223 See above, p. 85.
224 Yvan, De France en Chine, p. 175, Paris, 1853. [“M. Périer has mentioned, according to Yvan, the beauty of the inhabitants of the island of Réunion, who descend from a few couples only, and yet have known how to preserve their purity of blood” (An Inquiry into Consanguineous Marriages and Pure Races, Dr. E. Dally; transl. by H. J. C. Beavan, Anthrop. Review, p. 97, 1864).—Editor.]
225 White, Account of the regular Gradation of Man, p. 112. Morton, Crania Americana, Introduction. Prince de Wied, Voyage au Brésil, vol. ii, p. 310. Bory de St. Vincent, Essai Zoologique sur le genre humain, vol. ii, p. 20.
226 Desmoulins, Histoire Naturelle des races humaines, p. 162. Indigenous Races of the Earth, p. 585.
227 White, Account of the regular Gradation of Man, p. 104.
228 W. Edwards, Des Caractères Physiologiques des races humaines, p. 14. Niebuhr (transl.), Lectures on Ethnography, vol. i, p. 374.
229 John Hunter also thought that man was originally black; he had remarked that domestic animals become white by age. Compare White, Account of the regular Gradation of Man, p. 100. Hunter thus confounded men with domestic animals. We have already said what must be thought of this connexion.
230 Compare Morel, Dégénérescence de l’espèce humaine, p. 5, Paris, 1857.
231 See above, p. 73.
232 Climateric influences act probably upon wild animals in the same manner; it must be remarked, however, that a captive animal and a man, taken to another country, are not exposed in the same degree to the action of the new medium; conditions are not similarly altered as regards both of them. Sometimes the man, sometimes the animal, will have most chances of resistance; the one being always obliged by his master to submit to an intellectual government, approaching as much as possible his former state; the other, abandoned to himself, and drawn fatally into the new habits which he sees around him.
233 See, on this point, Boudin, Géographie Médicale, vol. ii, p. 15, Paris, 1857. Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes, p. 230, 1833. G. Pouchet, Des Colorations de l’épiderme, 4to, Paris, 1864.
234 [Dr. Waitz, in his Introduction to Anthropology (translated and edited by J. F. Collingwood), gives an explanation concerning the colouring matter in the Negro, which is very curious, but with which, however, he does not agree; viz., “that in hot climates the amount of oxygen inspired is insufficient to change the carbon into carbonic acid, and that the unconsumed carbon is deposited in the pigment-cells of the skin.... It is, however, difficult to admit that the browning of the skin in our climate in summer is produced by the same causes as the black colour of the Negro, and that it would only require a greater intensity and a longer duration to become so entirely.” Part. I, sect. i, p. 35.—Editor.]
235 The precociousness of the genital functions is in direct relation with this general fact.
236 W. Edwards, Caractères Physiologiques, etc., p. 14. “The tropics alone produce the combination of infantine grace with the full development of female maturity.” Smith, Natural History, etc., p. 190. See, also, Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral, vol. ii; and Davy, Account of Ceylon. These two authors in particular have quite appreciated these changes.
237 Boudin, Géographie Médicale, vol. ii, p. 150, 1857.
238 Meeting of November 7, 1861.
239 [See above, p. 59, note.—Editor.]
240 It would appear from the documents collected by Nott (Two Lectures on the Natural History of the Caucasian and Negro Races, Mobile, 1844, compare Boudin, Géogr. Méd., vol. ii, p. 144), that as we advance towards the upper part of the Northern States, madness becomes very frequent among the Negroes. It reaches the proportion of one case of insanity among twenty-eight sane persons in Massachusetts and Maine. We hesitate in acknowledging climateric influence, because the number of cases seems to increase relatively to the degree of instruction among the people; not that madness depends on education, but because it finds out a great number of cases of which we should otherwise have been ignorant, as often happens in the east among a less enlightened people.
241 Compare Boudin, Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie, August 1, 1861.
242 Compare Boudin, Traité de Géographie Médicale, 1857, Introduction.
243 New York Medical Journal, p. 399, February 1831 (see Hirsch, Handbuch der Historisch-geographischen Pathologie, § 35, p. 1).
244 Some Account of the Last Yellow Fever Epidemic of British Guiana, p. 59, 8vo, London, 1850.
245 Barton, Report of the Sanitary Commission of New Orleans for 1853, p. 248, New Orleans, 1854 (see Hirsch, Handbuch, etc., § 35). He brings forward several pieces of evidence in the same question. They seem to us too decisive, in a polygenist point of view, for us not to give the entire list of his quotations: Romay, Diss. sobre la Fiebre Amarilla, etc., Habana, 1797: Arnold, Treatise on the Bilious Remittent Fever, etc., p. 26, London, 1840: Zimpel, Jenaische Annalen für Med., i, p. 68: Dickinson, Observations on the Inflammatory Endemic incident to Strangers in the West Indies, etc., p. 13, London, 1819: Ferguson, Notes and Reflections, p. 150, London, 1846: Dickson, Philadelphia Med. and Phys. Journal, iii, p. 250: Lallemand, Das Gelbfieber, etc., p. 121. [Schomburgk, A Description of British Guiana, etc., p. 22, London, 1840.—Editor.]
246 Words borrowed from the definition of species by Isidore Geoffroy, Histoire Naturelle Générale, vol. ii, p. 437. “The act which appears most natural to living beings who are perfect, and who are not abortive, nor produced by spontaneous generation, is the production of a being like themselves, the animal producing an animal, the plant a plant, so as to participate in the eternal and divine nature as much as they can.”—De l’âme, book ii, chap. iv, § 2, transl. by Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire.
247 Nott and Gliddon, Indigenous Races of the Earth, p. 443.
248 Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, p. 373, 1854.
249 See Boudin, Géographie Médicale, Introduction, p. 39.
250 See Morel, Traité des Dégénérescences.
251 Périer, Société d’Anthropologie, meeting of April 21, 1864.
252 Des Races Humaines, 1845.
253 Account of the Regular Gradation of Man, p. 146.
254 Compare W. Edwards, Des Caractères Physiologiques, etc., p. 29.
255 Individual distinctions can only, then, be based on the alterations of type, in characteristics which are not those of the supposed ideal. It hence results that, if we have lived with a stranger who has all the characteristics of his race well marked, we think that we see him while travelling among his fellow countrymen.
256 “It is one of the clearest facts in the animal, as well as in the vegetable world; all races generally reproduce and perpetuate themselves without mingling and confounding one with the other.”—Prichard, Histoire Naturelle de l’Homme, vol. i., p. 17. Compare Morel, Dégénérescences de l’espèce humaine, p. 2.
257 Third number. Most of the articles in this remarkable production are unsigned.
258 “No race will amalgamate with another; they die out, or seem slowly to be becoming extinct.” Compare the Ethnological Journal, p. 98.
259 “We arrive at the fundamental conclusion that it is useless for people belonging to varieties of different races, but neighbours, to ally themselves together; part of the new generation will always preserve the primitive type.”—See Courtet de l’Isle, Tableau Ethnographique, p. 77.
260 Latham thinks, however, that he has discovered some vestiges of the Phœnician race in Africa and Cornwall. Compare Knox, The Races of Men, 1850.
261 [Small columns, having neither base nor capital.—Editor.]
262 It is the case with the hippopotamus and the lion.
263 Thus, at least, Buffon translates “Gothi corpore proceriore, capillis albidis rectis, oculorum indibus cinere—cærulescentibus.”—Linnæus, Fauna succica, p. 1.
264 By virtue of the law which makes us find a family likeness in an individual after it has been absent, or rather hidden, for one or more generations.
265 “Rutilæ comæ, magni artus.”—Tacitus, Agricola, ii, § 11.
266 “Colorati vultus et torti plerumque crines.”—Idem, ibidem.
267 Idem, ibidem.
268 See Latham, Celtic Language, p. 371. J. B. Davis and J. Thurnam, Crania Britannica, p. 53. Garnet, in the Transactions of the Philological Society. R. Cull and Latham, in the Edinburgh New Physical Journal, 1854. Périer, Fragments Ethnologiques, Paris, 1857.
269 J. Philips, see British Association, 1849.
270 The name itself of this district shows, however, the habitation of these parts by the Scandinavians.
271 Compare W. Edwards, Des Caractères Physiologiques des Races Humaines. Paris, 1829.
272 See Périer, Fragments Ethnologiques, Paris, 1857.
273 Recherches sur l’Ethnologie de la France (Mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie, vol. i, p. 1). See, also, the discussion which followed the reading of this paper (Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie, meetings of July 21 and August 4, 1859).
274 We may remark this line is precisely perpendicular to the climateric parallels which divide France.
275 [The standard in France is, we believe, five feet.—Editor.]
276 Peru, 1846.
277 Nicaragua: its People, vol. ii, p. 153, New York, 1852.
278 Essai sur l’Inégalité des Races Humaines, Paris, 1852.
279 Rapports du Physique et du Moral, vol. i, p. 484.
280 M. Morel, Traité des Dégénérescences.
281 [“All races of mankind intermix, they are fertile, producing cross-breeds, mulattoes, mestizoes, etc., which again are productive. All human races constitute, therefore, on physiological principles, but one species, which is here identical with genus humanum.” So thinks Professor Rudolph Wagner, but his arguments are not very satisfactory. He refers varieties of race in a great measure to climatic influence. See Creation of Man and Substance of the Mind (Anthrop. Rev., vol. i, p. 229).—Editor.]
282 Compare Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie, vol. iii, p. 175.
283 In applying these principles to family consanguinity, we may say in a general manner, that it will be favourable or not to the offspring according to the state of the parents. If the parents are perfectly healthy, and exempt from all commencing degeneracy, they can only give birth to children at least as healthy as themselves. If one of the two parents is tainted with a commencement of degeneracy, the descendant, in his quality of offspring, will perhaps bear the trace of this degeneracy, but sensibly weakened. If the two parents are separately tainted with a different commencement of degeneracy, one or the other ought to continue it in the child, only in a lesser degree. But if the same degeneracy has already tainted both the parents, the offspring will show it in a greater degree, and will tend towards entire disappearance.
284 Flourens, Histoire des Travaux de Buffon, p. 180.
285 [On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo, edited by C. Carter Blake, F.G.S., F.A.S.L.—Editor.]
286 Compare G. Pouchet, Précis d’Histologie Humaine, § 5.
287 “Ac Sylla quidem sodalis noster, fatus nos parva quæstione tanquam instrumento ingentem et gravem de origine mundi quæstionem subruere.” Quæstionem Convivalium, book ii, quest. 3; transl., edited by F. Didot, 1841.
288 Buffon said that (Suppléments, vol. iv, p. 335) this method of generation is not only the most frequent and the most general, but the most ancient, that is, the first and most universal one. Plutarch (Quæst. Conviv., book ii, quest. 3; transl., edited by F. Didot, 1841) makes the same remark: “Proinde probabile est primum ortum ex terra gignentis perfectione ac robore absolutum fuisse, nihilque indigentem hujusmodi instrumentis, receptaculis et vasis, qualia nunc ob imbecillitatem natura parit atque machinatur parientibus.”
289 It must not be forgotten, that organic substances are supposed to have been found even in the formation of certain aërolites.
290 É. Geoffroy, Comptes Rendus des séances de l’Académie des Sciences, vol. v, p. 193.
291 See Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Histoire Naturelle Générale, vol. iii, p. 210.
292 [We are almost tempted, in all kindness, to refer our author to the following remarks in the Reliques of Father Prout, p. 264. “I have been at some pains to acquire a comprehensive notion of the Count de Buffon’s system, and, aided by an old Jesuit, I have succeeded in condensing the voluminous dissertation into a few lines, for the use of those who are dissatisfied with the Mosaic statement:—

1. In the beginning was the sun, from which a splinter was shot off by chance, and that fragment was our globe.

2. And the globe had for its nucleus melted glass, with an envelope of hot water.

3. And it began to twirl round, and became somewhat flattened at the poles.

4. Now, when the water grew cool, insects began to appear, and shell-fish.

5. And from the accumulation of shells, particularly oysters (see vol. i, p. 14, 4to, 2nd ed.), the earth was gradually formed, with ridges of mountains, on the principle of the Monte Testacio at the gate of Rome.

6. But the melted glass kept warm for a long time, and the arctic climate was as hot in those days as the tropics now are,—witness a frozen rhinoceros found in Siberia.” Let the leaven work, although a mere joke to M. Pouchet’s reality.—Editor.]

293 Histoire Naturelle, vol. ix, p. 127, 1761. Étienne Geoffroy (Comptes Rendus, vol. iii, p. 29) says the same thing “as regards the actual constitution of the globe; each race is a species sui generis,—a form or combination of its own in nature.”
294 The terms of this definition are almost entirely borrowed from Isidore Geoffroy. By ending it with these words, “in the present order of things,” Isidore Geoffroy only defined the existing species, and took away, without any reason, the palæontologic species.
295 Lamarck, Discours de l’An XI, p. 45.
296 See Flourens, Examen du livre de M. Darwin sur l’Origine des Espèces, 18mo, Paris, 1864. We are at least astonished to find the name of the Geoffroys mentioned but once in such a work (p. 45). M. Flourens charges Darwin with only quoting the partisans of his own opinions (p. 40).
297 [See above, p. 84, note.—Editor.]
298 Sur l’Influence du monde ambiant, 1831 (Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences), vol. xii, p. 81.
299 Vol. ii, second part, 1859.
300 Philosophie Zoologique, vol. i, p. 221.
301 Système des Connaissances Positives, p. 143, 1820.
302 Discours de l’An XI, p. 45. He says, also, in another place (Philosophie Zoologique, vol. i, p. 66), “What we call species, has only a relative constancy in that state, and cannot be as ancient as nature itself.”
303 Lamarck, Organisation des Corps Vivants, p. 53.
304 For nature “time has no limit, and consequently has it always at its disposal.” Lamarck, Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres, p. 13, 1801.
305 Darwin On the Origin of Species, p. 518, London, 1861. “I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or less number. Analogy would lead me one step farther, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype.”
306 Compare Darwin On the Origin of Species, p. 96, 1861.
307 Histoire Naturelle Générale, vol. ii, p. 421, 1859.
308 “The observation of species in a state of nature, by revealing to us a multitude of modifications more or less important, cannot show us any serious deviation from the types formed or preserved by the influence of the existing state of things.” Isidore Geoffroy, Vie d’Étienne Geoffroy, p. 349.
309 See Leibnitz, Protogée, transl. by Bertrand de Saint-Germain, Introduction, p. 61.
310 Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie, February 22, 1858.
311 We shall be thanked for publishing here the following extract from a letter addressed to us by Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the 3rd of June, 1860, and which relates to all these questions. “I said, two or three years ago, as I have learnt from M. Lartet (who remembered the expression which I had myself forgotten), that the present movement of science tends to substitute in geology the idea of the evolution of the globe for that of revolutions. M. Lartet has taken up this view, and adheres to it. It is of great importance to me, as regards my works on species, in which we must in this case substitute the notion of evolution for that of revolution; revolutions are here pretended creations, abruptly successive. It is time to have done with these views, which, instead of taking creation as having been once concluded, make at every instant the Deus ex machinâ intervene.”
312 [“In the neighbourhood of Mount Ætna, or on the sides of that extensive mountain, there are beds of lava covered over with a considerable thickness of earth; and at least another, again, which though known from ancient monuments and historical records to have issued from the volcano at least two thousand years ago, is still almost entirely destitute of soil and vegetation; in one place a pit has been cut through seven different strata of lava; and these have been found separated from each other by almost as many thick beds of rich earth. Now, from the fact that a stratum of lava, two thousand years old, is yet scantily covered with earth, it has been inferred by the ingenious Canon Recupero, who has laboured thirty years on the natural history of Mount Ætna, that the lowest of these strata which have been found divided by so many beds of earth, must have been emitted from the volcanic crater at least fourteen thousand years ago, and consequently, that the age of the earth, whatever it may exceed this term of years, cannot possibly be less.”—Brydone’s Tour through Sicily and Malta (1770). Plato, in his Critias, mentions the island Atlantis as having been buried in the ocean nine thousand years before his own time. In the Universal History, vol. i, (preface,) we are told that the astronomical records of the ancient Chaldeans carry back the origin of society to the remote period of four hundred and seventy-three thousand years. Among comparatively well-known authorities, there is a good deal of difference in the time of the supposed formation of the world. The Hebrew bible makes the creation 3,944 years before the Christian era. The Samaritan bible, 4,305 years; the Septuagint, 5,270 years; Usher, 4,004 years; Josephus, 4,658 years; M. Pezron, 5,872 years. In all these differences, however, there is nothing so striking as in the theories we mention above, of Recupero, the Chaldeans, etc.—Editor.]
313 [Our author is quite right. Science does teach us what to think of divine power in its outward manifestations. The more we understand nature, the more ready will earnest-minded men be to praise and give glory to the God who made it, who created man and beast with such marvellous and exquisite regularity, and who continues to govern the world and all that is upon it. Perhaps M. Pouchet thinks he himself could have made a better one. It is a pity that a clever mind is so warped by that science which ought to make him more satisfied than ever that God is the creator of the world; and that spontaneous generation, and the never-clearly explained origin of the first matter, about which even M. Pouchet cannot tell us, with all his scepticism, ought to go to pave the “pathway of good intentions.”—Editor.]
314 [Why not?—Editor.]
315 Some may be astonished at our applying the word kingdom to the vertebrata. We do so because, in truth, the distance which separates them from other animals seems to us almost as great, and even more decided, than that which separates the invertebrata from plants.
316 The diagram which Darwin has placed in his book On the Origin of Species, is only a fraction and piece of detail of the general figure which we are endeavouring to place before the mind of the reader.
317 L’Insecte, p. 128, 1858.
318 Predominance of the immediate azotic principles, respiration comparable to that of animals, voluntary movements, indivisibility of organism, etc.
319 [See above, pp. 46, 47.—Editor.]
320 See On the Origin of Species, chap. iii.
321 Lions hindered the army of Xerxes in Macedonia. They abounded in the province of Africa in the time of the Roman Emperors. At the present time, however, Gérard was obliged to watch for three hundred nights in order to kill only thirty or forty.
322 The crocodile, which used to swarm on the Delta, is now only found in Upper Egypt.
323 The hippopotamus, since the Roman occupation, has successively retired from the mouth of the Nile to the fourth cataract. Some years ago, there existed one, and one only, at the Island of Argo, on this side of New Dongolah. Some hunters killed it, and since then, they have only been found at the Berber level.
324 [Hamites, a genus of extinct Cephalopods, found in the greensand formation in England.—Editor.]
325 Comptes Rendus, vol. iv, p. 58. Perhaps the only logical deduction which we can really draw from the greater size of these animals, is the greater extent of the continents which they inhabited. The belief in the gigantic dimensions of the fossil fauna and flora, is also a remains of the marvels which the first inquirers into science involuntarily reported. In examining matters nearer and more impartially, we see that certain zoological groups have been, in fact, formerly represented by larger species than at the present day; but until we arrive at some new discovery, we have the right to think that the other groups of animals, on the contrary, have a class of larger representatives than in former times; like the quadrumana, the cetacea, insects, cephalopods, acephalous mollusks, etc. But this pretended decay is especially false as regards plants; if we find in the ground some large ferns, or enormous grasses, we must subtract a good deal from those so-called antediluvian forests, which many have not hesitated to bring forward in support of their ideas. All the fossil plants that we know are, without exception, extremely wretched in comparison with the gigantic conifers and dicotyledons in the forests of the old and new world.
326 [If this new handiwork of man, so charmingly arranged by our author, is not more successful than Pandora, as made by Vulcan, we fear the world will not gain much by it. In the olden times, the man who propounded such curious ideas would probably have had a punishment awarded him, something similar to that suffered by Prometheus. Does M. Pouchet, in quoting this personage, entirely forget the rest of the tale, and the consequences of his rashness? We are really sorry, however, to see science perverted to a pet idea, if we may use the expression, and twisted by means of “bad anatomy and worse theology,” as a friend of ours calls it, for the sake of proving facts quite impossible to be solved. M. Pouchet gives us, in spontaneous generation, a first germ with which to start a primordial anatomical element, as he calls it. He starts with this, and argues—in what manner we leave it to our readers to determine—that, from this germ there have, in time, sprung all the animals on the surface of the globe. But he does not tell us how this first germ itself arose. That is put entirely on one side, and taken for granted. We cannot take it for granted however; and until we have it satisfactorily proved that he is right in any part of his idea, we shall go on thinking and believing as we have done before.—Editor.]
327 See Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Vie d’E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, p. 287.
328 See above, chap. viii.
329 Compare Owen, On the Characters, Principles of Division, and Primary Groups of the Class Mammalia (Journal of Linnean Society, 1857.)
330 See, for the explanation and discussion of these different systems, Crull, Dissertatio de Cranio, 1810.
331 Compare Crull, Dissertatio de Cranio, p. 28, 1810.
332 Compare Crull, Dissertatio de Cranio, p. 52.
333 Busk and Quekett (Medical Times and Gazette).
334 One always endeavours to find some former indication or presentiment, although even confused and full of obscurity, beyond the origin of positive science; it is curious to find in the works of the potter physician a sort of germ which, when developed, may have given birth to cranioscopy,—a sort of foresight of the importance which the measurement of the skull would one day acquire. It is in the Recepte Véritable: one of two speakers relates a dream in which he saw the different instruments used in geometry dispute about precedence: he answers them, that man is above them all; they exclaim, that man cannot even use one of them in order to measure any part of his body. [We think it best to give the original here.—Editor.] “Quoy voyant, il me print envie de mesurer la teste d’un homme, pour scauoir directement ses mesures, et me sembla que la sauterelle, la reigle, et le compas me seroient fort propres pour ceste affaire, mais quoy qu’il en soit, ie n’y sceu iamais trouver une mesure asseurée.” Bernard Palissy, Œuvres, p. 93, 12mo, Paris, 1844. Blumenbach says somewhere, “The habit and constant use of my collection of skulls makes me understand every day the impossibility of subjecting a variety of skulls to the rule of any possible angle, the head being susceptible of so many forms, and the parts which compose it being of so many different proportions and directions.” See Morel, Traité des Dégénérescences dans l’espèce humaine, p. 68. M. Aitken Meigs, at the present day, shows no less than twenty-nine different measurements of the skull which must be obtained if we wish to have anything like a satisfactory idea of the same.
335 See above, chap. iv.