Dr Hodgkin on the Progress of Ethnology, 119 



When all these various subjects arc more or less carefully 

 viewed and considered in relation to man as an animal of a 

 peculiar kind, it may very naturally be inquired, are all these 

 differences to be ascribed to modifying circumstances acting 

 upon beings essentially similar and of the same stock \ 



Prichard and Lawrence put the supposed case of a pre- 

 viously uninformed individual seeing in contrast the ex- 

 tremes of colour, and the extremes of civilization and barba- 

 rism, by which he would almost necessarily be led to infer 

 absolute distinctness of species. Lord Kames had previ- 

 ously stated that a similar inference must be drawn, were 

 not the declaration of Scripture opposed to it. 



Investigation of the innumerable and almost insensible 

 gradations between these extremes, might as naturally induce 

 the opposite idea, which is actually embraced by many of the 

 best inquirers. Irrespective of these extreme views, writers 

 of the highest antiquity have spoken of man as formed into 

 various distinct groups which have been known as separate 

 nations ; some distinguished by their languages, some by their 

 colour, and many by their country, of whom it has been mere- 

 ly known that they inhabit such a territory and possess such 

 and such peculiarities of custom. Facts of this kind are ne- 

 cessarily blended with the writings of historians and geogra- 

 phers from the most remote period down to the present 

 time, and whether separated into a distinct study or not, the 

 description of them has acquired the peculiar and appropriate 

 name of Ethnography or the description of nations. 



With the object of exhibiting the mode in which the hu- 

 man race, broken up into more or less distinct groups, is 

 distributed over the face of the globe, various attempts have 

 been made to give the geography of man, just as we have the 

 geography of plants by Humboldt, the geography of insects by 

 Latreille, and the geography of Crustacea by Milne Edwards. 

 Thus we have the geographical distribution of man attempted 

 by Zimmermann. 



Various Ethnographical maps, of greater or less extent, 

 have been produced in this country and on the Continent, 

 and a comprehensive scheme for the production of an ethno- 

 graphical map of the world has been projected and commenced 



