Dr Hodgkin on the Progress of Ethnology. 123 



proportions of the head and face greatly vary, and thereby 

 affect the facial angle, but differences no less remarkable have 

 long been noticed, with respect to the proportionate width of 

 the cranium ; and the distinction of long and round heads is 

 probably one of the oldest distinctions which ordinary obser- 

 vation has adopted. The late Professor Blumenbach insisted 

 on these characters, and having laboriously formed a collection 

 of skulls from various nations, he published sketches of them 

 in his Decades, accompanied by observations pointing out the 

 peculiarities which, by this mode of observation, he had been 

 led to detect. He therefore placed it in the power of others to 

 pursue the inquiry in the same line, and gave a stimulus to 

 the collection of comparative crania, which are now to be 

 found in all the best anatomical museums, where they render 

 valuable facilities to those who may be engaged in this inter- 

 esting study. Mainly referring to the cranial characteristics, 

 yet, as before stated, not neglecting the lights of history and 

 geography, Blumenbach was led to establish five principal va- 

 rieties — the Caucasian or Arab European, the Asiatic or 

 Mongolian, the Malay or Polynesian, the American and the 

 Ethiopic. The genius of that greatest of modern zoologists, 

 Cuvier, was so much engrossed with characteristics of recent 

 and extinct inferior animals, that he cannot be said to have 

 devoted proportionate attention to the varieties of man ; yet 

 he did so sufficiently to be led to the persuasion, that, if we 

 must admit certain grand divisions of the human race, deter- 

 mined by their respective localities, it would be necessary to 

 reduce the five mentioned by Blumenbach to three, viz. : the 

 Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Ethiopian, since he does 

 not find, in the Malay and the American, characteristics suf- 

 ficiently marked to constitute separate divisions, though he 

 has not determined to which of those which he has admitted 

 they ought to be referred. He was very sensible of the great 

 defect of materials already collected for the complete study of 

 the varieties of man, and observes that the indifference of 

 travellers to this subject has been incomprehensible. It is 

 difficult to give an account of this indifference, but the omis- 

 sion is not, therefore, the less to be deplored. 



The obvious relation which the divisions of Blumenbach 



