2 o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE NATURAL HISTOEY OF MAN. 



A COURSE OF LECTURES BY A. BE QUA TREE AGES. 



TKANSLATED BY ELIZA. A. TOUMAXS. 



II. The Antiquity of Man. 



QENTLEMEN: I shall to-day continue the Natural History of 

 Man, which I have undertaken to give you entire. Those of you 

 who were present at our first lecture know that it was devoted to the 

 examination of a fundamental question. "We inquired if all the men 

 living upon earth, however they may differ among themselves, are of 

 one and the same species; that is, if they are to be regarded as de- 

 scended from a single primitive pair. 



To answer this question, we appealed to science alone. We started 

 with the principle that, so far as the body is concerned, man is an ani- 

 mal nothing more, nothing less ; that, consequently, all the general 

 laws to which animals are subject bear upon him, and he cannot evade 

 their dominion. 



"We then asked, not only of animals, but also of plants, "What is 

 meant by the word species f and we were led to distinguish species 

 from race. 



"Without going into the details I then gave, this distinction is 

 easily established. "When two individuals of different species \mite, 

 the union is almost always infertile, and, if the first union is fertile, the 

 offspring, either immediately or at the end of a few generations, will 

 reproduce no more. So that, between two species, w T e cannot establish 

 a third series of individuals, starting at first with a father and a 

 mother taken from two distinct species. The examples I gave are 

 known to you all. "When we unite a jackass with a mare, an ass with 

 a stallion, we obtain a mule or a hinny, and never a horse or an ass ; 

 and, to get mules, it is always necessary to have recourse to a jackass 

 and a mare. 



"When, on the contrary, we take two individuals of two different 

 races of the same species, whatever their differences of exterior confor- 

 mation, the resulting individual is fertile, and may give birth to an in- 

 termediate series of individuals between the two races. 



As examples, I took the different races of dogs, of sheep, of cattle. 

 "Whatever the skin, the color, the form, the proportions of the dog, he 

 remains a dog ; whatever the proportions, the figure, the color of 

 horses or of oxen, they remain horses and oxen. So, when we cross a 

 water-spaniel with a greyhound, a lap-dog with a Havana dog, the 

 offspring are fertile, and we get what are called fertile mixed races. 



Now, when human beings unite with each other, whatever their 

 exterior differences, whether they are white, or black, or yellow, these 

 marriages are fertile. From this fact, verified a thousand times, we 



