METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. 245 



These " Eational Monogenists," or, at any rate, 

 the more modern among them, hold, firstly, that 

 the present condition of the earth has existed for 

 untold ages; secondly, that, at a remote period, be- 

 yond the ken of Archbishop Usher, man was cre- 

 ated, somewhere between the Caucasus and the 

 Hindoo Koosh; thirdly, that he might have mi- 

 grated thence to all parts of the inhabited world, 

 seeing that none of them are unattainable from 

 some other inhabited part, by men provided with 

 only such means of transport as savages are known 

 to possess and must have invented; fourthly, that 

 the operation of the existing diversities of climate 

 and other conditions upon people so migrating, is 

 sufficient to account for all the diversities of man- 

 kind. 



Of the truth of the first of these propositions 

 no competent judge now entertains any doubt. 

 The second is more open to discussion; for, in these 

 latter days, many question the special creation of 

 man: and even if his special creation be granted, 

 there is not a shadow of a reason why he should 

 have been created in Asia rather than anywhere 

 else. Of all the odd myths that have arisen in 

 the scientific world, the " Caucasian mystery," in- 

 vented quite innocently by Blumenbach, is the 

 oddest. A Georgian woman's skull was the 

 handsomest in his collection. Hence it became 

 his model exemplar of human skulls, from which 

 all others might be regarded as deviations; and 



