Thus the same process still repeats itself along the widening frontier of the far West, which has been in operation on the American continent from the days of Columbus and Cabot. Hardy bands of pioneer adventurers, or the solitary hunter and trapper, wander forth to brave the dangers of the prairie or savage-haunted forest, and to such, an Indian bride proves the fittest mate. Of the mixed offspring a portion cling to the fortunes of the mother’s race, and are involved in its fate; but more adhere to those of the white father, share with him the vicissitudes of border life, and cast in their lot with the first nucleus of a settled community. As the border land slowly recedes into the further West, new settlers crowd into the clearing; the little cluster of primitive log-huts grows up into the city, perhaps the capital of a state, and with a new generation the traces of Indian blood are well nigh forgotten. If any portion of the aboriginal owners of the soil linger in the neighbourhood, they are no less affected by the predominant intruding race.

The transfer of the rich prairie lands of the great North-West from the care of Hudson Bay factors and trappers, the organisation of it into the Province of Manitoba, and the territories already in preparation for new provinces, under the government of their own legislatures, has necessarily brought to an end the condition of things so favourable to friendly relations between the White and Red races. The region, moreover, is now traversed by the Canadian Pacific Railway; and the herds of buffalo, on which the Indian mainly depended for his supplies of food, fur robes, and teepe skins, have finally disappeared. Railways, telegraph lines, and other appliances of civilisation are equally incompatible with the existence of the wild buffalo and the wild Indian. The former inevitably vanished from the scene. It remains to be seen if the latter can adapt himself to the novel conditions of such an environment.

As some preparation for the inevitable revolution, the half-breeds, already numbering thousands, accustomed to mingle on perfect equality with the Whites, and trained in some partial degree to agricultural industry, entered on the possession of farms allotted to them by the Government. But such a transitional stage, forced into premature development, could scarcely be expected to pass through all its revolutionary stages without a conflict, and clashing of interests; and the efforts of the Dominion Government to deal with this novel condition of things were only partially successful. But perhaps the most notable feature in the results has been that the chief difficulty was, not with the wild tribes transferred from the management of the fur-traders to the direct jurisdiction of the Government, but with the half-breeds, claiming civil rights, and jealously resenting encroachments on lands appropriated for their own settlement.

The reports of the Indian Department supply interesting glimpses of the process of adjustment with the various tribes of natives reluctantly yielding to the new condition of things. Returns made to an address of the House of Commons at Ottawa, dated March 1873, disclose the jealousies and suspicions of the native tribes, and the anxiety evinced by the Government officials to remove all just grounds of complaint. Mr. Beatty, a contractor for certain surveys on the Upper Assiniboine, reports that the Portage Indians, under their chief, Yellow Quill, had absolutely forbidden any survey of their lands, and driven him and his party off the field. The Lieutenant-Governor thereafter held an interview with Yellow Quill and a party of his braves, and after a long pow-wow succeeded in pacifying him. Again, a party of about two thousand Sioux are reported to have left in high dudgeon, with a threat to return in force next spring; and the Hon. Alexander Morris—now Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba—writes to the Provincial Secretary at Ottawa, that “The Red Lake Indians on the American side have been sending tobacco to the Sioux in our territory, as it is believed, with the view of common action with regard to the Boundary Survey.” For the settlement of provinces, and the surveying of the prairie for disposal to its new occupants, had necessitated the determination of a well-defined boundary between the Canadian territories and those of the United States. Only a few years had elapsed since the State of Minnesota was desolated by a cruel war, carried on by the Sioux at the instigation, as was then affirmed, of Southern agents, with a view to a diversion in favour of the South during the great Civil War. A large number of the Sioux have since crossed the boundary, and settled within the British lines; and the Hon. Mr. Morris writes from Fort Garry in December last: “Some of the Sioux assist the white settlers as labourers in the summer. They have asked for land, and were led to believe that they would be assigned a reserve, and, if so, they would plant crops, and could then be removed from the settlement.” But Mr. Morris specially draws the attention of the provincial authorities to the excited state apparent among all the Western tribes, and adds: “I believe it to be in part created by the Boundary Commission. They do not understand it, and think the two nations are uniting against them.” The difficulties, however, were overcome; and the reports of the Indian agents contain some curious illustrations of the difficulties inevitable in the first attempt at transforming wild Indian tribes into prairie farmers. One of them thus writes: “The full demands of the Indians cannot be complied with; but there is, nevertheless, a certain paradox in asking a wild Indian, who has hitherto gained his livelihood by hunting and trapping, to settle down on a reservation and cultivate the land, without at the same time offering him some means of making his living. As they say themselves: ‘We cannot tear down the trees and build huts with our teeth, we cannot break the prairie with our hands, nor reap the harvest, if we had grown it, with our knives.’ ” But even among the wild tribes of the prairies a great diversity in habits, and in aptitude for the new life now forced upon them as their only chance of survival, is apparent. The Portage Indians clung to their old status as hunters living in their buffalo-skin lodges on the prairies; the St. Peter Indians form permanent settlements, not only of birch-bark wigwams, but many of them have built log-houses for themselves. Even among the tribes already settling down to steady agricultural labour, such as the Saulteux and the Swampies of Manitoba, a very great difference both in sentiments and customs prevail. Thirty-four Indian families from one tribe in Pembina are reported by the agent as demanding their allocation of farms; the chiefs and headmen of other tribes are in negotiation for farming implements, stock, etc., and some of their demands curiously illustrate the form in which the new life thus opening up to them presents its most tempting aspects. Hoes, axes, and other indispensable implements have been readily granted to them. Ploughs, harrows, and oxen are in request, and have been conceded or promised where the Government agent is satisfied that they will be turned to good account. But in special demand is “a bull and cow for each chief, and a boar for each reserve.” The incipient idea of the stock farm is indeed apparent in the universal demand of all: “A promise,” says one of the agents, “which the Indians never omit to mention, that they shall be supplied with a male and female of each animal used by a farmer.” But the transformation of the wild hunter into an industrious agriculturist is a difficult process; and even in the new generation, born under such changed conditions, the Indian boy shows much greater aptitude for mechanical employments; and takes more readily to the work of the carpenter than to that of tilling the soil, which, so long as the Indian was its lord, was practised exclusively by the women of the tribe.

Could the older condition of interblended prairie life have been sufficiently long perpetuated, the results would far more fully have presented results in close analogy to the intermingling of Europe’s aboriginal and Aryan races in prehistoric times. A settlement begun by Lord Selkirk in 1811, was formed on the Red River within the area now embraced in the Province of Manitoba. It consisted of hardy Orkney men and Sutherlandshire Highlanders; and on the amalgamation of the North-West and the Hudson Bay Companies, the settlement received considerable additions to its numbers. When at length the great fur Companies’ supremacy came to an end, the community numbered upwards of two thousand whites, chiefly occupied in farming, or in the service of the Company. At a later date, another settlement was formed on the Assiniboine river, chiefly by French Canadians. In those, as at the forts and trading-posts of the Hudson Bay Company, the settlers consisted chiefly of young men. They had no choice but to wed or cohabit with the Indian women; and the result has been, not only the growth of a half-breed population greatly out-numbering the Whites, but the formation of a tribe of half-breeds, divided into two distinct bands, according to their Scottish or French paternity, who kept themselves distinct in manners, habits, and allegiance, alike from the Whites and the Indians.

This rise of an independent half-breed tribe is one of the most remarkable results of the great, though undesigned, ethnological experiment which has been in progress ever since the meeting of the diverse races of the Old and New World on the continent of America; and when the peculiar circumstances which favoured this result came to an end, it became a matter of great interest to note the most striking phases presented by it, before they are effaced by the influx of European emigration. I accordingly printed and circulated as widely as possible a set of queries relative to the Indian and half-breed population both of Canada and the Hudson Bay territory; and from the returns made to me by Hudson Bay factors, missionaries, and others, most of the following results are derived. The number of the settled population, either half-breed or more or less of Indian blood, in Red River and the surrounding settlements was about 7200. The intermarriage there has been chiefly with Indian women of the plain Crees, though alliances also occur with the Swampies (another branch of the Crees), and with Sioux, Chippeway, and Blackfeet women. But the most noticeable differences are traceable to the white paternity. The French half-breeds have more demonstrativeness and vivacity, but they are reported to take less readily to the steady drudgery of the farm than those of Scotch descent. But, at best, the temptations of a border settlement, with its buffalo hunts and its chief market for peltries, were little calculated to develop the industrious habits of a settled community; and the intrusion of farmers from the old provinces, and immigrants from Europe, ignorant of their habits and wholly indifferent to their interests, necessarily interfered with the healthful process of transformation into a settled industrious community of civilised half-breeds.

Some of the results elicited by the inquiries are of value in their bearing on the question of mixed races, and the apparent tendency to develop permanent varieties; and all the more so as the data thus obtained show the condition of the North-West community immediately prior to the formation of the Province of Manitoba, and the inauguration of the revolution which inevitably followed in its train. The half-breeds are a large and robust race, with greater powers of endurance than the native Indian. Mr. S. J. Dawson, of the Red River Exploring Expedition, speaks of the French half-breeds as a gigantic race as compared with the French Canadians of Lower Canada. Professor Hind refers in equally strong language to their great physical powers and vigorous muscular developments; and the venerable Archdeacon Hunter, of Red River, replied in answer to my inquiry: “In what respects do the half-breed Indians differ from the pure Indians as to habits of life, courage, strength, increase of numbers, etc.?” “They are superior in every respect, both mentally and physically.” Much concurrent evidence points to the fact that the families descended from mixed parentage are larger than those of the whites; and though the results are in some degree counteracted by a tendency to consumption, yet it does not amount to such a source of diminution on the whole as to interfere with their steady numerical increase. One of the questions circulated by me was in this form: “State any facts tending to prove or disprove that the offspring descended from mixed White and Indian blood fails in a few generations.” To this the Rev. J. Gilmour answered: “I know many large and healthy families of partial Indian blood, and have formed the opinion that they are likely to perpetuate a hardy race.” The venerable Archdeacon Hunter, familiar with the facts by long residence as a clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church among the mixed population of the Red River Settlement, answered still more decidedly: “The offspring descended from mixed White and Indian blood does not fail, but, generally speaking, by intermarriages it becomes very difficult to determine whether they are pure Whites or half-breeds.” Living, however, for many years among a people in whom the Indian traits are more or less traceable, it is probable that Archdeacon Hunter is less attracted by the modified, ample black hair, the large full mouth, and the dark, though gentle and softly expressive eye, which strikes a stranger on first coming among any frontier population of mixed blood. The half-breeds also retain much of the reserved and unimpressible manner of the Indian; though a good deal of intercourse with the native race has led me to the conclusion that this is more of an acquired habit than a strictly hereditary trait: a piece of Indian education akin to certain habits of social life universally inculcated among ourselves. When off his guard, the wild Indian betrays great inquisitiveness, and when relaxing over the camp-fire after a laborious day gives free play to mirth and loquacity.

So far, however, much that has been said applies to the mixed population of the Red River Settlement, living on a perfect equality with the white settlers, and constituting an integral part of the colony. They are neither to be confounded with the remarkable tribe of half-breed hunters, nor with the Indians of mixed blood already described, on older Canadian reserves. Remote as this settlement has hitherto been from ordinary centres of colonisation, and inaccessible except through the agency of the Hudson Bay Company, every tendency has been to encourage the introduction of the young adventurer, trapper, or voyageur, rather than the married settler. The habits of life incident to the fur trade made the distinction less marked between the Indian and the white man; and thus a people of peculiar type grew up there as intermediate in habits and mode of life as in blood from those of the old settled provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. Much property is now possessed by men of mixed blood. Their young men have in some cases been sent to the colleges of Canada, and, after creditably distinguishing themselves, have returned to lend their aid in the progress of the settlement. Thus a favourable concurrence of circumstances in all respects tended to give ample opportunity for testing the experiment of intermingling the blood of Europe and America, and raising up a civilised race peculiar to its soil. With the rapid influx of emigrants; the settling of the prairie lands with a population of yeomen farmers; and the rise of villages and towns along the railways and river highways; the ultimate absorption of this half-breed population, and its merging into the homogeneous community that will ultimately be fashioned out of a meeting of very diverse settlers, is inevitable. Icelanders and Danes, Germans, Russians, Italians, French, Highland crofters, and Irish Celts, are all being interfused into the new community of which the half-breed element will form no unimportant factor.

But a greater interest attaches to that other class of half-breeds already alluded to, which the new order of things has inevitably tended to efface, though not necessarily to eradicate, as an element in the population of the future province. Besides the civilised race of half-breeds, mingling on a perfect equality with the Whites; brought up in many cases in full enjoyment of such domestic training as the Hudson Bay factor and hunter could furnish in the wilderness; there remained apart from them a half-breed race, the offspring born to native women as the inevitable results of such a social condition as pertains to the occupants of the forts and trading-posts of that remote region. These half-breed buffalo hunters were wholly distinct from the civilised settlers, and yet more nearly related to them than to the wild Indian tribes. They belonged to the settlement, possessed land, and cultivated farms, though their agricultural labours were very much subordinated to the claims of the chase, and they scarcely aimed at more than supplying their own wants. The two bands numbered in all between 6000 and 7000. Each division had its separate tribal organisation and distinct hunting-grounds, extending beyond the British American frontier. In 1849 the White Horse plain half-breeds on the Strayenne river, Dakota territory, rendered the following returns to an officer appointed to take the census: “700 half-breeds, 200 Indians, 603 carts, 600 horses, 200 oxen, 400 dogs, and 1 cat.” This may illustrate the general character of a people partaking of the nomad habits of the Indian, and yet possessed of a considerable amount of movable property and real estate. They are a hardy race, fearless horsemen, and capable of enduring the greatest privations. They have adopted the Roman Catholic faith, and specially coveted the presence of a priest with them when on their hunting expeditions. The mass was celebrated on the open prairie, and was prized as a guarantee of success in the hunting-field. On such expeditions, it has to be borne in view, they were not tempted by mere love of the chase or by the prospect of a supply of game. Winter-hunting supplies to the trapper the valued peltries of the fur-bearing animals; but they depended on the summer and autumn buffalo hunts for the supply of pemmican, which furnished one of the main resources of the whole Hudson Bay population. The summer hunt kept them abroad on the prairie from about the 15th of June to the end of August, and smaller bands resumed the hunt in the autumn. With this as the favourite and engrossing work of the tribe, it is inevitable that farming could be carried on only in the most desultory fashion. Nevertheless, the severity of the winter compelled them to make provision for the numerous horses and oxen on which the summer hunt depended; and thus habits of industry and forethought were engendered.

The half-breed hunters regarded the Sioux and Blackfeet as their natural enemies, and carried on warfare with them much after the fashion of the Indian tribes that have acquired fire-arms and horses; but they gave proof of their “Christian” civilisation by taking no scalps. In the field, whether preparing for hunting or war, the superiority of the half-breeds was strikingly apparent. They then evinced a discipline, courage, and self-control, of which the wild Sioux, Crees, or Blackfeet are wholly incapable; and they accordingly looked with undisguised contempt on their Indian foes.

Such are some of the most noticeable characteristics of this interesting race, called into being by the contact of the European with the native tribes of the forest and prairie. With so many of the elements of civilisation which it is found so hard to introduce among the most intelligent native tribes, an aptitude for social organisation, and a thorough independence of all external superintendence or control, there seems no reason to doubt that here is an example of an intermediate race, combining characteristics derived from two extremely diverse types of man, with all apparent promise of perpetuity and increase, if they could have been secured in the exclusive occupation of the region in which they have originated. But the railway has traversed the trail of the buffalo; and they have been compelled to make their choice between conformity to the industrial habits of agricultural settlers, or follow the herds of the buffalo in search of some remote wilderness beyond the shriek of the locomotive and the hail of the pioneer immigrant.

The inevitable revolution was not permitted to be inaugurated without very practical protest. The Red River Expedition of Sir Garnet Wolseley in 1870 was directed to put down a revolt of the half-breeds, under their leader, Louis Riel, resolute to oppose the intrusion of immigrant settlers. The struggle was renewed in 1885 under the same leader, but with the more legitimate grievance of neglected land claims, and the assertion of their rights to property in the prairie lands and on the river fronts. They were encountered by a Canadian volunteer force; Batoche, their little urban stronghold, was captured; and the North-West rebellion was brought to an end. But it was freely acknowledged that, poorly armed and ill-provided with the indispensable requisites for meeting a well-organised force of militia, under an experienced British soldier, General Middleton, they displayed unflinching courage, and held out bravely against overwhelming numbers furnished with the deadly appliances of modern warfare.

It could not be supposed that the invasion of the western hemisphere by the wanderers from the later homes of the Aryans beyond the Atlantic could reproduce in all respects the old phenomena that marked the displacement of Europe’s prehistoric races. But making due allowance for the changes wrought on the Aryan stock by the civilising influences of twenty centuries or more; and the consequent disparity between them and the rude hunter tribes of the American forests and prairies; much remains to aid us in the interpretation of the past. Ethnological investigation and induction enable us to realise the condition of Europe when its thinly-dispersed population consisted of a dark-skinned race, small in stature, and, as we may conceive, with hair and eyes of corresponding hue. Sepulchral deposits and the chance disclosures in their old cave-shelters have made us familiar with their physical form. Their modern representatives survive on the outskirts of Europe’s civilised centres. Still more, their ethnical characteristics have been perpetuated by the very same process as may now be seen in progress in the frontier states of America and the newest provinces of the Canadian Dominion. Not only are the modern representatives of Europe’s Allophyliæ to be found among the Lapps, Finns, and the Iberians of Northern and Western Europe; but everywhere in the British Isles, and throughout Western Europe, the Melanochroic elements stand out distinctly from the predominant Xanthocroic stock, among a people unconscious of any diversity of race. Here then we see evidences of the intermingling and the partial absorption of the Australioid savage of prehistoric Europe by the later Xanthocroi, the product of which survives in the brunette of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. In Britain the contrasting characteristics of the diverse ethnical elements attracted the attention of Tacitus in the first century of our era. In Spain the Iberian still preserves the evidence of an individuality apart from the Indo-European races in the vernacular Euskara, while a large Moorish element in the southern portion of the peninsula perpetuates the results of another foreign intrusion and interblending of races within historic times.

The diversity apparent in some of the results of the meeting of dissimilar races in the Old World and the New, is due to the geographical characteristics of the two hemispheres. Alike by sea and land, Europe could be entered by invading colonists, gradually, and at many diverse points. Hence, the aggression of the higher races may be assumed to have begun while the difference between them and the aborigines of Europe was much less than that which distinguishes the European from the Bed Indian savage. The conquest would thus be protracted over a period probably of many generations, and so would involve no such collisions as inevitably result in the destruction of savage races when brought into abrupt contact with those far advanced in civilisation.

But the peculiar relations of the frontier populations of the New World, and especially of the factors, trappers, and voyageurs of the Hudson Bay Company, with the native tribes, helped to create a partial equality between the civilised European and the savage, and so to beget results akin to those which have left such enduring evidences of the mingling of diverse races in the population of Europe.

This accordingly suggests a question affecting the whole relations of British and European colonists generally to the native population of new lands settled and colonised by them. Not only English, Scotch, and Irish, but German, Norwegian, Icelandic, French, Polish, Russian, and Italian emigrants flock in thousands to the New World, merge in the common stock, and in the third generation learn to speak of themselves as “Anglo-Saxon!” The investigations of ethnologists have well-nigh put an end to the supposed purity of an Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Scandinavian population in all but the assumed purely Celtic areas of the British Islands; and the latest system of ethnical classification is based on the recognition of the survival in the mixed population of modern Britain of a race-element which still perpetuates an enduring influence derived from aborigines of Europe anterior to the advent of Celt or Teuton. The power of absorption and assimilation of a predominant race is great; and ethnological displacement is no more necessarily a process of extinction now than in primitive times; though intermixture must ever be most easily effected where the ethnical distinctions are least strongly marked, and the conditions of civilisation are nearly akin.

The permanent survival of a disparate type in America perpetuating the evidences of the interblending of the Red and White races may be doubted. That some ineffaceable results will remain I cannot doubt; but the enormous disparity in numbers between the millions of European nationalities, and the little remnant of the native race brought in contact with them, precludes the possibility of results such as have perpetuated in the modern races of Europe elements derived from some of its earliest savage tribes.

It has indeed been such a favourite idea with some physiologists that in the undoubted developments of something like a distinct Anglo-American type, there is a certain approximation to the Indian, that Dr. Carpenter, in his Essay on the Varieties of Mankind, lays claim to originality in the idea “that the conformation of the cranium seems to have undergone a certain amount of alteration, even in the Anglo-Saxon race of the United States, which assimilates it in some degree to that of the aboriginal inhabitants.” This he dwells on in some detail, and arrives at what he seems to regard as an indisputable conclusion, that the peculiar American physiognomy to which he adverts presents a transition, however slight, toward that of the North American Indian. But the long-cherished opinion, to which Dr. Morton gave currency, of the existence of one special type of skull-form common to the whole aborigines of America, has been abandoned by all who have given any attention to the evidence which Dr. Morton’s own Crania Americana supplies. I doubt if the idea of such an approximation of the Anglo-American to the Red Indian type would ever have occurred to a physiologist of Canada or of New England, to whom abundant opportunities for comparing the Indian and Anglo-American features, and of noting the actual transitional forms between the two, are accessible. But if such examples can be clearly recognised, they may be assigned with probability to a reverting to the type of some Bed ancestress whose blood is transmitted to a late descendant.

But it is otherwise with the millions of the Coloured race who now constitute the indigenous population of the Southern States. They are at home there in a climate to which the White race adapts itself with very partial success. The offspring of white fathers and of mothers of the African races, they have multiplied to millions; and now with the recently acquired rights of citizenship, and with the advantages of education within their reach, the country is their own. The very social prejudices against miscegenation protect them from the effacing influences to which the Indian half-breed is exposed by ever recurrent intermarriage with the dominant race. As yet, there are discernible the various degrees of heredity from the Mulatto to the Quinteron. But the abolishing of slavery has placed the Coloured race on an entirely new footing; and left as it now is, free to enjoy the healthful social relations of a civilised community, and protected by the very prejudices of race and caste from any large intermixture with the White race, it can scarcely admit of doubt that there will survive on the American continent a Melanocroi of its own, more distinctly separated from the White race, not only by heredity, but also by climatic influences, than the “dark Whites” of Europe are from the blonde types of Hellenic, Slavic, Teutonic, or Scandinavian stocks.

Consistently with the recognition of the brain as the organ of intellectual activity, it seems not unnatural to assume for man, as the rational animal, a very distinctive cerebral development. One of the most distinguished of living naturalists, Professor Owen, has even made this organ the basis of a system of classification, by means of which he separates man into a sub-class, distinct from all other mammalia. But while a comparison between man and the anthropoid apes, as the animals most nearly approximating to him in physical structure, lends confirmation to the idea not only that a well-developed brain is essential to natural activity, but that there is a close relation between the development of the brain and the manifestation of intellectual power; the distinctive features in the human brain, as compared with those of the anthropomorpha, prove to be greatly less than had been assumed under imperfect knowledge. The substantial difference is in volume. “No one, I presume,” says Darwin, “doubts that the large size of the brain in man, relatively to his body, in comparison to that of the gorilla or orang, is closely connected with his higher mental powers”;^[152] and it might not unfairly be reasoned from analogy, that the same test distinguishes the intellectual man from the stolid, and the civilised man from the savage. A careful study of the subject, however, shows some remarkable deviations from such a scale of progression. Attention is indeed directed to greatly more ample proofs of inequality between the organic source of power and the manifestations of mental energy; as, for example, in the ant, with its cerebral ganglia not so large as the quarter of a small pin’s head, displaying instincts and apparent affections of wonderful intensity and compass. Viewed in this aspect, “the brain of an ant is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more marvellous than the brain of man.” Here, however, we look on elements of contrast rather than analogy; and seek in vain in this direction for any appreciable test of the soundness of the popular belief in the size of the brain as a measure of intellectual power. It is otherwise when we turn to the anthropomorpha. There, alike in the scientific and in the popular creed, very special and exceptional affinities to man are admitted; and a careful study of their anatomical structure tends to increase the recognised points of analogy.

Mr. Lockhart Clarke, in a contribution to Dr. Maudsley’s work on the Physiology and Pathology of Mind, gives a minute description of the concentric layers of nervous substance which combine to form the convolutions of the human brain; and of the forms and disposition of the various nerve-cells of which its vesicular structure consists. Comparing the human brain with those of other animals, he says: “Between the cells of the convolutions in man and those of the ape tribe I could not perceive any difference whatever; but they certainly differ in some respects from those of the larger mammalia: from those, for instance, of the ox, sheep, or cat.”^[153] Apart from the difference in volume (55 to 115 cubic inches), the only distinctive features, according to Professor Huxley, between the brain of the anthropomorpha and that of man, are “the filling up of the occipito-temporal fissure; the greater complexity and less symmetry of the other sulci and gyri; the less excavation of the orbital face of the frontal lobe; and the larger size of the cerebral hemispheres, as compared with the cerebellum and the cerebral nerves.”

The brain of the orang is the one which seems most nearly to approximate to that of man. In volume it is about 26 or 27 cubic inches; or about half the minimum size of a normal human brain. The frontal height is greater than in that of other anthropomorpha; the frontal lobe is in all respects larger as compared with the occipital lobe; and certain folds of brain-substance, styled “bridging convulsions,” which in the human brain are interposed between the parietal and occipital lobes, also occur, though greatly reduced, in the brain of the orang; while they appear to be wholly wanting in the chimpanzee, the gibbon, and other apes which superficially present a greater resemblance to man. Referring to the convolutions of the central cerebral lobe, Huschke says: “With their formation in the ape, the brain enters the last stage of development until it arrives at its perfection in man”; and the higher class of brains may be arranged between the extremes of poorly and richly convoluted examples.

But it must not be overlooked that, apart from structural differences, relative, and not absolute mass and weight of brain has to be considered, otherwise the elephant and the whale would take the foremost place. “The brain of the porpoise,” Professor Huxley remarks,^[154] “is quite wonderful for its mass, and for the development of the cerebral convolutions”; but it is the centre of a nervous system of corresponding capacity, while as compared with the size of the animal, the brain is not relatively large. Vogt states the weight of the human body to be to the brain, on an average, as 36 to 1; whereas in the most intelligent animals the difference is rarely less than 100 to 1.

Assuming the existence of some uniform relation between the size of the brain and the development of the intellectual faculties, along with whatever is recognised as most closely analogous to them in the lower animals, it might be anticipated that we should find not only a graduated development of brain in the anthropomorpha as they approximate in resemblance to man; but, still more, that the progressive stages from the lowest savage condition to that of the most civilised nations should be traceable in a comparative size and weight of brain. Dr. Carl Vogt, after discussing certain minor and doubtful exceptions, thus proceeds: “We find that there is an almost regular series in the cranial capacity of such nations and races as, since historic times, have taken no part in civilisation. Australians, Hottentots, and Polynesians, nations in the lowest state of barbarism, commence the series; and no one can deny that the place they occupy in relation to cranial capacity and cerebral weight corresponds with the degree of their intellectual capacity and civilisation.”^[155] But the position thus confidently assigned to the Polynesians receives no confirmation from the evidence supplied by the measurements of Dr. J. B. Davis, in his Thesaurus Craniorum; and a careful study of the subject reveals other remarkable deviations from such a scale of progression, not only in individuals but in races. To these exceptional deviations, with their bearing on the comparative capacity of races, the following remarks are chiefly directed. The largest and heaviest brains do indeed appear, for the most part, to pertain to the nations highest in civilisation, and to the most intelligent of their number. But this cannot be asserted as a uniform law, either in relation to races or individuals. The more carefully the requisite evidence is accumulated, the less does it appear that the volume of brain, or the cubic contents of the skull, supply a uniform gauge of intellectual capacity. In the researches which have thus far been instituted into the characteristics of the human brain among the lowest races, the development is in many respects remarkable; and, as was to be expected, no organic differences between diverse races of men have been traced.

Professor C. Luigi Calori has published the results of a careful examination of the brain of a negro of Guinea. It presented the marked excess of length over breadth so characteristic of the negro cranium; but in other respects it corresponded generally to the fully developed European brain. The distribution of the white and gray substances was the same; the cerebral convolutions were collected into an equal number of lobes; and the only special difference was that the convolutions were a little less frequently folded, and the separating sulci somewhat less marked than in the average European brain. But even in those respects the complication was great. The actual weight of the brain, according to Professor Calori, was 1260 grammes, equivalent to 44.4 cubic inches. The complexity of convolution, and consequent extension of superficies of the encephalon, appears to be an essential element in the development of the brain as the organ of highest mental capacity; and to the cerebrum, apparently, the true functions of intellectual activity pertain. Professor Wagner undertook the measurement of the convex surface of the frontal lobe in a series of brains. The heaviest, as a rule, had also the greatest development of surface. But the two elements were not in uniform ratio. Some of the lighter brains presented a much greater degree of convolution and consequent extent of convex superficies than others which ranked above them in weight. It is thus apparent that in estimating the comparative characteristics of brains, various elements are necessary for an exhaustive comparison. Besides the functional differences of the cerebrum, cerebellum, and pons varolii, they have different specific gravities, so that brains of equal weight may differ widely in quality. Dr. Peacock, taking distilled water as 1000, gives the values of the subdivisions of the brain thus: cerebrum, 1034; cerebellum, 1041; pons varolii, 1040. Again, Dr. Sankey states the mean specific gravity of the gray matter of the brain in either sex as 1034.6, and of the white matter as 1041.2. The variations from these results, as given by Bastian, Thurnam, and others, are trifling. But it is significant to note that recent researches show that where greater specific gravity of brain occurs in the insane, it appears to be limited to the gray matter.^[156] Professor Goodsir maintained that symmetry of brain has more to do with the higher faculties than bulk of form. It is, at any rate, apparent that two brains of equal weight may differ widely in quality.

Nevertheless, the popular estimate embodied in such expressions as “a good head,” “a long-headed fellow,” and “a poor head,” like many other popular inductions, has truth for its basis. Up to a certain stage the growth of the brain determines the capacity of the skull. Then it seems as though more complex convolutions accompanied the packing of the elaborated cerebral mass within the fixed limits of its osseous chamber.

A comparison of races, based on minute investigation of an adequate number of brains of fair typical examples, may be expected to yield important results; but in the absence of such direct evidence, the chief data available for this purpose are derived from measurements of the internal capacity of their skulls. Among English observers who have devoted themselves to this class of observations, the foremost place is due to Dr. J. Barnard Davis, who, in 1867, summed up the results of his extensive researches in a contribution to the Royal Society, entitled “Contributions towards determining the Weight of the Brain in different Races of Man.”^[157] Inferior as such evidence must necessarily be, if compared with the examination of the brain itself, nevertheless the number of skulls of the different races gauged unquestionably furnishes some highly valuable data for ethnical comparison. The evidence, moreover, is obtained from a source in some respects less variable than the encephalon; and will always constitute a corrective element in estimating results based on direct examinations of the brain. Dr. Davis, indeed, claims “that the examination of a large series of skulls in ascertaining their capacities and deducing from those capacities the average volume of the brain, affords in some respects more available data for determining this relative volume for any particular race than the weighing of the brain itself.” The defect is, that its most important results are necessarily based on the assumption of a uniform density of brain; whereas some notable ethnical differences, hereafter referred to, may prove to be due to the fact that certain races derive their special characteristics from a prevailing diversity in this very respect.

But the extensive observations of Dr. Davis, as of Dr. Morton, have a special value from the fact that each furnishes results based on a uniform system of observation; for the diverse methods and materials employed by different observers in gauging the human skull have greatly detracted from their practical value. In a communication by the late Professor Jeffreys Wyman to the Boston Natural History Society,^[158] he presented the results of a series of measurements of the internal capacity of the same skull with pease, beans, rice, flax-seed, shot, and coarse and fine sand. From repeated experiments he arrived at the conclusion that the apparent capacity varied according to the different substances used, so that the same skull measured respectively, with pease 1193 centimetres, with shot 1201.8, with rice 1220.2, and with fine sand 1313 centimetres. Professor Wyman was led to the conclusion that, for exactness, small shot, as employed latterly by Dr. Morton, is preferable to sand, were it not for its weight, which, in the case of old and fragile skulls, is apt to be destructive to them. With a view to avoid the latter evil, Dr. J. B. Davis has used fine Calais sand of 1.425 specific gravity. The diversity in apparent volume, consequent on the employment of different substances in gauging the internal capacity of the skull, necessarily detracts from the value of comparative results of Morton, Davis, and others. But the elaborate measurements of their great collections of human crania furnish reliable series of data, each uniform in system, and sufficiently minute to satisfy many requirements of comparative craniometry and approximate cerebral development.

Without assuming an invariable correspondence in cubical capacity and brain-weight, there is a sufficient approximation in the cubical capacity of the skull and the average weight of the encephalon to render the deductions derived from gauging the capacities of skulls of different races an important addition to this department of comparative ethnology. For minute cerebral comparisons, however, it is apparent that much more is required; and the special functions assigned to the various organs within the cranium have to be kept in view. Of these the medulla oblongata, in direct contact with the spinal cord, is now recognised as the centre of the vital actions in breathing and swallowing; and is believed also to be the direct source of the muscular action employed in speech. Next to it are the sensory ganglia, arranged in pairs along the base of the brain. To the cerebellum, which the phrenologist sets apart as the source of the emotions and passions embraced in his terminology of amativeness, philoprogenitiveness, etc., physiologists now assign the function of conveying to the mind the conditions of tension and relaxation of the muscles, and so controlling their voluntary action. But above all those is the cerebrum, or brain-proper, consisting of two large lobes of nervous substance, which in man are so large that, when viewed vertically, they cover and conceal the cerebellum. To this organ is specially assigned emotion, volition, and ratiocination. It is the assumed seat of the mind; and, in a truer sense than the skull—