SJJ4 Dr Prichard on the Varieties 



appear to have found their way incidentally into the midst of 

 races foreign to their lineage ; and it would be absurd to regard 

 them as the ancestral stock of so many great and anciently civi- 

 lized nations. 



" 3. The Negroes of Africa, and the woolly-haired natives of 

 the Malayan Mountains, and of New Guinea, and many islands 

 in the Pacific, at no great distance from New Holland, are re- 

 ferred by M. Cuvier to his third race, which he supposes to 

 have originated in Mount Atlas. The languages of these tribes 

 are multifarious, and the migration of one part of them to the 

 Eastern Ocean is improbable and difficult to imagine. It is evi- 

 dent, that the attempt to identify the African Negroes with the 

 Papuas of the Eastern Ocean, rests on the physical peculiarities 

 of these tribes, and that every other species of evidence is against 

 it. But it is certain, that no other principle can be found to 

 account for the existence of nations resembling the Africans in 

 New Guinea and the Eastern Islands. Are not the torrid climes 

 of these countries similar to that of Old Guinea ? and do not all 

 the other productions of nature likewise resemble those of Africa ? 

 It is not to be wondered at that the human species should as- 

 similate in these parallel latitudes and analogous situations. 

 The black and woolly-haired variety of the human species is 

 that which has ever thrivea best in equatorial countries ; and 

 there is probably something in the nature of the torrid clime 

 which favours its rise and propagation. If physical agencies 

 produced it once, similar agencies may have produced it where- 

 ever their influence has been exerted with a certain degree of in- 

 tensity, and under favourable circumstances.'' 



The following are the general inferences which the author has 

 deduced from the preceding statement : 



** It appears, on the whole, that the attempt to constitute 

 particular families of nations, or to divide the human species into 

 several distinct races, upon the principle of a permanent and 

 constant transmission of physical characters, is altogether im- 

 practicable. In the first place, such divisions of races do 

 not coincide with the divisions of languages. We shall find 

 one class of men as distinguished by physical character, in- 

 cluding several races entirely distinct from each other, when 

 reference is made to their languages. Thus, the Turkish or 



