122 Dr Hodgkin on the Progress of Ethnology. 



attempts wliicli have been made to trace not only various 

 Asiatic nations, but even the North American Indians to the 

 lost tribes of the children of Israel, and the equally improved, 

 but somewhat less improbable doctrine, that the entire continent 

 of North and South America have been peopled by migrations 

 from Asia, by the nearly approximating points of Kamt- 

 schatka and the Aleutian Islands. 



The views of historians and naturalists, regarding the va- 

 rieties exhibited by man, were ill defined and irregular, com- 

 posed of a strange admixture of facts either well or ill ob- 

 served, rumour and speculation, prior to the important step 

 which was taken by a great natural historian of our own 

 times. Professor Blumenbach directed his attention to this 

 subject at so early a period as to make it the subject of his 

 inaugural dissertation, and it continued to be one of the prin- 

 cipal objects of his research through the course of his long 

 life ; in which he was enabled to bring to bear upon it his 

 cultivated abilities as a zoologist and comparative anatomist, 

 aided by accumulated well authenticated facts and specimens, 

 which, by his own exertions, and the co-operations of his 

 friends, he collected for its illustration. 



Without disregarding the important advantage which a 

 knowledge of the geographical distribution of man must ne- 

 cessarily render to the subject with which he was engaged, 

 and without disregarding the more obvious distinctions marked 

 by colour, he led the way in adopting the form and proportion 

 of the cranium, as affording the most important and distinct 

 indications by which to mark the distinctions and affinities of 

 human races or varieties. In doing this he was not absolutely 

 original, seeing that Camper had touched on the same subject 

 in treating of the facial angle in the groups of inferior animals ; 

 and after applying this test in comparisons drawn between 

 these amongst each other, and again between the inferior 

 animals and man, he was led to make the same application in 

 contrasting the varieties of man with each other. Blumen- 

 bach perceived the necessity which existed for looking at 

 many characters besides that of the facial angle, and instituted 

 a method for viewing skulls in different directions, for the pur- 

 pose of contrasting them with each other. Not only may the 



