226 THE DESCENT OF MAN. Part I. 



peculiarities, more strongly marked than those occur- 

 ring in any other race, but these are known not to 

 be of constant occurrence. In the several American 

 tribes, colour and hairyness differ considerably ; as does 

 colour to a certain degree, and the shape of the features 

 greatly, in the Negroes of Africa. The shape of the 

 skull varies , much in some races ; 16 and so it is with 

 every other character. Now all naturalists have learnt 

 by dearly-bought experience, how rash it is to attempt 

 to define species by the aid of inconstant characters. 



But the most weighty of all the arguments against 

 treating the races of man as distinct species, is that they 

 graduate into each other, independently in many cases, 

 as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed. 

 Man has been studied more carefully than any other 

 organic being, and yet there is the greatest possible 

 diversity amongst capable judges whether he should be 

 classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as 

 three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), 

 six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven 

 (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), sixteen (Des- 

 moulins), twenty- two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as 

 sixty-three, according to Burke. 17 This diversity of 

 judgment does not prove that the races ought not to be 

 ranked as species, but it shews that they graduate into 

 each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover 

 clear distinctive characters between them. 



Every naturalist who has had the misfortune to under- 



16 For instance with the aborigines of America and Australia. Prof. 

 Huxley says (' Transact. Internat. Congress of Prehist. Arch.' 1868, p. 

 105) that the skulls of many South Germans and Swiss are " as short 

 " and as broad as those of the Tartars," &c. 



17 See a good discussion on this subject in Waitz, ' Introduct. to 

 Anthropology,' Eng. translat. 1863, p. 198-208, 227. I have taken 

 some of the above statements from H. Tuttle's ' Origin and Antiquity 

 of Physical Man,' Boston, 1866, p. 35. 



