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NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.*

THE natural history of man, and the study of the earth's crust, have excited more than a purely scientific interest; their intimate connexion with questions relating to the origin and antiquity of our race, has given them importance with many who otherwise would have bestowed no attention on such investigations. With the ancients, destitute of positive revelation, and with scarcely any deep conviction of the moral importance and destinies of the human family, questions respecting the origin of mankind called forth but little curiosity, and were very summarily decided. The opinion that the world was eternal, was extended to the various races of its inhabitants, or, on the contrary, animals originated spontaneously from mud and slime acted on by the sun's rays, was very general, and was admirably adapted to blunt the edge of curiosity. When such notions prevailed, the varieties of the human race were easily accounted for the blue-eyed, flaxen-haired, and white-skinned German differed from the woolley-headed Negro because they were autochthones, that is, sprung from the soil of their respective countries. The social system of the Greeks and Romans contained no element that could stimulate inquiry respecting the origin or history of mankind. Believing themselves superior to all others, they looked upon the barbarians, as they called them, much in the same manner as the people of the United States do on the Cherokees or the Negroes. In countries where slavery prevails-that is, where the social edifice is based on oppression-but little attention is paid to the migrations of nations, or the scientific study of their dialects. In this point of view, it is interesting to compare the narrations of modern travellers with the ancient historians. The travels of Humboldt, the writings of Foster, who accompa

nied Captain Cook, afford such stores of precise knowledge respecting the various tribes they visited, as contrast strongly with the carelessness and contradictions which we find in Tacitus, Strabo, or Ammianus Marcellinus. We could scarcely find out what was the complexion of the ancient Egyptians from the united testimonies of the Greek and Roman writers, so indifferent were they respecting such inquiries. It was not until such investigations obtained a moral interest that they were cultivated with zeal and attention; and if we have too often occasion to complain of the bigotry with which scientific investigations have been treated, we must, in justice, remember the important considerations which gave an impulse to pursuits which would otherwise have been neglected. The intolerance which sometimes impeded the progress of geology has also been the means of increasing the number of students. The study of philology might still have been confined to the niceties of the Greek and Latin languages, had not the translating of the Scriptures into the vernacular languages of Europe required the study of the Semitic dialects, and taught scholars that there were other laws of speech than those displayed by the Indo-European tongues.

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It is only from a very recent period that the natural history of man has been cultivated with any degree of success, and the reason is abundantly obvious the instruments of investigation required to be created. could not point out the essential conditions of the physical structure of man, until the science of comparative anatomy had been constituted; we could not prove the Oriental origin of the Celtic race, before we had obtained a knowledge of the other Indo-European languages; and the common origin of the native tribes of America

"Researches into the Physical History of Mankind." By Dr. Pritchard. London: Bailliere. 1847.

"Natural History of the Human Species." By Colonel Hamilton Smith. Edinburgh: W. H. Lizars. 1848.

is only proved by philological investigations respecting their dialects. It is, in fact, owing to the very complicated nature of the investigation, that so many very absurd opinions have been set forth respecting the natural history of our race: few can combine an adequate knowledge of all the preliminary branches of inquiry, and hence one-sided and erroneous views were almost inevitable. The bones of other animals were mistaken for those of man; and hence stories of pigmies and giants. These who knew nothing of the differential anatomy of the man and the ape, believed that the lower was gradually transmuted into the higher animal. Even Linnæus could find no distinction between man and the ourang, and places them in the same genus, as homo sapiens and homo troglodytes, besides enumerating various races of wild men, among whom a countryman of our own, the homo ferus ovinus Hibernus, takes his appropriate place. M. Bory St. Vincent instead of one admits no less than twenty-seven species of man, displayed in all the arid and formal language in which naturalists describe the various kinds of mosses or insects. Lord

Kames is profound respecting the original savage state of man, of which he knew nothing; and yet from his investigations arrived at the conclusion that the forgeries of Macpherson are the genuine compositions of Ossian.

If inadequate knowledge and premature speculations have thus produced a fruitful progeny of errors, other mistakes have originated from a want of analysis-the different and distinct questions have not been separated, nor has their bearings been seen with sufficient clearness. We will, therefore, offer a few remarks, on a subject concerning which much misconception prevails. The rather affected term, Unity of the Human Race, introduced into the science by Blumenbach, is one of those vague phrases to which no very definite idea can be attached. It may mean that man is a species distinct from all other animals, or, that all the individuals of the human race belong to a single species. It is obvious that, frequently as these statements are confounded, it is most important to keep them separate-they demand different modes of proof, and one of them carries us much further in

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our inferences than the other. the human race belong to different species from any other group of individuals in the animal kingdom, is a fact which no one denies; but it is certain that the physical structure of man presents something far more important than what naturalists call a specific difference. Man does not differ in structure from the ourang, merely in the same sense as the horse does from the zebra, or the buffalo from the oxhe belongs not only to a distinct species, but to a distinct genus. Thus the difference is even greater than between two genera-man differs from the ourang in the same sense as the ape tribe differs from the group of carnivorous animals. This enormous dif ference in structure between man and the ourang, although admirably illustrated by D'Aubenton, nearly a century ago, is strangely overlooked by such speculators as believe, with La Marck, that one species can be transmuted into another. The refutation of those doctrines, retailed at second-hand by the compiler of the "Vestiges of Creation," might very safely be decided by even a cursory study of the human skeleton, as contrasted with that of the ourang or Chimpansee. These remarkable anatomical peculiarities of the human race involve not merely physical, but intellectual and moral consequences. The long and helpless infancy involves education, and this, in its turn, the family relations and sympathies; and the physical peculiarities of the hand, and erect walking, would be unable to preserve the race from speedy extinction, unless they were combined with intellect, and some degree of free agency and accountability-essential conditions of the social state.

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If it is one of the best-established, and self-evident truths in science, that man, even when physically considered, is thus separated, by an impassable hiatus, from the most elaborately-constructed of the lower animals. other very important question remains -Is there more than one species of the human genus? Does the Mongol, the Negro, and the European, belong to as many distinct species, created at different times and places, or are all the endless varieties of form, colour, and temperament, merely the results of physical causes, modifying one ori

ginal species? The solution of this question involves more difficulties than the former one; for although the doctrine of the permanence of species is the basis of all sound natural history, it is unquestionably, in many cases, very difficult to decide what are species, and what are mere varieties. In investigating the specific unity of the human race, under all its variations, we must be guided, in as far as natural history is concerned, by indirect results. Every botanist who has studied such genera as the rose and the willow, knows that it is almost impossible to ascertain what are species, and what varieties; and the same difficulties occur in the animal kingdom. We all can distinguish between a hare and rabbit, but how difficult is it to express the difference in words. The fox, the jackal, and the wolf, are distinct species, yet they do not appear to differ so much as the terrier, the greyhound, and the mastiff; yet these are, unquestionably, merely varieties of the dog. We must, however, remember, that even where we cannot find organic differences, we sometimes find other criteria no less decisive of species. Thus the mode of breeding and rearing their young, indicates a specific distinction between the hare and rabbit; and in like manner the solitary fox and the jackal, who hunts in packs, may from these habits alone be considered distinct. The unity of the human species, in as far as it is a zoological question, appears to be by far the most probable view, and is scarcely contradicted by any opposing evidence. We know that domestication exercises a powerful influence in producing, in varieties, the Shetland pony and the London dray-horse; and the varieties of our tame animals, and also of our cultivated vegetables, prove how greatly species may vary, and the varieties of the human race are not greater than those which we observe within the limits of species in the inferior animals. Another source of confusion in this inquiry is from the narrow and technical views which mere naturalists are too apt to entertain, and of this the work of Col. Hamilton Smith affords a curious illustration. The learned writer speaks of normal and aberrant races of man, of typical and subtypical stocks, no doubt to the wonder of those who know not the sacred language of the

systematists. From the use, or rather abuse, of such phrases, the uninitiated would be apt to suppose that the various tribes of mankind might be as easily classified as the inhabitants of the wards and streets of a great city; and it is this unfortunate rage for applying system where system is inapplicable, that gives an air of precision to what is most indefinite. It is in this way that the terms Caucasian, Mongolian, &c., have been so abused, that it is desirable that science should speedily get quit of what can only produce mistakes.

If the varieties of mankind stood out so boldly as is thus supposed, some presumption of a plurality of species might be entertained. But such ideas are far from the truth. If we take the woolly-haired type, as learned men delighted to call it, or, in other words, the African, we immediately imagine a man with a black skin, woolly hair, a narrow, receding forehead, and weak shin bones, &c. Now such a combination of characters are rare even in Africa. The Hottentot is certainly not a Negro; and if any one will compare portraits of a Nubian, a Caffir, a native of Congo and Mozambique, he will find that the Africans present a rich variety of features and complexion; so that here we have an endless variety of conformations to classify. The Hindoo, the Greek, and the Scandinavian, are unquestionably of a common descent; yet we may make three types or sub-types, if we are so inclined. In short, when we take an extensive survey of the varieties of mankind, we find that classification is impossible, and that the divisions constituted by naturalists, are unsusceptible of definition, and can be referred to no common standard.

From these remarks, it follows that there are no definite characters which separate and define the various races of mankind, and that so far from finding specific characters, we are unable even to draw lines of demarcation between the varieties. If we take even the most extreme cases, such as the Negro, the Australian, the Mongol, and the European, we find no point of organisation in which they differ. In seeking for such distinctions, the most skilful anatomists have failed, and their existence has

been maintained only by those whose limited views have prevented them from taking a general survey, or who have forgotten the most obvious facts of anatomy. Instances of such strange oversights are but too numerous in the work of Colonel Hamilton Smith, and a few examples will explain the want of reflection which is but too often displayed in such investigations. We select as an instance the remains of crania found in ancient tumuli in Peru, which we find so strangely flattened and distorted, as to differ from anything which we observe in any other quarter of the world. Not only are these heads totally different in form from the average heads of mankind, but we find also several other peculiarities, which have been esteemed very anomalous. It is dif ficult to render those differences intelligible to the non-professional student, but we must make the attempt. In the greater number of cases, the bone of the hind-head, called the occiput, is directly united to the two bones which form the roof of the skull; but in the flat-heads there is a bone interposed between the three bones just mentioned. Concerning this bone much speculation has been expended, and as being characteristic of an extinct nation, perhaps an extinct species has been decorated in good Latin with the name of os-Inca, or the Inca bone, as being characteristic of the ancient inhabitants of Peru. Another wonderful circumstance is, that the teeth of these Indians have been so worn down as to present flat surfaces, as if the very teeth were differently constructed from those of ordinary mortals. It is very afflicting to notice such a combination of blunders in an elementary work, whose readers are not likely to be able to detect the fallacy. The

truth, however, is, that the flat-heads of these Indians is not aboriginal or congenital, but is obviously the result of art. It is true we cannot prove this with respect to Indians who lived, died, and were buried before Columbus was born, or Pizarro had spread ruin and devastation through the country; but we know that the practice of flattening the head by artificial means, prevailed in Peru before the conquest, that it was discouraged by the Incas, and at later

periods by the Spanish ecclesiastics. Nor is this all-the process of flattening the head is still practised by various tribes, and has been witnessed in all its stages by competent scientific observers, so that a deformed and flattened cranium is no proof of the existence of a peculiar species or variety of the human race; the only wonderful thing is, that such a notion should ever have become prevalent. We have stated that a small bone is often found in these Peruvian skulls, which is interposed between the bone of the hind-head and the two bones which form the vault of the skull. Now, it is truly marvellous that this bone should have been considered as wonderful or peculiar to the skulls of the tribe of American Indians; it is as common in the skulls of Europeans as of Indians, and what is the Incas bone of some travellers, has been known, time out of mind, to every medical student by the name of Wormian bone. In like manner, the flattened surfaces of the teeth is as common among the Indians of the present day as it ever was at any remote period. We will only state another instance in which the most vague and hypothetical statements are advanced. It is a well-known theory, that the human embryo goes through a series of changes, which correspond with the permanent structure of the different classes of inferior animals. Whether this theory be true or false, our learned author presents us with a strange caricature of the doctrine

"The human brain successively assumes the form of the Negroes, the Malays, the Americans, and the Mangolians, before it attains the Caucasian, one of the earliest points where ossification commences in the lower

jaw. This bone, therefore, is sooner completed than any other of the head, and acquires a predominance which it never loses in the Negro during the soft pliant state of the bones of the skull the oblong form which they naturally assume approaches nearly the permanent shape of the American. It has the flattened face &c. of the infant represented in the Mongolian form."

These inaccurate and ill-expressed notions only deserve notice in as far as they are apt to be entertained by a numerous class of readers, who may

not have the means of correcting them. That the brain of a European infant passes through the forms of a Negro, Malay, and American brain, is at best a mere hypothesis, derived from another ill-understood hypothesis, and is, besides, contrary to what is actually the case. Tiedeman, one of the ablest anatomists of the present time, instituted a most careful comparison between the structure of the European and Negro brains, and could not detect the smallest difference; and thus, as is too often the case, fact is opposed to theory.

Although all the weight of evidence indicates that the varieties of the human race belong to a single species-and such is the opinion of those who have investigated the subject most carefully it would by no means follow from this alone that all the races of mankind are descended from a single pair. This is an inquiry in which our natural history knowledge can be of comparatively little aid. We must seek for information elsewhere; but we must keep the physical, the philological, and historical branches of the investigation distinct, and interrogate them separately. The natural history argument for the common origin of the human family, although it has been largely insisted upon by Dr. Pritchard in his excellent and candid work, has always appeared to us very inconclusive. The argument is as follows:-It is wellknown that all great regions of our globe possess its own peculiar creation of plants and animals, thus forming a little world within the greater one. This remarkable distribution of organic bodies does not depend on any physical necessity. The plants and animals of tropical Africa and tropical America are almost and always of distinct species, and very often distinct families, although there is little doubt that, if they were respectively to change their abodes, they would subsist and multiply in their new habitations. Each region of the earth has, therefore, possessed, so to speak, its own centre of creation, whence the various tribes have spread, until their progress was impeded by some physical obstacle, such as seas, mountains, or change of climate. From these truths concerning which every one is agreed, it has been inferred that each species originated from a single original pair, and hence

by analogy, the same origin is inferred for the human race. This analogical argument, however, appears to be extremely inconclusive, even when applied to the animal and vegetable kingdoms; and indeed the presumption appears to us to be altogether on the other side. The ant-bears consume thousands of ants per diem, and it is obvious that a single pair of ants and of ant-bears created at the same instant is an impossibility. At all events, this argument is far too vague to be of any value in reasoning respecting the parentage of man and the dispersion of his tribes.

If the analogical argument is of no value, and affords no evidence on either side, we are inclined to think that some presumptions, at least, may be obtained by calling in the aid of philology and history. The only reason, as far as we can see, for assuming a plurality of parentage for the human family, is the remarkable varieties of form, complexion, and mental disposition, which we perceive in different regions of the earth. Impressed with extremes or limits of diversity, some who admit a unity of species contend for a multiplicity of parent stocks. Cuvier-who, however, does not appear to have bestowed much attention on the subject -was inclined to admit three primary families—the African, the Mongol, the source of the Chinese, Americans, and Malays, and the Caucasian or IndoEuropean family-and this is very much the opinion of Col. Hamilton Smith. There are many considerations which are opposed to this view of the subject; and if in the present instance, even if we cannot prove our own opinions, we can at least do some service, by pointing out the difficulties attending the opposite hypothesis. If well-marked varieties are to be traced each to a separate parentage, it is obvious we must admit far more than three original stocks. The Hottentot and the Australian must be taken from the negro race, and the American and Malay are equally entitled to their own family honours. On the other hand, it is impossible to define the three primary stocks; they vary infinitely in different situations; and what is still more difficult to comprehend, they pass into each other. The ancient Egyptian and the Canary Islanders are, in physical appearance, neither Cauca

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