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Show 240 'THE DESCENT OF MAN. PART I. conscious of this parallelism, for he compares his future fate with that of the native rat almost exterminated by the European rat. The difficulty, though great to our imagination, and really great if we wish to ascertain the precise causes, ought not to be so to our reason, as long as we keep steadily in mind that the increase of each species and each race is constantly hindered by various checks; so that if any new check, or cause of destruction, even a slight one, be superadded, the race will surely decrease in number; and as it has everywhere been observed that savages are much opposed to any change of habits, by which means injurious checks could be counterbalanced, decreasing numbers will sooner or later lead to extinction ; the end, in most cases, being promptly determined by the inroads of increasing and conquering tribes. On the Formation of the Races of Man.-It may be premised that when we find the same race, though broken up into distinct tribes, ranging over a great area, as over America, we may attribute their general resemblance to descent from a common stock. In some cases the crossing of races already distinct has led to the formation of new races. The singular fact that Europeans and Hindoos, who belong to the same Aryan stock and speak a language fundamentally the same, differ widely in appearance, whilst Europeans differ but little from Jews, who belong to the Semitic stock and speak quite another language, has been accounted for by Broca36 through the Aryan branches having been largely crossed during their wide diffusion by various indigenous tribes. When two races in close contact 36 "On Anthropology," translatio:J, 'Anthropolog. Review,' Jan. 1868, p. 38. CHAP. VII. TilE RACES OF MAN~ 241 cross, the first result is a heterogeneous mixtllre: thus Mr. Hunter, in describing the Santali or hilltribes of India, says that hundreds of imperceptible gradations may be traced "from the black, squat tribes ·" of the mountains to the tall olive-coloured Brahman, "' with his intellectual brow, calm eyes, and high but '',narrow head;" so that it is necessary in courts of justice to ask the witnesses whether they are Santalis or HindoosY Whether a heterogeneous people, such as the inhabitants of some of the Polynesian islands, formed by the crossing of two distinct races, with few or no pure members left, would ever become homogeneous, is not known from direct evidence. But as with our domesticated animals, a crossed breed can certainly, in the course of a few generations, be fixed and made uniform by careful selection,38 we may infer that the free and prolonged intercrossing during many generations of a heterogeneous mixture would supply the place of selection, and overcome any tendency to .reversion, so that a crossed race would ultimately become homogeneous, though it might not partake in an equal degree of the characters of the two parent-races. Of all the differences between the races of man, the colour of the skin is the most conspicuous and one of the best marked. Differences of this kind, it was formerly thought, could be accounted for by long exposure under different climates; but Pallas first shewed that this view is not tenable, and he has been followed hy almost all anthropologists.39 The view has been 37 'The Annals of Rural Bengal,' 1868, p. 134:. 38 'The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. ii. p. 95. ag Pallas, 'Act. Acad. St. Petersburgh,' 1780, part ii. p. 69. He was followed by Rudolphi, in his 'Beytrago zur Anthropologie,' 1812. An excellent summary of the evidence is given by Godl'on, 'De l'Espece,' 1859, vol. ii. p. 246, &c. VOL. I. R |
