ZOOLOGY. 289 



the frequency with -which this notion is revived, ever returning upon 

 us with hydra-headed tenacity of life, and presenting itself under a new 

 form as soon as the preceding one has been exploded and set aside, 

 that it has a certain fascination for the human mind. This arises, per- 

 haps, from the desire to explain the secret of our own existence, to 

 have some simple and easy solution of the fact that we live. 



" I confess that there seems to me to be a repulsive poverty in this ma- 

 terial explanation that is contradicted by the intellectual grandeur of 

 the universe ; the resources of the Deity cannot be so meagre that, in 

 order to create a human being endowed with reason, he must change a 

 monkey into a man. This is, however, merely a personal opinion, and 

 has no weight as an argument ; nor am I so uncandid as to assume 

 that another may not hold an opinion diametrically opposed to mine in 

 a spirit quite as reverential as my own. But J nevertheless insist, that 

 this theory is opposed to the processes of Nature, as far as we have been 

 able to apprehend them ; that it is contradicted by the facts of Embry- 

 ology and Paleontology, the former showing us forms of development 

 as distinct and persistent for each group as are the fossil types of each 

 period revealed to us by the latter ; and that the experiments upon 

 domesticated animals and cultivated plants, on which its adherents base 

 their views, are entirely foreign to the matter in hand, since the varie- 

 ties thus brought about by the fostering care of man are of an entirely 

 different character from those observed among wild species. And 

 while their positive evidence is inapplicable, their negative evidence is 

 equally unsatisfactory, since, however long and frequent the breaks in 

 the geological series may be in which they would fain bury their tran- 

 sition types, there are many points in the succession where the connec- 

 tion is 'perfectly distinct and unbroken, and it is just at these points 

 that new organic groups are introduced without any intermediate forms 

 to link them w r ith the preceding ones." 



PHYSIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TYPICAL RACES OF MEN. 



In a paper on the above subject, recently read to the British Ethno- 

 logical Society, Mr. Robert Dunn maintained that the genus homo 

 was distinctly "defined, on the ground that in man's moral and religious 

 attributes the inferior animals do not participate, and it was this that 

 constituted the difference between him and them. The barrier was 

 thus, he considered, impassable between man and the 'chimpanzee and 

 gorilla ; and that wherever man, with his erect attitude and with his 

 articulate voice, is found, his claims to our common humanity must be 

 immediately acknowledged, however debased the type may be. His 

 conviction was that there was proof of a general unity exhibited in all 

 the races of the great family of man, inasmuch that they were all en- 

 dowed with the same intellectual faculties and mental activities, how- 

 ever much they may vary in degree. It had, he thought, been fairly 

 argued that all the races of the human family form but one species, 

 from the physiological fact that they are all capable of fruitful union. 

 Believing the brain to be the material organ of the mind, the author 

 considered the study of the cerebral organization and development in 

 the various typical races as one of the most effectual means of better 

 understanding and elucidating the psychological differences which 

 characterize them. This subject, however, was one that yet required 



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