THE VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 315 

 THE YAEIETIES OF THE HUMAIT SPECIES.* 



By Pbofessob WILLIAM. H, FLO WEE, F. E. S. 



THE most ordinary observation is sufficient to demonstrate the fact 

 that certain groups of men are strongly marked from others by 

 definite characters common to all members of the group, and transmit- 

 ted regularly to their descendants by the laws of inheritance. The 

 Chinaman and the negro, the native of Patagonia and the Andaman- 

 Islander, are as distinct from each other structurally as are many of 

 the so-called species of any natural group of animals. Indeed, it may 

 be said with truth that their differences are greater than those which 

 mark the groups called genera by many naturalists of the present day. 

 Nevertheless, the difficulty of parceling out all the individuals com- 

 posing the human species into certain definite groups, and of saying 

 of each man that he belongs to one of other of such groups, is insu- 

 perable. No such classification has ever, or indeed, can ever, be 

 obtained. There is not one of the most characteristic, most extreme 

 forms, like those I have just named, from which transitions can not be 

 traced by almost imperceptible gradations to any of the other equally 

 characteristic, equally extreme, forms. Indeed, a large proportion of 

 mankind is made up, not of extreme or typical, but of more or less 

 generalized or intermediate, forms, the relative numbers of which are 

 continually increasing as the long-existing isolation of nations and races 

 breaks down under the ever-extending intercommunication character- 

 istic of the period in which we dwell. 



The difficulties of framing a natural classification of man, or one 

 which really represents the relationship of the various minor groups to 

 each other, are well exemplified by a study of the numerous attempts 

 which have been made from the time of Linnseus and Blumenbach 

 onward. Even in the first step of establishing certain primary groups 

 of equivalent rank there has been no accord. The number of such 

 groups has been most variously estimated by different writers from 

 two up to sixty, or more, although it is important to note that thei'e has 

 always been a tendency to revert to the four primitive types sketched 

 out by Linnseus — the European, Asiatic, African, and American — ex- 

 panded into five by Blumenbach by the addition of the Malay, and 

 reduced by Cuvier to three by the suppression of the last two. After 

 a perfectly independent study of the subject, extending over many 

 years, I can not resist the conclusion, so often arrived at by various 

 anthropologists, and so often abandoned for some more complex sys- 

 tem, that the primitive man, whatever he may have been, has in the 

 course of ages divaricated into three extreme types, represented by the 



* From the President's Anniversary Address to the Anthropological Institute of Great 

 Britain and Ireland, January 27, 1835. 



