in going from Kaffa to Doko, must pass over a high country, and cross several rivers, which fall into the Gochob.

“The language of the Dokos is a kind of murmuring, which is understood by no one but themselves and their hunters. The Dokos evince much sense and skill in managing the affairs of their masters, to whom they are soon much attached; and they render themselves valuable to such a degree, that no native of Kaffa ever sells one of them to be sent out of the country. As Captain Clapperton says of the slaves of Nyffie:—‘The very slaves of this people are in great request, and when once obtained are never again sold out of the country.’ The inhabitants of Enarea and Kaffa sell only those slaves which they have taken in their border-wars with the tribes living near them, but never a Doko. The Doko is also averse to being sold; he prefers death to separating from his master, to whom he has attached himself.

“The access to the country of Doko is very difficult, as the inhabitants of Damboro, Koolloo, and Tooffte are enemies to the traders from Kaffa, though these tribes are dependent on Kaffa, and pay tribute to its sovereigns; for these tribes are intent on preserving for themselves alone the exclusive privilege of hunting the Dokos, and of trading with the slaves thus obtained.

“Dilbo did not know whether the tribes residing south and west of the Dokos persecute this unhappy nation in the same cruel way.

“This is Dilbo’s account of the Dokos, a nation of pigmies, who are found in so degraded a condition of human nature that it is difficult to give implicit credit to his account. The notion of a nation of pigmies in the interior of Africa is very ancient, as Herodotus speaks of them in II. 32.”

Now those who believe in the Dokos at all, may fairly believe them to constitute a new species.

Other imperfectly known populations may be put forward in a similar point of view.

All existing varieties may be referable to a single species; but certain species may have ceased to exist.—There is a considerable amount of belief in this respect. We see, in certain countries, which are at present barbarous vestiges of a prior civilization, works, like those of Mexico and Peru for instance, which the existing inhabitants confess to be beyond their powers. Be it so. Is the assumption of a different species with architectural propensities more highly developed, legitimate? The reader will answer this question in his own way. I can only say that such assumptions have been made.

Again—ancient tombs exhibit skeletons which differ from the living individuals of the country. Is a similar assumption here justifiable? It has been made.

The most remarkable phænomena of the kind in question are to be found in the history of the Peruvians.

The parts about the Lake Titicaca form the present country of the Aymaras, whose heads are much like those of the other Americans, whose taste for architecture is but slight, and whose knowledge of having descended from a people more architectural than themselves is none.

Nevertheless, there are vast ruins in their district; whilst the heads of those whose remains are therein preserved have skulls with the sutures obliterated, and with remarkable frontal, lateral, and occipital depressions.

Does this denote an extinct species? Individually, I think it does not; because, individually, with many others, I know that certain habits decline, and I also believe that the flattenings of the head are artificial. Nevertheless, if I, ever so little, exaggerated the permanency of habits, or if I identified a habit with an instinct, or if I considered the skulls natural, the chances are that I should recognise the remains of ancient stock—possibly an ancient species—without congeners and without descendants.

The antiquity of the human species.—Our views on this point depend upon our views as to its unity or non-unity; so much so, that unless we assume either one or the other, the question of antiquity is impracticable. And it must also be added that, unless the inquiry is to be excessively complicated, the unity-doctrine must take the form of descent from a single pair.

Assuming this, we take the most extreme specimens of difference, whether it be in the way of physical conformation or mental phænomena—of these last, language being the most convenient. After this, we ask the time necessary for bringing about the changes effected; the answer to this resting upon the induction supplied within the historical period; an answer requiring the application of what has already been called Ethnological Dynamics.

On the other hand, we may assume a certain amount of original difference, and investigate the time requisite for effecting the existing amount of similarity.

The first of these methods requires a long, the second a short period; indeed, descent from a single pair implies a geological rather than a historical date.

Furthermore—that uniformity in the average rate of change which the geologist requires, ethnology requires also.

The geographical origin of Man.—Supposing all the varieties of Man to have originated from a single protoplast pair, in what part of the world was that single protoplast pair placed? Or, supposing such protoplast pairs to have been numerous, what were the respective original locations of each? I ask these questions without either giving any answer to them, or exhibiting any method for discovering one. Of the three great problems it is the one which has received the least consideration, and the one concerning which there is the smallest amount of decided opinion. The conventional, provisional, or hypothetical cradle of the human species is, of course, the most central point of the inhabited world; inasmuch as this gives us the greatest amount of distribution with the least amount of migration; but, of course, such a centre is wholly unhistorical.

Race—What is the meaning of this word?

Does it mean variety? If so, why not say variety at once?

Does it mean species? If it do, one of the two phrases is superfluous.

In simple truth it means either or neither, as the case may be; and is convenient or superfluous according to the views of the writer who uses it.

If he believe that groups and classes like the Negro, the Hottentot, the American, the Australian, or the Mongolian, differ from each other as the dog differs from the fox, he talks of species. He has made up his mind.

But, perhaps, he does no such thing. His mind is made up the other way. Members of such classes may be to Europeans, and to each other, just what the cur is to the pug, the pointer to the beagle, &c. They may be varieties.

He uses, then, the terms accordingly; but, in order to do so, he must have made up his mind; and certain classes must represent either one or the other.

But what if he have not done this? If, instead of teaching undoubted facts, he is merely investigating doubtful ones? In this case the term race is convenient. It is convenient for him during his pursuit of an opinion, and during the consequent suspension of his opinion.

Race, then, is the term denoting a species or variety, as the case may be—pendente lite. It is a term which, if it conceals our ignorance, proclaims our openness to conviction.

Of the prospective views of humanity, one has been considered. But there are others of at least equal importance. Two, out of many, may serve as samples.

1. The first is suggested by the following Table; taken from a fuller one in Mr. D. Wilson’s valuable Archæology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland. It shows the relative proportions of a series of skulls of very great, with those of a series of moderate antiquity.

The study of this—and it requires to be studied carefully—gives grounds for believing that the capacity of a skull may increase as the social condition improves; from which it follows that the physical organization of the less-favoured stocks may develope itself progressively,—and, pari passu, the mental power that coincides with it. This illustrates the nature of a certain ethnological question. But what if the two classes of skulls belong to different stocks; so that the owners of the one were not the progenitors of the proprietors of the other? Such a view (and it is not unreasonable) illustrates the extent to which it is complicated.

2. The second, like the first, shall be explained by extracts:—

a. Mrs. ——, a neighbour of Mr. M’Combie, was twice married, and had issue by both husbands. The children of the first marriage were five in number; by the second, three. One of these three, a daughter, bears an unmistakeable resemblance to her mother’s first husband. What makes the likeness the more discernible is, that there was the most marked difference, in their features and general appearance, between the two husbands.

b. A young woman, residing in Edinburgh, and born of white (Scottish) parents, but whose mother some time previous to her marriage had a natural (Mulatto) child, by a negro-servant, in Edinburgh, exhibits distinct traces of the negro. Dr. Simpson, whose patient the young woman at one time was, has had no recent opportunities of satisfying himself as to the precise extent to which the negro character prevails in her features; but he recollects being struck with the resemblance, and noticed particularly that the hair had the qualities characteristic of the negro.

c. Mrs. ——, apparently perfectly free from scrofula, married a man who died of phthisis; she had one child by him, which also died of phthisis. She next married a person who was to all appearance equally healthy as herself, and had two children by him, one of which died of phthisis, the other of tubercular mesenteric disease—having, at the same time, scrofulous ulceration of the under extremity.

There are the elements of a theory here; especially if they be taken along with certain phænomena, well-known to the breeders of race-horses—the theory being, that the mixture of the distinctive characters of different divisions of mankind may be greater than the intermixture itself. I give no opinion on the data. I merely illustrate an ethnological question—one out of many.

FOOTNOTES

[3] From the Greek word (ἦθος) ethos = character.

[4] Called by Comte Sociology, a name half Latin and half Greek, and consequently too barbarous to be used, if its use can be avoided.

[5] Knox, Races of Men, pp. 73, 74.

[6] On the Osteology of the Great Chimpanzee. By Professor Owen, in the Philosophical Transactions.

[7] Owen, Philosophical Transactions, Feb. 22, 1848.

[8] From protos = first, and plastos = formed.

[9] From the Greek telos = an end.

CHAPTER III.

Methods—the science one of observation and deduction rather than experiment—classification—on mineralogical, on zoological principles—the first for Anthropology, the second for Ethnology—value of Language as a test—instances of its loss—of its retention—when it proves original relation, when intercourse—the grammatical and glossarial tests—classifications must be real—the distribution of Man—size of area—ethnological contrasts in close geographical contact—discontinuity and isolation of areas—oceanic migrations.

In the Natural History of Man we must keep almost exclusively to the methods of deduction and observation; and in observation we are limited to one sort only, i. e. that simple and spontaneous kind where the object can be found if sought for, but cannot be artificially produced. In other words, there is no great room for experiment. The corpus is not vile enough for the purpose. Besides which, “even if we suppose unlimited power of varying the experiment (which is abstractedly possible), though no one but an oriental despot either has the power, or if he had would be disposed to exercise it, a still more essential condition is wanting—the power of performing any of the experiments with scientific accuracy[10].” Experiment is nearly as much out of place in Ethnology and Anthropology as it is in Astronomy.

Psammetichus, to be sure, according to Herodotus, did as follows. He took children of a poor man, put them in the charge of a shepherd who was forbidden to speak in their presence, suckled them in a lone hut through a she-goat, waited for the age at which boys begin to talk, and then took down the first word they uttered. This was bekos, which when it was shown to mean in the Phrygian language bread, the Egyptians yielded the palm of antiquity to that rival.

Now this was an ethnological experiment; but then Psammetichus was an oriental despot; and the instance itself is, probably, the only one of its class—the only one, or nearly so—the only one which is a true experiment; since in order to be such there must be a definite and specific end or object in view.

We know the tradition about Newton and the apple. This, if true, was no experiment, but an observation. To have been the former, the tree should have been shaken for the purpose of seeing the fruit descend. There would then have been an end and aim—malice prepense, so to say.

Hence the phænomena of the African slave-trade, of English emigration, and of other similar elements for observation are no experiments; since it has not been Science that either the slaver or the settler ever thought about. Sugar or cotton, land or money, was what ran in their heads.

The revolting operation by which the jealous Oriental labours to secure the integrity of his harem is in its end a scientific fact. It tells how much the whole system sympathises with the mutilation of one of its parts. But it is nothing for Science to either applaud or imitate. It is repeated by the sensual Italian for the sake of ensuring fine voices in the music-market; and Science is disgusted at its repetition. Even if done in her own name, and for her own objects, it would still be but an inhuman and intolerable form of zootomy.

Still the trade in Africans, and the emigration of Englishmen are said to partake of the nature of a scientific experiment, even without being one. They are said to serve as such. So they do; yet not in the way in which they are often interpreted. A European regiment is decimated by being placed on the Gambia, or in Sierra Leone. The American Anglo-Saxon is said to have lost the freshness of the European—to have become brown in colour, and wiry in muscle. Perhaps he has. Yet what does this prove? Merely the effect of sudden changes; the results of distant transplantation; the imperfect character of those forms of acclimatization which are not gradual. It was not in this way that the world was originally peopled. New climates were approached by degrees, step by step, by enlargement and extension of the circumference of a previously acclimated family. Hence the experience of the kind in question, valuable as it is in the way of Medical Police, is comparatively worthless in a theory as to the Migrations of Mankind. Take a man from Caucasus to the Gold Coast, and he either dies or takes a fever. But would he do so if his previous sojourn had been on the Gambia, his grandfather’s on the Senegal, his ancestor’s in the tenth degree on the Nile, and that ancestor’s ancestor’s on the Jordan—thus going back till we reached the first remote patriarch of the migration on the Phasis? This is an experiment which no single generation can either make or observe; yet less than this is no experiment at all, no imitation of that particular operation of Nature which we are so curious to investigate.

What follows applies to Ethnology. The first result we get from our observations is a classification, i. e. groups of individuals, families, tribes, nations, sub-varieties, varieties, and (according to some) of species connected by some common link, and united on some common principle. There is no want of groups of this kind; and many of them are so natural as to be unsusceptible of improvement. Yet the nomenclature for their different divisions is undetermined, the values of many of them uncertain, and, above all, the principle upon which they are formed is by no means uniform. Whilst some investigators classify mankind on Zoological, others do so on what may be called Mineralogical, principles. This difference will be somewhat fully illustrated.

In Africa, as is well known, a great portion of the population is black-skinned; and with this black skin other physical characteristics are generally found in conjunction. Thus the hair is either crisp or woolly, the nose depressed, and the lips thick. As we approach Asia these criteria decrease; the Arab being fairer, better-featured and straighter-haired than the Nubian, and the Persian more so than the Arab. In Hindostan, however, the colour deepens; and by looking amongst the most moist and alluvial parts of the southern peninsula we find skins as dark as those of Africa, and hair crisp rather than straight. Besides this, the fine oval contour and regular features of the high-cast Hindus of the North become scarce, whilst the lips get thick, the skin harsh, and the features coarse.

Further on—we come to the great Peninsula which contains the Kingdoms of Ava and Siam—the Indo-Chinese or Transgangetic Peninsula. In many parts of this the population blackens again; and in the long narrow peninsula of Malacca, a large proportion of the older population has been described as blacks. In the islands we find them again; so much so that the Spanish authorities call them Negritos or Little Negroes. In New Guinea all is black; and in Australia and Van Diemen’s Land it is blacker still. In Australia the hair is generally straight; but in the first and last-named countries it is frizzy, crisped, or curling. This connects them with the Negroes of Africa; and their colour does so still more. At any rate we talk of the Australian Blacks, just as the Spaniards do of the Philippine Negritos. Moral characteristics connect the Australian and the Negro, much in the same manner as the physical ones. Both, as compared with the European, are either really deficient in intellectual capacity, or (at least) have played an unimportant part in the history of the world. Thus, several populations have come under the class of Blacks. Is this classification natural?

It shall be illustrated further. On the extremities of each of the quarters of the world, we find populations that in many respects resemble each other. In Northern Asia and Europe, the Eskimo, Samoeid, and Laplander, tolerant of the cold of the Arctic Circle, are all characterized by a flatness of face, a lowness of stature, and a breadth of head. In some cases the contrast between them and their nearest neighbours to the south, in these respects, is remarkable. The Norwegian who comes in contact with the Lap is strong and well-made; so are many of the Red Indians who front the Eskimo.

At the Cape of Good Hope something of the same sort appears. The Hottentot of the southern extremity of Africa is undersized, small-limbed, and broad-faced; so much so, that most writers, in describing him, have said that, in his conformation, the Mongolian type—to which the Eskimo belongs—Asiatic itself—re-appears in Africa. And then his neighbour the Kaffre differs from him as the Finlander does from the Lap.

Mutatis mutandis, all this re-appears at Cape Horn; where the Patagonian changes suddenly to the Fuegian.

But we in Europe are favoured; our limbs are well-formed and our skin fair. Be it so: yet there are writers who, seeing the extent to which the islanders of the Pacific are favoured also, and noting the degree to which European points of colour, size, and capacity for improvement, real or supposed, re-appear at the Antipodes, have thrown the Polynesian and the Englishman in one and the same class.

And so, perhaps, he is, if we are to judge by certain characteristics: if agreement in certain matters, wherein the intermediate populations differ, form the grounds upon which we make our groups, the Fuegians, Eskimo, and Hottentots form one class, and the Negroes and Australians another. But are these classes natural? That depends upon the questions to which the classification is subservient. If we wish to know how far moisture and coolness freshen the complexion; how far moisture and heat darken it; how far mountain altitudes affect the human frame; in other words, how far common external conditions develope common habits and common points of structure, nothing can be better than the groups in question.

But alter the problem: let us wish to know how certain areas were peopled, what population gave origin to some other, how the Americans reached America, whence the Britons came into England, or any question connected with the migrations, affiliations, and origin of the varieties of our species, and groups of this kind are valueless. They tell us something—but not what we want to know: inasmuch as our question now concerns blood, descent, pedigree, relationship. To tell an inquirer who wishes to deduce one population from another that certain distant tribes agree with the one under discussion in certain points of resemblance, is as irrelevant as to tell a lawyer in search of the next of kin to a client deceased, that though you know of no relations, you can find a man who is the very picture of him in person—a fact good enough in itself, but not to the purpose; except (of course) so far as the likeness itself suggests a relationship—which it may or may not do.

Classes formed irrespective of descent are classes on the Mineralogical, whilst classes formed with a view to the same are classes on the Zoological, principle. Which is wanted in the Natural History of Man? The first for Anthropology; the second for Ethnology.

But why the antagonism? Perhaps the two methods may coincide. The possibility of this has been foreshadowed. The family likeness may, perhaps, prove a family connexion. True: at the same time each case must be tested on its own grounds. Hence, whether the African is to be grouped with the Australian, or whether the two classes are to be as far asunder in Ethnology as in Geography, depends upon the results of the special investigation of that particular connexion—real or supposed. It is sufficient to say that none of the instances quoted exhibit any such relationship; though many a theory—as erroneous as bold—has been started to account for it.

It is for Ethnology, then, that classification is most wanted—more than for Anthropology; even as it is for Zoology that we require orders and genera rather than for Physiology. This is based upon certain distinctive characters; some of which are of a physical, others of a moral sort. Each falls into divisions. There are moral and intellectual phænomena which prove nothing in the way of relationship, simply because they are the effects of a common grade of civilizational development. What would be easier than to group all the hunting, all the piscatory, or all the pastoral tribes together, and to exclude from these all who built cities, milked cows, sowed corn, or ploughed land? Common conditions determine common habits.

Again, much that seems at first glance definite, specific, and characteristic, loses its value as a test of ethnological affinity, when we examine the families in which it occurs. In distant countries, and in tribes far separated, superstition takes a common form, and creeds that arise independently of each other look as if they were deduced from a common origin. All this makes the facts in what may be called the Natural History of the Arts or of Religion easy to collect, but difficult to appreciate; in many cases, indeed, we are taken up into the rare and elevated atmosphere of metaphysics. What if different modes of architecture, or sculpture, or varieties in the practice of such useful arts as weaving and ship-building, be attributed to the same principle that makes a sparrow’s nest different from a hawk’s, or a honey-bee’s from a hornet’s? What if there be different instincts in human art, as there is in the nidification of birds? Whatever may be the fact, it is clear that such a doctrine must modify the interpretation of it. The clue to these complications—and they form a Gordian knot which must be unravelled, and not cut—lies in the cautious induction from what we know to what we do not; from the undoubted differences admitted to exist within undoubtedly related populations, to the greater ones which distinguish more distantly connected groups.

This has been sufficient to indicate the existence of certain moral characters which are really no characters at all—at least in the way of proving descent or affiliation; and that physical ones of the same kind are equally numerous may be inferred from what has already been written.

It is these elements of uncertainty so profusely mixed up with almost all the other classes of ethnological facts, that give such a high value, as an instrument of investigation, to Language; inasmuch as, although two different families of mankind may agree in having skins of the same colour, or hair of the same texture, without, thereby, being connected in the way of relationship, it is hard to conceive how they could agree in calling the same objects by the same name, without a community of origin, or else either direct or indirect intercourse. Affiliation or intercourse—one of the two—this community of language exhibits. One to the exclusion of the other it does not exhibit. If it did so, it would be of greater value than it is. Still it indicates one of the two; and either fact is worth looking for.

The value of language has been overrated; chiefly, of course, by the philologists. And it has been undervalued. The anatomists and archæologists, and, above all, the zoologists, have done this. The historian, too, has not known exactly how to appreciate it, when its phænomena come in collision with the direct testimony of authorities; the chief instrument in his own line of criticism.

It is overrated when we make the affinities of speech between two populations absolute evidence of connection in the way of relationship. It is overrated when we talk of tongues being immutable, and of languages never dying. On the other hand, it is unduly disparaged when an inch or two of difference in stature, a difference in the taste in the fine arts, a modification in the religious belief, or a disproportion in the influence upon the affairs of the world, is set up as a mark of distinction between two tribes speaking one and the same tongue, and alike in other matters. Now, errors of each kind are common.

The permanence of language as a sign of origin must be determined, like every thing else of the same kind, by induction; and this tells us that both the loss and retention of a native tongue are illustrated by remarkable examples. It tells both ways. In St. Domingo we have negroes speaking French; and this is a notable instance of the adoption of a foreign tongue. But the circumstances were peculiar. One tongue was not changed for another; since no Negro language predominated. The real fact was that of a mixture of languages—and this is next to no language at all. Hence, when French became the language of the Haytians, the usual obstacle of a previously existing common native tongue, pertinaciously and patriotically retained, was wanting. It superseded an indefinite and conflicting mass of Negro dialects, rather than any particular Negro language.

In the southern parts of Central America the ethnology is obscure, especially for the Republics of San Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Yet if we turn to Colonel Galindo’s account of them, we find the specific statement that aborigines still exist, and that their language is the Spanish; not any native Indian dialect. As similar assertions respecting the extinction and replacement of original languages have frequently proved incorrect, let us assume this to be an over-statement—though I have no definite grounds for considering it one. Over-statement though it may be, it still shows the direction in which things are going; and that is towards the supremacy of a European tongue.

On the confines of Asia and Europe there is the nation, tribe or family of the Bashkirs. Their present tongue is the Turkish. It is believed, however, that originally it was the mother-tongue of the Majiars of Hungary.

Again, the present Bulgarian is akin to the Russian. Originally, it was a Turk dialect.

Lastly—for I am illustrating, not exhausting, the subject—there died, in the year 1770, at Karczag in Hungary, an old man named Varro; the last man, in Europe, that knew even a few words of the language of his nation. Yet this nation was and is a great one; no less a one than that of the ancient Komanian Turks, some of whom invaded Europe in the eleventh century, penetrated as far as Hungary, settled there as conquerors, and retained their language till the death of this same Varro. The rest of the nation remained in Asia; and the present occupants of the parts between the Caspian and the Aral are their descendants. Languages then may be lost; and one may be superseded by another.

The ancient Etruscans as a separate substantive nation are extinct: so is their language, which we know to have been peculiar. Yet the Etruscan blood still runs in the veins of the Florentine and other Italians.

On the other hand, the pertinacity with which language resists the attempts to supersede it is of no common kind. Without going to Siberia, or America, the great habitats of the broken and fragmentary families, we may find instances much nearer home! In the Isle of Man the native Manks still remains; though dominant Norsemen and dominant Anglo-Saxons have brought their great absorbent languages in collision with it. In Malta, the labourers speak Arabic—with Italian, with English, and with a Lingua Franca around them.

In the western extremities of the Pyrenees, a language neither French nor Spanish is spoken; and has been spoken for centuries—possibly milleniums. It was once the speech of the southern half of France, and of all Spain. This is the Basque of Biscay.

In contact with the Turk on one side, and the Greek and the Slavonic on the other, the Albanian of Albania still speaks his native Skipetar.

A reasonable philologist makes similarity of language strong—very strong—primâ facie evidence in favour of community of descent.

When does it imply this, and when does it merely denote commercial or social intercourse? We can measure the phænomena of languages and exhibit the results numerically. Thus the percentage of words common to two languages may be 1, 2, 3, 4–98, 99, or any intermediate number. But, now comes the application of a maxim. Ponderanda non numeranda. We ask what sort of words coincide, as well as how many? When the names of such objects as fire, water, sun, moon, star, hand, tooth, tongue, foot, &c. agree, we draw an inference very different from the one which arises out of the presence of such words as ennui, fashion, quadrille, violin, &c. Common sense distinguishes the words which are likely to be borrowed from one language into another, from those which were originally common to the two.

There are a certain amount of French words in English, i. e. of words borrowed from the French. I do not know the percentage, nor yet the time required for their introduction; and, as I am illustrating the subject, rather than seeking specific results, this is unimportant. Prolong the time, and multiply the words; remembering that the former can be done indefinitely. Or, instead of doing this, increase the points of contact between the languages. What follows? We soon begin to think of a familiar set of illustrations; some classical and some vulgar—of the Delphic ship so often mended as to retain but an equivocal identity; of the Highlander’s knife, with its two new blades and three new handles; of Sir John Cutler’s silk-stockings degenerated into worsted by darnings. We are brought to the edge of a new question. We must tread slowly accordingly.

In the English words call-est, call-eth (call-s), and call-ed, we have two parts; the first being the root itself, the second a sign of person, or tense. The same is the case with the word father-s, son-s, &c.; except that the -s denotes case; and that it is attached to a substantive, instead of a verb. Again, in wis-er we have the sign of a comparative; in wis-est that of a superlative degree. All these are inflexions. If we choose, we may call them inflexional elements; and it is convenient to do so; since we can then analyse words and contrast the different parts of them: e. g. in call-s the call- is radical, the -s inflexional.

Having become familiarized with this distinction, we may now take a word of French or German origin—say fashion or waltz. Each, of course, is foreign. Nevertheless, when introduced into English, it takes an English inflexion. Hence we say, if I dress absurdly it is fashion’s fault; also, I am waltz-ing, I waltz-ed, he waltz-es—and so on. In these particular words, then, the inflexional part has been English; even when the radical was foreign. This is no isolated fact. On the contrary, it is sufficiently common to be generalized so that the grammatical part of language has been accredited with a permanence which has been denied to the glossarial or vocabular. The one changes, the other is constant; the one is immortal, the other fleeting; the one form, the other matter.

Now it is imaginable that the glossarial and grammatical tests may be at variance. They would be so if all our English verbs came to be French, yet still retained their English inflexions in -ed, -s, -ing, &c. They would be so if all the verbs were like fashion, and all the substantives like quadrille. This is an extreme case. Still, it illustrates the question. Certain Hindu languages are said to have nine-tenths of the vocables common with a language called the Sanskrit—but none of their inflexions; the latter being chiefly Tamul. What, then, is the language itself? This is a question which divides philologists. It illustrates, however, the difference between the two tests—the grammatical and the glossarial. Of these, it is safe to say that the former is the more constant.

Yet the philological method of investigation requires caution. Over and above the terms which one language borrows from another, and which denote intercourse rather than affinity, there are two other classes of little or no ethnological value.

• 1. Coincidences may be merely accidental. The likelihood of their being so is a part of the Doctrine of Chances. The mathematician may investigate this: the philologist merely finds the data. Neither has been done satisfactorily, though it was attempted by Dr. T. Young.
• 2. Coincidences may have an organic connexion. No one would say that because two nations called the same bird by the name cuckoo, the term had been borrowed by either one from the other, or by both from a common source. The true reason would be plain enough. Two populations gave a name on imitative principles, and imitated the same object. Son and brother, sister and daughter—if these terms agree, the chances are that a philological affinity is at the bottom of the agreement. But does the same apply to papa and mama, identical in English, Carib, and perhaps twenty other tongues? No. They merely show that the infants of different countries begin with the same sounds.

Such—and each class is capable of great expansion—are the cases where philology requires caution. Another matter now suggests itself.

To be valid a classification must be real; not nominal or verbal—not a mere book-maker’s arrangement. Families must be in definite degrees of relationship. This, too, will bear illustration. A man wants a relation to leave his money to: he is an Englishman, and by relation means nothing more distant than a third cousin. It is nothing to him if, in Scotland, a fifth cousinship is recognised. He has not found the relation he wants; he has merely found a greater amount of latitude given to the term. Few oversights have done more harm than the neglect of this distinction. Twenty years ago the Sanskrit, Sclavonic, Greek-and-Latin, and Gothic languages formed a class. This class was called Indo-Germanic. Its western limits were in Germany; its eastern in Hindostan. The Celtic of Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man was not included in it. Neither was it included in any other group. It was anywhere or nowhere—in any degree of isolation. Dr. Prichard undertook to fix it. He did so—well and successfully. He showed that, so far from being isolated, it was connected with the Greek, German, and Sclavonic by a connexion with the Sanskrit, or (changing the expression) with the Sanskrit through the Sclavonic, German, and Greek—any or all. The mother-tongue from which all these broke was supposed to be in Asia. Dr. Prichard’s work was entitled the ‘Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations.’ Did this make the Celtic Indo-Germanic? It was supposed to do so. Nay, more—it altered the name of the class; which was now called, as it has been since, Indo-European. Inconveniently. A relationship was mistaken for the relationship. The previous tongues were (say) second cousins. The Celtic was a fourth or fifth. What was the result? Not that a new second cousin was found, but that the family circle was enlarged.

What follows? Dr. Prichard’s fixation of the Celtic as a member of even the same clan with the German, &c. was an addition to ethnographical philology that many inferior investigators strove to rival; and it came to be current belief—acted on if not avowed—that tongues as like the Celtic as the Celtic was to the German were Indo-European also. This bid fair to inundate the class—to make it prove too much—to render it no class at all. The Albanian, Basque, Etruscan, Lap, and others followed. The outlier of the group once created served as a nucleus for fresh accumulations. A strange language of Caucasus—the Irôn or Ossetic—was placed by Klaproth as Indo-Germanic; and that upon reasonable grounds, considering the unsettled state of criticism. Meanwhile, the Georgian, another tongue of those same mysterious mountains, wants placing. It has undoubted Ossetic—or Irôn—affinities. But the Ossetic—or Irôn—is Indo-European. So therefore is the Georgian. This is a great feat; since the Caucasian tongues and the Caucasian skulls now agree, both having their affinities with Europe—as they ought to have. But what if both the Irôn and Georgian are half Chinese, or Tibetan, i. e. are all but monosyllabic languages both in grammar and vocables? If such be the case, the term ‘Indo-European’ wants revising; and not only that—the principles on which terms are fixed and classes created want revising also. At the same time, the ‘Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations’ contains the most definite addition to philology that the present century has produced; and the proper compliment to it is Mr. Garnett’s review of it in the ‘Quarterly;’ the first of a series of masterly and unsurpassed specimens of inductive philology applied to the investigation of the true nature of the inflexions of the Verb. But this is episodical.

The next instrument of ethnological criticism is to be found in the phænomena themselves of the dispersion and distribution of our species.

First as to its universality. In this respect we must look minutely before we shall find places where Man is not. These, if we find them at all, will come under one of two conditions; the climate will be extreme, or the isolation excessive. For instances of the first we take the Poles; and, as far as the Antarctic Circle is concerned, we find no inhabitants in the ice-bound regions—few and far between—of its neighbourhood; none south of 55° S. lat., or the extremity of the Tierra del Fuego. This, however, is peopled. We must remember, however, that in the Southern Ocean such regions as New South Shetland and Victoria Land are isolated as well as cold and frozen.

The North Pole, however, must be approached within 25° before we lose sight of Man, or find him excluded from even a permanent habitation. Spitzbergen is beyond the limits of human occupancy. Nova Zembla, when first discovered, was also uninhabited. So was Iceland. Here, however, it was the isolation of the island that made it so. A hardy stock of men, nearly related to ourselves, have occupied it since the ninth century; and continental Greenland is peopled as far as the 75th degree—though, perhaps, only as a summer residence.

Far to the east of Nova Zembla and opposite to the country of the Yukahiri—a hardy people on the rivers Kolyma and Indijirka, and within the Arctic Circle—lies the island of New Siberia. I find from Wrangell’s Travels in Siberia that certain expatriated Yukahiri are believed to have fled thither. Have they lived or died? Have they reached the island? In case they have done so, and kept body and soul together, New Siberia is probably the most northern spot of the inhabited world.

How cold a country must be in order to remain empty of men, we have seen. Such localities are but few. None are too hot—unless, indeed, we believe the centre of Equatorial Africa to be a solitude.

In South America there is a great blank in the Maps. For many degrees on each side of the Upper Amazons lies a vast tract—said to be a jungle—and marked Sirionos, the name of a frontier population. Yet the Sirionos are not, for one moment, supposed to fill up the vast hiatus. At the same time, there are few, or none, besides. Is this tract a drear unhumanized waste? It is said to be so—to be wet, woody, and oppressively malarious. Yet, this merely means that there is a forest and a swamp of a certain magnitude, and of a certain degree of impenetrability.

Other such areas are unexplored—yet we presume them to be occupied; though ever so thinly: e. g. the interiors of New Guinea and Australia.

That Greenland was known to the early Icelanders is well known. And that it was occupied when so first known is also certain. One of the geographical localities mentioned in an old Saga has an Eskimo word for one of its elements—Utibuks-firth = the firth of the isthmus; Utibuk in Eskimo meaning isthmus.

Of the islands originally uninhabited those which are, at one and the same time, large and near continents are Madeira and Iceland—the former being a lonely wood. The Canaries, though smaller and more isolated, have been occupied by the remarkable family of the Guanches. Add to these, Ascension, St. Helena, the Galapagos, Kerguelen’s Island, and a few others.

Easter Island, a speck in the vast Pacific, and more than half way between Asia and America, exhibited both inhabitants and ruins to its first discoverers.

Such is the horizontal distribution of Man; i.e. his distribution according to the degrees of latitude. What other animal has such a range? What species? What genus or order? Contrast with this the localized habitats of the Orang-utan, and the Chimpanzee as species; of the Apes as genera; of the Marsupialia as orders.

The vertical distribution is as wide. By vertical I mean elevation above the level of the sea. On the high table-land of Pamer we have the Kerghiz; summer visitants at least, where the Yak alone, among domesticated animals, lives and breathes in the rarefied atmosphere. The town of Quito is more than 10,000 feet above the sea; Walcheren is, perhaps, below the level of it.