hominidj: 743 



golian, and the Caucasian were being gradually fashioned into their 

 respective types, is entirely wanting, or if any exists it is at present 

 safely buried in the earth, perhaps to be revealed at some unex- 

 pected time and in some unforeseen manner. Even the materials 

 from which a history of the modifications of the human species as 

 known to our generation must be constructed are rapidly passing 

 away, since the age in which we live is an age in which, in a far 

 greater degree than any previous one, the destruction of races, both 

 by annihilation and absorption, is going on. Owing to the rapid 

 extension of maritime discovery and commerce, changes such as 

 have never been witnessed before are now taking place in the 

 ethnology of the world — changes especially affecting the island 

 populations among which, more than elsewhere, the solution of 

 many of these problems may be looked for. The subject is, how- 

 ever, attracting the attention of observers of all countries to a 

 greater degree than it ever has before, and such progress has been 

 made in perfecting the methods of investigation of racial character- 

 istics that we are beginning to learn what lines of research are 

 profitable and what are barren, so that we may hope the time is 

 not far distant when we may get some clear insight into the know- 

 ledge of the natural classification and relationships of the races of 

 Man. 



The following is a brief summary of the principal results 

 which appear to have been attained up to the present time by the 

 study of this somewhat difficult subject. 1 



The most ordinary observation is sufficient to demonstrate the 

 fact that certain groups of men are strongly marked from others by 

 definite characters common to all members of the group, and trans- 

 mitted regularly to their descendants by the laws of inheritance. 

 Thus the Chinaman and the Negro, the native of Patagonia and the 

 Andaman Islander, are as structurally distinct from each other as 

 are many of the so-called species of any natural group of animals. 

 Indeed, it may be said with truth that their differences are even 

 greater than those which mark the groups called genera by many 

 naturalists of the present day. Nevertheless the difficulty of 

 parcelling out all the individuals composing the human species into 

 certain definite groups, and of saying of each man that he belongs 

 to one or other of such groups, is insuperable. No such classifica- 

 tion has ever been, or, indeed, can ever be obtained. There is not 

 one of the most characteristic and most extreme forms, like those 

 just named, from which transitions cannot be traced by almost 

 imperceptible gradations to any of the other equally characteristic 

 and equally extreme forms. Indeed, a large proportion of mankind 



1 " On the Classification of the Varieties of the Human Species," by W. H. 

 Flower, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 

 May 1885. 



