246 METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. 



out of this, by some strange intellectual hocus- 

 pocus, grew up the notion that the Caucasian man 

 is the prototypic " Adamic " man, and his coun- 

 try the primitive centre of our kind. Perhaps 

 the most curious thing of all is, that the said 

 Georgian skull, after all, is not a skull of average 

 form, but distinctly belongs to the brachycephalic 

 group. 



With the third proposition I am quite disposed 

 to agree, though it must be recollected that it is 

 one thing to allow that a given migration is 

 possible, and another to admit there is good 

 reason to believe it has really taken place. 



But I can find no sufficient ground for accept- 

 ing the fourth proposition; and I doubt if it would 

 ever have obtained its general currency except for 

 the circumstance that fair Europeans are very 

 readily tanned and embrowned by the sun. Yet 

 I am not aware that there is a particle of proof that 

 the cutaneous change thus effected can become 

 hereditary, any more than that the enlarged livers, 

 which plague our countrymen in India, can be 

 transmitted; while there is very strong evidence 

 to the contrary. Not only, in fact, are there such 

 cases as those of the English families in Barbadoes, 

 who have remained for six generations unaltered 

 in complexion, but which are open to the objection 

 that they may have received infusions of fresh Eu- 

 ropean blood; but there is the broad fact, that not 

 a single indigenous Negro exists either in the great 



