328 Dr. Latham on the Subjectivity of 



closely can most accurately and conveniently be grouped. When 

 this is done, the more distant outliers will be distributed over 

 the debateable ground of an equivocal frontier. To recapitulate : 

 varieties as opposed to species imply transitional forma, whilst 

 transitional forms preclude definite lines of demarcation. 



Yet what is the actual classification of the varieties of man- 

 kind, and what is the current nomenclature? To say the least, it is 

 very like that of the species of a genus. Blumenbach^s Mon- 

 golian, Blumenbach's Caucasian, Blumenbach's iEthiopian,— 

 where do we find the patent evidence that these are the names of 

 varieties rather than species ? Nowhere. The practical proof of 

 a clear consciousness on the part of a writer that he is classifying 

 varieties rather than species, is the care he takes to guard his 

 reader against mistaking the one for the other, and the attention 

 he bestows on the transition from one type to another. Who 

 has ever spent much ethnology on this ? So far from learned 

 men having done this, they have introduced a new and lax term 

 — race. This means something which is neither a variety nor 

 yet a species — a tertium quid. In what way it differs from the 

 other denominations has yet to be shown. 



Now if it be believed (and this belief is assumed) that the 

 varieties of mankind are varieties of a species only, and if it can- 

 not be denied that the nomenclature and classification of ethno- 

 logists is the nomenclature and classification of men investigating 

 the species of a genus, what is to be done ? Are species to be ad- 

 mitted, or is the nomenclature to be abandoned ? The present 

 remarks are made with the view of showing that the adoption of 

 either alternative would be inconsiderate, and that the existing 

 nomenclature, even when founded upon the assumption of broad 

 and trenchant lines of demarcation between varieties which {ex 

 vi termini) ought to graduate into each other, is far from being 

 indefensible. 



Man conquers man, and occupant displaces occupant on the 

 earth's surface. By this means forms and varieties which once 

 existed become extinct. The more this extinction takes place, 

 the greater is the obliteration of those transitional and interme- 

 diate forms which connect extreme types ; and the greater this 

 obliteration, the stronger the lines of demarcation between geo- 

 gi'aphically contiguous families. Hence a variational modification 

 of a group of individuals simulates a difference of species ; forms 

 which were once wide apart being brought into juxtaposition by 

 means of the annihilation of the intervening transitions. Hence 

 what we of the nineteenth century, — ethnologists, politicians, 

 naturalists, and the like — behold in the way of groups, classes, 

 tribes, families, or what not, is beholden to a great extent under 

 the guise of species ; although they may not be so in reality, 



