| OCR Text |
Show 608 DISTINCTIONS OBSERVABLE AMONG If such are the lamentations of an ethnologist in tho centre of science, at Paris, how unreasonable it would be to expect ampler collections of iconographic materials, illustrative of human types, elsewhere? The iconoplastic inspiration of Dumouticr has been since applied, by M. DE FRODERVILLE/78 with increased accuracy as regards coloration, to African races at Bourbon and Mauritius. Of sixty beautiful casts, representing an astonishing variety of Mozambique negroes, I was favored by this learned ethnologist with a sight of several; and I am free to state that they opened a new world of light to me as regards African populations on the eastern coast. Unfortunately these fac-similes aro still ineditcd. On the other hand, plastermoulding inevitably eftaces the expression of the eye; 6w but this defect can now be counterbalanced through photography; nowhere employed with such tho1·ough appreciation of anthropological exigcnda as by MM. Dcv6ria, Rousseau, and Jacquart, at tho Museum d'IIistoire Naturelle. Compared to this Gallcry,-savo only the department of craniology, in which it is surpassed by the Mortonian collection at Philadelphia680 - all other collections known to my personal observation, or through report, sink into insignificance. Skeletons, skulls, anatomical preparations; casts of entire figures, busts, and heads, colored and uncolored, of an immense number of nations; oil and water-colored portraits, daguerreotypes, photographs, of individuals from all parts of the world; not foL"getting those exquisite colored models of Russian races, presented by Prince Dcmidoft;-an these, and other items by far too various for enumeration, already render the Galerie Antlt1·opologique (as might have Leon iufcrrcd where French science directs) one of the glories of Paris, no loss than foremost in tho world's ethnology. In fact, such an admirable system has thoro been laid down, susceptible of indefinite expansion, that with very trifling aid from the imperial government, Paris might contain, amidst her thousand attractions to the student, as well as to m "Rapport sur los races ncgres de !'Afrique orientnlc nu sud do 1'6quatour, observ6cs pnr M. D.ll FnoDERVILLE-C'omptes rendu.• dts seances de l'Acadtfmie des Sciences, xxx, 8 Juin, 1860-" tirago ~ po.rt" 14 pages:- o.nd Bulletin de la Soc. Etlmol. de Po.ris, 1846; i. pp. 89- 90; o.nd elsewhere in the Bulletins de la Soc. de Otfograpllie. This gentlcmnn told me tho.t the method ho had employed wo.s, to gum square bits of paper on the skin of oo.ch individual whose co.st he ho.d previously to.kon, nnd then to cause his o.rtist to color them until the hue disappeared in tlmt of the "torso" himself. Transferring thence this colored po.per to tho plaster-cast, the so.mo process yielded u. perfect copy of such porson's cuticular coloration. 619 See o.n oxo.mple in M. D'Avczo.c'R "Y6bou," exquisitely moulded though it was by the onro of Do Dlo.invillc, in our" Ethnographic To.blonu," No. 27. &eO 'fhero aro, however, o.dmiro.blo matorio.ls, forming tho nucleus of who.t might become o. gt·oo.t anthropological museum, in tho London Royo.l College of Surgeons. VARIOUS GROUPS OF HUMANITY. 609 persons of e~u~ation and leisure, every desideratum in anthropology. An appropnatwn of not more than 100,000 ii·ancs to the Galerie Anth1·opologique, coupled with official instructions to her consuls chiefs of expeditions, governors, and naval commanders, scattered over the world, to co~lcct-at national expense -colm·ed photographs (fro.nt, back, and profile) of all types of man, male and female, within thc1r several rcach,-and executed upon an uniform scale, according to rules for mcasur·cmcnts, &c., such as none but French administrative experi.cnccs kuow so well bow to give-these two ordinances, "pure and sunplc," arc, no·w, all that is required to make ]ranee, within five or ten years, as supreme in ethnology as she is in every other science. No other government in the world will perform this service towards tho study of man; because the two or three others (that may have the power) do not possess, amid tho personnel of their Executives, men of education sufficiently refined to appreciate "ctlmology"- its true political value, or its eventual humanitarian influences. 'l'o such Cabinets, of cast-iron mould, appeal is useless, owing to their intellectual conditions; to others, like cultivated Sardii1ia for instance, its achi vcment would be almost impossible. If imperial centralization in France docs not accomplish for MANKIND that which has been done everywhct·e in behalf of beetles, snakes, bats, and tadpoles, generations must yet pass away before, through any amount of private enterprise, those materials can be collected, in one spot, that might aftord a comprehensive insight into this planet's human occupants. Such arc tho disheartening convictions w]Jich genom! experience, gathered eastward and westward during former years, followed by some :five exclusively devoted to ethnological inquiries, bavo forced upon me involuntarily. Mortifying to my aspirations as the acknowledgment may be, a uricf sketch of the precursory steps taken to accomplish om· "Ethnographic Tableau," such as it is, will be the best comment upon its difficulties of realization. It was my conception, whc11 setting out for Europe, with the object of gathering materials for the present volume, to prepare a Map of the world, colored somewhat upon the plan of Prof. Agassiz's suggcsLion,581 in size of about four folio sheets; containing the most exact colored portraz'ts of races procurable, drawn to an uniform scale, and each placed geographically in situ. Copiously supplied, beyond any otl10rs in this country, as is our Academy of Natural Sciences with works npon every department of Natural IIistoL"y, and among them many containing excellent human iconographic specimens, they were wlJOJly inadequate to tho execution of my GSI Types of Jlfa11kind, p. Ixxviii, nod Map. II' 'I ' ,li |
