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EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND.

THE human race is known to consist of numerous nations, displaying considerable differences of external form and colour, and speaking, in general, different languages. This has been the case since the commencement of written record. It is ascertained that the external peculiarities of particular nations do not change rapidly. While a people remain upon one geographical era, and under the influence of one set of conditions, they always exhibit a tendency to persistency of type, insomuch that a subordinate admixture of various type is usually obliterated in a few generations. The investigations of Dr. Prichard have nevertheless made it tolerably clear' that external peculiarities are of a more superficial and accidental nature than was at one time supposed. One fact is at the very first extremely startling, that there are nations, such as the inhabitants of Hindostan, apparently one in descent, which nevertheless contain groups of people of almost all shades of colour, and likewise discrepant in other of those important features on which much stress has been laid. Some other facts, which may be stated in brief terms, are scarcely less remarkable. In Africa there are Negro nations, that is, nations of intensely black complexion, as the Jolofs, Mandingoes, and Kafirs,-whose features and limbs are as elegant as those of the

See Prichard's Researches into the Physical History of Man; also his smaller work, the Natural History of Mau.

best European nations. While we have no proof of Negro races becoming white in the course of generations, the converse may be held as established, for there are Arab and Jewish families of ancient settlement in Northern Africa, who have become as black as the other inhabitants. There are also facts which seem to show the possibility of a natural transition by generation from the black to the white complexion, and from the white to the black. True whites (apart from Albinoes) are not unfrequently born among the Negroes, and the tendency to this singularity is transmitted in families. There is, at least, one authentic instance of a set of perfectly black children being born to an Arab couple, in whose ancestry no such blood had intermingled. This occurred in the valley of the Jordan, where it is remarkable that the Arab population in general have flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair, than any other tribes of the same nation.'

The style of living is ascertained to have a powerful effect in modifying the human figure in the course of generations, and this even in its osseous structure. About two hundred years ago, a number of people were driven by a barbarous policy from the counties of Antrim and Down, in Ireland, towards the sea-coast, where they have ever since been settled, but in unusually miserable circumstances, even for Ireland; and the consequence is, that they exhibit peculiar features of the most repulsive kind, projecting jaws with large open mouths, depressed noses, high cheek-bones, and bowed legs, together with an extremely diminutive stature. These with an abnormal slenderness of the limbs, are the outward marks of a low and barbarous condition all over the world; it is particularly seen in the Australian aborigines. On the other hand, the beauty of the higher ranks in England is very remarkable, being in the main as clearly a result of good external conditions. "Coarse, unwholesome, and ill-prepared

Buckingham's Travels among the Arabs.

A brief notice, by the Rev. Lansdown Guilding, St. Vincent, of a Negro couple in that parish, having, amongst other children, one as fair as an European, with European features, white hair, and blue eyes, is inserted in the Magazine of Natural History, vii. 589.

food," says Buffon, "makes the human race degenerate. All those people who live miserably are ugly and ill-made. Even in France, the country-people are not so beautiful as those who live in towns; and I have often remarked that in those villages where the people are richer and better fed than in others, the men are likewise more handsome, and have better countenances." He might have added, that elegant and commodious dwellings, cleanly habits, comfortable clothing, and being exposed to the open air only as much as health requires, co-operate with food in increasing the elegance of a race of human beings.

Attention has lately been attracted by a curious physiological speculation, having for its object to show that some of the broader features of the great families of mankind are expressly connected with the principle of development. It points out that the brain of one of the most favoured specimens of humanity, after completing the series of animal transformations, passes through the characters in which it appears in the Negro, the American, and the nations of Northern and Eastern Asia (sometimes comprehensively called Mongolian), and finally assumes that perfect character which it bears in the superior nations comprehensively called Caucasian by Cuvier. The face partakes of these alterations. "One of the earliest points in which ossification commences is the lower jaw. This bone is consequently sooner completed than the other bones of the head, and acquires a predominance, which, as is well known, it never loses in the Negro. During the soft pliant state of the bones of the skull, the oblong shape which they naturally assume approaches nearly the permanent shape of the Americans. At birth the flattened face, and broad smooth forehead of the infant, the position of the eyes rather towards the side of the head, and the widened space between, represent the Mongolian form; while it is only as the child advances to maturity, that the oval face, the arched forehead, and the marked features of the true Caucasian become perfectly developed." It appears, in short, that the leading characters of the various races

1 Lord's Popular Physiology, explaining observations by M. Serres.

of mankind are simply representations of particular stages in the development of the highest or Caucasian type. The Negro exhibits permanently the imperfect brain, projecting lower jaw, and slender bent limbs of a Caucasian child some considerable time before the period of its birth. The aboriginal American represents the same child nearer birth. The Mongolian is an arrested infant newly born. In harmony with these views is the opinion now beginning to be announced by ethnologists, that some nations have passed in the course of ages through the three leading forms of skull, beginning with what is called the prognathous, a narrow shape of the head with a prominent jaw, proper to savage tribes; afterwards advancing to a pyramidal form, which is usually found among nomadic or pastoral races, in conformity with their assuming that mode of life; and finally exhibiting in a comparatively civilized state an arched form of skull.'

On the whole, it results from inquiries into what is called the physical history of man, that conditions, such as climate and food, domestication, and perhaps an inward tendency to progress under tolerably favourable circumstances, are sufficient to account for all the outward peculiarities of form and colour; so that these can only at the utmost serve as proofs of the distinctness of races, if supported by more decisive evidence.

The inquiries of the philologist have supplied such evidence. It is seen that the language of a people, liable as it is to change, is a much more permanent possession than a form of head or a hue of the skin. It is a profound expression of the idiosyncrasy of a people, not easy to be obliterated or disguised. There are upon earth between three and four thousand languages, perhaps for the most part as distinct from each other as French, English, German, but, like these, exhibiting relationships which at once enable us to decide on the relationships of the nations to which they belong. A relationship amongst languages is shown in the community of words or roots of words. This is the kind of relationship with which we are most familiar, but it is one liable to some

1 See Dr. Prichard's Natural History of Man.

obscurity, as it may either happen that all or nearly all traces of a common vocabulary have perished between nations known to be akin, or there may be a community of words that is only the result of accident. By far the most certain test of an affinity between languages is the trace of a common character or analogy in their grammatical structure and in their laws of combination -what has been well called the mechanism of speech. This is both a more immediate and distinct expression of intellect, and one which tends to be more permanent. Now it is found that, amidst all the diversities of tongues, relations in the laws of their formation can be established from one to another, till we come to reckon six plans of language, if such a phrase may be used, amongst which no sort of community can be shown, leading to the supposition that they have originated in entire independence of one another, and are each expressive of the idiosyncrasy of a distinct family of mankind.' This distinction, as it happens, is tolerably in harmony with a classification of mankind into five varieties, which Cuvier determined on from a consideration of broad external characters, but which has now of course lost much of its value.

The first group of nations, according to the philological arrangement, comprehends the Indians, Persians, and nearly the whole of the people of Europe, being the chief section of the Caucasians of Cuvier. "There is," says Dr. Prichard, "internal evidence in the Indo-European languages, sufficient to prove that they grew by gradual dialectic development out of one common matrix. Any person who considers, with competent knowledge of these languages, the nature of their relations to each other, the fact that their original roots are for the most part common, and that in the great system of grammatical inflection pervading all these languages there is nothing else than the varied development of common principles, must be convinced that the differences between them are but the result of the gradual devia

1 See Report on Ethnology, by Dr. Prichard, in the publication of the British Association for 1847.