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Show 226 THE DESCENT OF MAN. PART I. peculiarities, more strongly marked than those occurring in any other race, but these are known no~ to be of constant occurrence. In the several Amencan tribes, colour and hairyness differ considerably; as does colour to a certain degree, and the shape of the features greatly, in the Negroes of Africa. The sha~e _of ~he skull varies much in some races; 16 and so 1t IS w1th every other character. Now all natural~st~ have learnt by dearly-bought experience, how rash It IS to attempt to define species by the aid of inconstant characters .. But the most weighty of all the arguments agamst treating the races of man as distinct species, is that they graduate into each other, indep~ndent~y in _many cases, as far as we can judge, of their havmg mtercrossed. Man has been studied more carefully than any other organic being, and yet there is the greatest possible diversity amongst capable judges whether he should be classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), sixteen (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as sixty-three, according to Burke.17 This diversity of judgment does not prove that the races ought not to be ranked as species, but it shews that they graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them. Every naturalist who has had the misfortune to under- 15 For instance with the aborigines of America and Australia. Prof. Huxley says(' Transact. Intcrnat. Congress of Prehist. Arch.' 1868, p. 105) that the skulls of many South Germans and Swiss are "as short " :mel as broad us those of the Tartars," &c. 1; See a good discussion on this subject in Waitz, 'Introduct. to Anthropology,' Eng. translat. 1863, p. 198-208, 227. I have taken some of the above statements from H. Tuttle's 'Origin and Antiquity of Physical Mftn,' Boston, 1866, p. 35. 4CHAP. VII. THE RACES OF MAN. 227 take the description of a group of highly varying ·organisms, has encountered cases (I speak after experience) precise I y like .that of man ; and if of a cautious ·disposition, he will end by uniting all the forms which graduate into each other as a single species; for he will -say to himself that he has no right to give names to <>bjects which he cannot define. Cases of this kind occur in the Order which includes man, namely in certain :genera of monkeys; whilst in other genera, as in Cercopithecus, most of the species can be determined with •certainty. In the American genus Cebus, the various forms are ranked by some naturalists as species, by others as mere geographical races. Kow if numerous specimens of Cebus \Yere collected from all parts of South America, and those forms which at present appear to be specifically distinct, were found to graduate into each other by close steps, they would be ranked ~~ most naturalists as mere varieties or races; and thus the greater number of naturalists have actecl with respect to the races of man. Nevertheless it must be confessed that there are forms, at least in the vegetable king ·dom/8 which we cannot avoid naming as species, but which are connected together, independently of inter ·Crossing, by numberless gradations. Some naturalists have lately employed the term ·"sub-species" to designate forms which possess many of the characteristics of true species, but which hardly deserve so high a rank. Now if we reflect on the weighty arguments, above given, for raising the races of man tto .the dignity of species, and the insuperable difficulties on the other side in defining them, the term " sub- 18 Prof. Nageli has carefully described several striking cases 'in his "'Botanische Mitthcilungen,' B. ii. 1866, s. 294-369. Prof. Asa Gray .has made analogous remarks on some intermediate forms in the Com_ positm of N. Ame1·i~. Q 2 |