34-t ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



unalterable fixity. On the oldest Egyptian monuments we find Jews, 

 Arabs, Negroes, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Europeans depicted with a 

 fidelity as to color and feature hardly to bo surpassed by a modern 

 artist. It might be objected, that this fixity was due to the surround- 

 ing conditions having remained unaltered. But a glance at the map 

 shows this objection to be invalid ; for the eastern region of Asia, 

 from 70 N. lat. to the Equator, offers every variety of temperature, 

 yet is peopled by a single type, the Mongolian. By the side of the fair 

 Circassian we find brown Calmucks ; short, dark Lapps live side by 

 side with tall, fair Finns. The color of the American Indian de- 

 pends very little on geographical positions. In short, color is dis- 

 tributed over the globe in patches, not in zones. Europeans trans- 

 planted from the temperate to the torrid zone do not, even in the course 

 of generations, undergo very considerable modification of type. This 

 may be seen in the Dutch, who have lived in South Africa for 310 

 years, and in the descendants of the Spaniards and Portugese in 

 South America ; also in the negroes transplanted to America. Inde- 

 pendently of this, we find races widely diifering from each other, but 

 dwelling side by side, who, so far as we know, have, from time im- 

 memorial, been affected by the same climate ; such is the case with 

 theBosjesmen and the Kaffirs, the Fuegians and the Patagonians, the 

 Parsees and the Hindoos. This fixity of type applies to habits as 

 well as to corporeal features. The life of the Ishmaelite of to-day 

 might be described in the identical terms applied to his first ancestor ; 

 and the Mongol has the same habits as in the days of xEschylus and 

 Herodotus, or, perhaps, thousands of years before. It may be ob- 

 jected that a period of a few centuries is little or nothing in ethnolog- 

 ical matters. It is, at any rate, everything, to those who, without 

 miraculous interference, of which nothing is recorded, have not more 

 than that period between the Deluge and the date of the oldest Egyp- 

 tian monument in which to account for the^appearance of, for instance, 

 the full-grown, well-marked Nigritian type. It remains for every 

 one who is convinced of these facts to draw from them such infer- 

 ences as appear to him most truthful and logical. 



In the discussion which followed, Mr. Russell stated, that he be- 

 lieved that the fixity of the type of races during the historical period 

 was only one of the numerous proofs of the great antiquity of man. 

 The results of various branches of inquiry, geological, traditional 

 and ethnological, all pointed one way. He maintained that some 

 amount of modification was known to have taken place in the descend- 

 ants of one and the same race, the European and Indian branches of 

 the Aryan race, for example ; he therefore concluded that, as two 

 lines not exactly parallel will eventually meet if traced out, so the 

 various races and sections of races of man must be concluded, from 

 this known example of divergence, to have had a common origin, 

 however remote in time that origin may have been. 



OX THE SOURCES OF THE SUPPLY OF TIN FOR THE BRONZE TOOLS 



AND WEAPONS OF ANTIQUITY. 



A paper on the above subject was read at the last meeting of the 

 liritish Association by Mr. J. Crawford. Tin, as is well known is 

 found in only a very few parts of the world, and the only localities 



