3i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Caucasian of Europe, the Mongolian of Asia, and the Ethiopian of 

 Africa, and that all existing individuals of the species can be ranged 

 around these types, or somewhere or other between them. Large num- 

 bers are doubtless the descendants of direct crosses in varying propor- 

 tions between well-established extreme forms ; for, notwithstanding 

 opposite views formerly held by some authors on this subject, there is 

 now abundant evidence of the wholesale production of new races in 

 this way. Others may be the descendants of the primitive stock, 

 before the strongly marked existing distinctions had taken place, and 

 therefore i^resent, though from a different cause from the last, equally 

 generalized characters. In these cases it can only be by most carefully 

 examining and balancing all characters however minute, and finding 

 out in what direction the preponderance lies, that a place can be as- 

 sigrned to them. It can not be too often insisted on that the various 

 groups of mankind, owing to their probable unity of origin, the great 

 variability of individuals, and the possibility of all degrees of intermixt- 

 ure of races at remote or recent periods of the history of the species, 

 have so much in common that it is extremely difficult to find distinct- 

 ive characters capable of strict definition by which they may be differ- 

 entiated. It is more by the preponderance of certain characters in a 

 large number of members of a group, than by the exclusive or even con- 

 stant possession of these characters in each of its members, that the 

 group as a whole must be characterized. 



Bearing these principles in mind, we may endeavor to formulate, as 

 far as they have as yet been worked out, the distinctive features of 

 the typical members of each of the three great divisions, and then show 

 into what subordinate groups each of them seems to be divided. 



To begin with the Ethiopian, Negroid, or Melanian, or "black" 

 type. It is characterized by a dark, often nearly black, complexion ; 

 black hair, of the kind called " frizzly," or, incorrectly, " woolly," i. e., 

 each hair being closely rolled up upon itself, a condition always asso- 

 ciated with a more or less flattened or elliptical transverse section ; a 

 moderate or scanty development of beard ; an almost invariably doli- 

 chocephalic skull ; small and moderately retreating malar bones (me- 

 sopic face *) ; a very broad and flat nose, platyrhine in the skeleton ; 

 moderate or low orbits ; prominent eyes ; thick, everted lips ; prog- 

 nathous jaws ; large teeth (macrodont) ; a narrow pelvis (index in the 

 male 90 to 100) ; a long fore-arm (humero-radial index 80), and cer- 

 tain other proportions of the body and limbs which are being gradu- 

 ally worked out and reduced to numerical expression as material for 

 so doing accumulates. 



The most characteristic examples of the second great type, the 

 Mongolian or Xanthous or " yellow," have a yellow or brownish com- 

 plexion ; coarse, straight hair, without any tendency to curl, and nearly 



* Oldfield Thomas, in a paper read before the Anthropological Institute, January 13, 

 1885. 



