THE VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 321 



polar ice, and on the other by hostile tribes of American Indians, with 

 which they rarely if ever mingled, have gradually developed charac- 

 ters most of which are strongly expressed modifications of those seen 

 in their allies who still remain on the western side of Behring Strait. 

 Every special characteristic which distinguishes a Japanese from the 

 average of mankind is seen in the Eskimo in an exaggerated degree, 

 so that there can be no doubt about their being derived from the same 

 stock. It has also been shown that these special characteristics gradu- 

 ally increase from west to east, and are seen in their greatest perfec- 

 tion in the inhabitants of Greenland ; at all events, in those where no 

 crossing with the Danes has taken place. Such scanty remains as have 

 yet been discovered of the early inhabitants of Europe present no 

 structural affinities to the Eskimo, although it is not unlikely that 

 similar external conditions may have led them to adopt similar modes 

 of life. In fact, the Eskimo are such an intensely specialized race, 

 perhaps the most specialized of any in existence, that it is probable 

 that they are of comparatively late origin, and were not as a race con- 

 temporaries with the men whose rude flint tools found in our drifts 

 excite so much interest and speculation as to the makers, who have 

 been sometimes, though with little evidence to justify such an assump- 

 tion, reputed to be the ancestors of the present inhabitants of the 

 northernmost parts of America. 



B. The typical Mongolian races constitute the present population 

 of Northern and Central Asia. They are not very distinctly, but still 

 conveniently for descriptive purposes, divided into two groups, the 

 Northern and the Southern. 



a. The former, or Mongolo-Altaic group, are united by the affini- 

 ties of their language. These people, from the cradle of their race in 

 the great central plateau of Asia, have at various times poured out 

 their hordes upon the lands lying to the west, and have penetrated 

 almost to the heart of Europe. The Finns, the Magyars, and the 

 Turks, are each the descendants of one of these waves of incursion, 

 but they have for so many generations intermingled with the peoples 

 through whom they have passed in their migrations, or have found in 

 the countries in which they have ultimately settled, that their original 

 physical characters have been completely modified. Even the Lapps, 

 that diminutive tribe of nomads inhabiting the most northern parts of 

 Europe, supposed to be of Mongolian descent, show so little of the 

 special attributes of that branch, that it is difficult to assign them a 

 place in it in a classification based upon physical characters. The 

 Japanese are said by their language to be allied rather to the North- 

 ern than to the following branch of the Mongolian stock. 



h. The Southern Mongolian group, divided from the former chiefly 

 by language and habits of life, includes the greater part of the popu- 

 lation of China, Thibet, Burmah, and Siam. 



C. The next great division of Mongoloid people is the Malay, sub- 



TOL. XXTIII. — 21 



