METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. 241 



belong to what is, properly speaking, the present 

 order of things, have long been extinct. Beyond 

 the limits of a fraction of Europe, Palieontology 

 tells us nothing of man or of his works. 



To sum up our knowledge of the ethnological 

 past of man; so far as the light is bright, it shows 

 him substantially as he is now; and, when it grows 

 dim, it permits us to see no sign that he was other 

 than he is now. 



It is a general belief that men of different stocks 

 differ as much physiologically as they do morpho- 

 logically; but it is very hard to prove, in any par- 

 ticular case, how much of a supposed national char- 

 acteristic is due to inherent physiological peculiari- 

 ties, and how much to the influence of circum- 

 stances. There is much evidence to show, how- 

 ever, that some stocks enjoy a partial or complete 

 immunity from diseases which destroy, or decimate, 

 others. Thus there seems good ground for the 

 belief that Negroes are remarkably exempt from 

 yellow fever; and that, among Europeans, the 

 melanochroic people are less obnoxious to its rav- 

 ages than the xanthochroic. But many writers, 

 not content with physiological differences of this 

 kind, undertake to prove the existence of others of 

 far greater moment; and, indeed, to show that cer- 

 tain stocks of mankind exhibit, more or less dis- 

 tinctly, the physiological characters of true species. 

 Unions between these stocks, and still more be- 

 tween the half-breeds arising from their mixture, 

 180 



