Indigenous Races of the Earth

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620 TilE MONOGBNISTS AND With reluctance I must terminate these digressional notices of human autochthones in different zoological realms. "The ancients," well remarks Com·tct de l'Islc,363 "unanimously professed belief in autochthones. * * * Now, this principle of indigenousness, consecrated among animals and plants, 30 ~ was entirely equivalent, among tho Greeks, to tho principle which the plurality of races establishes at tho present day." It is traceable in Homer, IIcsiod, and IIippocratoR. Ephorus of Cyme sustained it when he divided mankind into four races, according to tho four points of tho compass; and Aristotle held it where he adopts tltree types, "Scythians, Egyptians, and Thracians." The writer of Xth Genosis 365 had previously spread out his nations, cities, tribes, and countries, into a tripartite ethnico­gcographical distribution, symbolized by" Shcm, Ham, and J aphcth;" which arrangement Knobcl 366 agrees with me in denominating the yello~, the swartlty, and the wltite typos. Tho Egyptians, centuries previOusly, had alr ady divided mankind, as known to them, into jou1·-the red, tho yellow, tho white, and tho blaclc races; calling themselves, as men of tho rod or honorable color, by tho term "rot.u," RoT, race "par excollonce:" 307 and, about nino centuries sub.soqt~ontly, fou~· nations-Lydian (Japetltic), Scythian (not alluded ,to 1n Xth Gcncs1s), Negro (African, and also excluded from that charL), and Chaldroan (Semitic)- wore carved on the rock-hewu s.epulchrc of Darius: 300 while Linuoous, 3500 years after the Diospo­htan oLhnographcr, at first tried to classi(y human natural divisions into four, according to tho four quarters of the globe. Wholly omitted as such things are in tho last edition of Prichard the anthr~pologist, in lieu of the precedi ug facts on hybridi ty, i~ fav?rcd w1Lh at~y quantity of "scntiment;":ro9-mostly thrown away, th~tr ethnological bases being mostly false. Until science Las stndden over Lhc threshold in these new inquiries of tho Mortonian school, we may say of sentiment what Father Richard imon's Car­dinal.: no replied to an anxious thcologer-" Qucsto e buono per ]a Prcd10a." Mll ntbleau Et!mograpltique, p. G7. e<u ~oc pttrticuln.rly, a~ tho ln.tcst enunciation of zoological science, tho nddrcsscs of Prof. Agot~s oz ~cforo the Amcricttn Associntion for the Advnnocmcnt of Science, f.lt Albtmy,­reportcd ln tho New York Ilerald, 2G, 27, 28 Aug., 1856. 86S 'l)tpe« of /Jf(lnkind, Part li, prmim. 1100 Die Volkcrttrjel dcr Oene8i&, Oiossen, 8vo, 1850; p. 13. ~~ Type« of lfankind, pp. 84-8(), 247-0; wood-cuts, figs. 1, 162, 168, 164, 165: _to winch n.dtl, DK Rouoli, Tombeau d'Aalime4, chef du Nuutonnier1, Pt~ris, 4to, 1851; pp. 41-2, 5G:-n.nd llnuosou, Rtiscberichte, Berlin, 8vo, 1855; p. 881. 11(18 Pl•L~1.KV, a11te, Chn.p. II, p. 150, fig. 35. 869 Nat. lli8lory of Afatt, 1855; IT, pp. 1)57-714. 810 Ili«t. eric. de l'AntiCII 7'eNta111 cnt. TIIE POLYGENJSTS. "0 ye mitred hcn.ds 1 lo.y not Approving hnuds on skulls tho.t cannot teach, And will not learn." (COWl'J:tt.) 521 Probably autochthones, certainly aboriginal, were the men of prognathous and otherwise inferior typo who c humaLilc crania, in tho caverns and dilu vi urn of Europe, i nstigatcd my ox cur. us in q ucst of parallels. Of these, however, I have seen none of the trno Bel­gian or Austrian specimens : those ]JOinted out to me in the magni­ficent Galerie d'Antlt1·opologie at the Jardin des Plante , by my .friend:i MM. Jacquard and Rousseau, being, with one exception, ancient Gaulish, Keltic, or Etruscan. I obtained photographic copies of tho most inter sLing, together with that of the exceptional skull marked "Cr·:1nc (Oard)-1ype celte. M. Serres." Thesc 3•11 I had Lhc pleasure of passing on, in London, to tho cabinet of our obliging colleague Mr. J. Damat'cl Davis, of Shelton, Staff.; in whose hands, as joiut author of Crania Britannica, they m~y become really available to science, through comparisons with tho wide range of cognate British skulls now undergoing his and Dr. Thurn ham's critical analyses. As a specimen, mer ly, of the high scientific tone adopted by these gen­tlemen, I cannot refrain from reproducing their opening sentences on the Ilistm·itJal Ethnology of Britain.r.l "It is now generally admitted that tho plants and animals which cover tho surface of the globe are to be regarded as forming groups, each having a specific centre, from and around which, wiLlrin limits detonninod by natural laws as to elimato, temperature, &c., tho several species have been diffused. 'l'ho plants and animals com­posing tho floea and fauna of tho Bl'itish Islands arc, however, not peculiar to them, but arc almost without exception identical with those of different parts of the continent of Europe; and thus the existence of a specific centre for tho isolated area of those islandf:!, or, in other words, any special creation of plants and animals within their limi ts, cannot with any pt·obability be admitted. "Tho late distinguished Professot· E. ]'orbcs, by a rcmarlmbly happy example of philosophical induction, has shown that the torro~trial aJti.mals and flowering plants now inhabiting those islands must have migrated hitltct· ovct· conlinnous land, which in tho course of subso<]_uont geological changes was destroyed; and that this diffusion by migration occupied extended periods of tim , having various climatal conditions, before, during and after, tho 871 Jloduccd copies of some of them have o.ttro.ctod Dr. Meigs's uotice in his Chnpto1• III, figs. 20, 85. m Crania /Jritmmic(l, Dccn.dc I, London, 4to, 185(); p. 41. Cf. MEIOS's Chap. III, p. 801, fig. 20, a1l/e-for the cranioscopico.l i11dicia so f&lr t~ltaincd.