HOLMES DISTRIBUTION OF THE HUMAN RACE. 31 



nately preserved in rare instances by complete petrifaction, the 

 mere fact that no such remains have been found should not be 

 veiy surprising. Nevertheless, it may very well be true that 

 while all known races may be lineally and geographically traced 

 backward to the southern tropical provinces, it may at the same 

 time be the fact that the unknown ancestors of all of them may 

 have extended northwardly far into the Paltearctic province, in 

 times preceding the Miocene men of Thenay, in the same way as 

 did the living anthropoid apes, and in the same way that the 

 lemurs of Madagascar and Celebes go back to Eocene progenitors, 

 which then lived as far north as the Palaearctic areas. Among 

 these earliest human progenitors, it is certainly not probable that 

 there were any white types or color. 



There are, properly speaking, no white-skinned, blue-eyed, and 

 light-haired apes, though it appears that the naked parts of the 

 face in some of them exhibit black, blue, red, brown, and even 

 whitish colors, and some of them have white and reddish whis- 

 kers. Under the merely animal conditions in which they lived, 

 it might be the more probable that such spontaneous tendencies 

 to variation as might arise would be favored by sexual selection 

 for ornament and attraction as in lower animals ; and this opera- 

 tion may reasonably be supposed to have continued through the 

 earlier stages of the human development ; but Mr. Darwin him- 

 self admits that the stronger kinds of evidence, to show that the 

 light color in men arose from sexual selection, are wanting. He 

 gives many facts to prove that every race considers its own color 

 the most beautiful ; but this may be attributed to a merely fash- 

 ionable way of thinking after the natural fact has come to exist. 

 Colored races which still occupy latitudes and climates where 

 they probably originated, do not seem to have grown lighter in 

 recent times, unless crossed by races of lighter colors. But though 

 it is neither proved, nor probable, that the white color existed 

 among the earliest progenitors, and whatever may have been the 

 cause of the difference of color, or however color may be regarded 

 as a secondary character, from the general fact that the principal 

 bands of color correspond so nearly with the other distinctions of 

 race and habitat, it may safely be inferred that the origin of the 

 different colors must go very far back in the evolution of races. 

 It is hard to resist the conviction, for instance, that the Chinese, 



