II.] HISTORIC TIMES AND PEOPLES. 31 



Armed with a nearly perfect writing system, and the correlated 

 cultural appliances, the higher races soon took a foremost place 

 in the general progress of mankind, and gradually acquired a 

 marked ascendancy, not only over the less cultured populations 

 of the globe, but in large measure over the forces of 

 nature herself. With the development of naviga- a nd Conse- 



tion and improved methods of locomotion, inland 



seas, barren wastes, and mountain ranges ceased to c . al ) 



be insurmountable obstacles to their movements, 



which within certain limits have never been arrested throughout 



all recorded time. 



Thus, during the long ages following the first peopling of the 

 earth by pleistocene man, fresh settlements and readjustments 

 have been continually in progress, although wholesale displace- 

 ments must be regarded as rare events. With few exceptions, the 

 later migrations, whether hostile or peaceful, were, for reasons 

 already stated 1 , generally of a partial character, while certain 

 insular regions, such as America and Australia, remained little 

 affected by such movements till quite recent times. But for 

 the inhabitants of the Eastern hemisphere the results were none 

 the less far-reaching. Continuous infiltrations could not fail ulti- 

 mately to bring about great modifications of early types, while the 

 ever-active principle of convergence tended to produce a general 

 uniformity amongst the new amalgams. Thus the great varietal 

 divisions, though undergoing slow changes from age to age, con- 

 tinued, like all other zoological groups, to maintain a distinct 

 regional character. 



Prof. Flinders Petrie has acutely observed that the only mean- 

 ing the term " race ' : now can have is that of a 



The " Race " 



group of human beings, whose type has become merges in the 

 unified by their rate of assimilation exceeding the 

 rate of change produced by foreign elements 2 . We are also 

 reminded by Gustavo Tosti that " in the actual state of science the 

 word ' race ' is a vague formula, to which nothing definite may be 

 found to correspond. On the one hand, the original races can 



1 Et/i., p. 342. 



2 Address, Meeting British Assoc. Ipswich, 1895. 



