238 ANNUAL OP SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



ber ? and has any naturalist ever ventured to describe the long grada- 

 tion from it till we reach the gorilla '? How are the tailed and tailless 

 monkeys to be classed ? and how are we to place the monkeys of the 

 New World, with their four supernumerary teeth ? In America there 

 is no anthropoid monkey at all ; every one has a long tail, often a pre- 

 hensile one. Between man and the apes, then, in so far, at least, as 

 America is concerned, one great link is absent. The monkeys, then, 

 have an outward and even a structural resemblance to man beyond 

 all other animals, and that is all ; but why Nature has bestowed upon 

 them this similarity is a mystery beyond our understanding. 



THE EXTINCTION OF RACES. 



The following is an abstract of a paper on the above subject, read to 

 the British Association, 1863, by Mr. R. Lee : The author said that 

 the rapid disappearance of aboriginal tribes before the advance of 

 civilization, was one of the many remarkable incidents of the age. In 

 every new country, from America to New Zealand, this seemed to be 

 the result of an approximation of different races, peculiar, however, in 

 degree at least, to this portion of the world's history. Such circum- 

 stances have not always been the result even of enduring oppression, 

 still less of civilization. Two millions of the Coptic race still testify 

 to the inability of the ancient Eastern powers to destroy all remnants 

 of the people they subdued. Egypt numbers a vast crowd of the lineal 

 descendants of the men who fell before the Persian tyrant 2,000 years 

 ago ; and to come nearer home, the Celts, Britons, and Gauls have a 

 large host of worthy representatives upon their own soil. The author 

 then referred to the disappearance of the aboriginal inhabitants in 

 Tasmania and New Zealand. In 1815, the aborigines of A r an Diemen's 

 Land were estimated at 5,000. Five years later, this number was 

 reduced to 340; of whom 160 were females. In 1831, when they 

 were invited to place themselves under the protection of the local 

 authorities, there were but 196. In 1847, the party were removed 

 from Flinders Island the station which had been assigned to them 

 to an old convict station on the shores of D'Entrecasteaux's Chan- 

 nel, and there were then only forty-seven. In 1855, there were only 

 sixteen. A similar process of extinction was now taking place in New 

 Zealand. From these facts it was evident that there were causes in 

 operation to produce an extinction of race which at present could not 

 be clearly defined. The average mortality among them was greater 

 than among more civilized nations, and there was also an inequality of 

 the sexes. Out of several tribes the proportion of males to females 

 under fourteen was as 5.974 to 4.860; and above fourteen, as 16.443 

 to 11.989. The introduction among aboriginal races of some European 

 diseases and of injurious habits, intemperance and the like, as well as 

 an increasing mortality owing to the antagonism between the white 

 and native races, were among the artificial causes of this extinction ; 

 but none of these causes would account for the paradox that exists in 

 respect to the inequality of the sexes, the unusual diminution of fe- 

 males, and the increase to such an enormous extent of unproductive 

 marriages. For an explanation of all this, we must look deeper, and 

 it is more than a question whether at the present time anything like a 

 satisfactory explanation can be offered. As an almost abstract ques- 



