THE VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 323 



were Aryans, and in treating the Americans as one race it is not 

 intended that they are more closely allied than the different Aryan 

 people of Europe and Asia. The best argument that can be used for 

 the unity of the American race — using the word in a broad sense — is 

 the great difficulty of forming any natural divisions founded upon 

 physical characters. The important character of the hair does not 

 differ throughout the whole continent. It is always straight and lank, 

 long and abundant on the scalp, but sparse elsewhere. The color of 

 the skin is practically uniform, notwithstanding the enormous differ- 

 ences of climate under which many members of the group exist. In 

 the features and cranium certain special modifications prevail in differ- 

 ent districts, but the same forms appear at widely separated parts of 

 the continent. I have examined skulls from Vancouver's Island, from 

 Peru, and from Patagonia, which were almost undistinguishable from 

 one another. 



Naturalists who have admitted but four primary types of the hu- 

 man species have always found a difficulty with the Americans, hesi- 

 tating between placing them with the Mongolian or so-called " yellow " 

 races, or elevating them to the rank of a primary group. Cuvier does 

 not seem to have been able to settle this point to his own satisfaction, 

 and leaves it an open question. Although the large majority of Ameri- 

 cans have in the special form of the nasal bones, leading to the charac- 

 teristic high bridge of the nose of the living face, in the well-developed 

 superciliary ridge and retreating forehead, characters which distinguish 

 them from the typical Asiatic Mongol, in so many other respects they 

 resemble them so much that, although admitting the difficulties of the 

 case, I am inclined to include them as aberrant members of the Mon- 

 golian type. It is, however, quite open to any one adopting the Negro, 

 Mongolian, and Caucasian as primary divisions, also placing the Ameri- 

 cans apart as a fourth. 



Now that the high antiquity of man in America, perhaps as high 

 as that he has in Europe, has been discovered, the puzzling problem, 

 from which part of the Old World the people of America have sprung, 

 has lost its significance. It is quite as likely that the people of Asia 

 may have been derived from America as the reverse. However this 

 may be, the population of America had been, before the time of Co- 

 lumbus, practically isolated from the rest of the world, except at the 

 extreme north. Such visits as those of the early Norsemen to the 

 coasts of Greenland, Labrador, and Nova Scotia, or the possible acci- 

 dental stranding of a canoe containing survivors of a voyage across 

 the Pacific or the Atlantic, can have had no appreciable effect upon 

 the characteristics of the people. It is difficult, therefore, to look upon 

 the anomalous and special characters of the American people as the 

 effects of crossing, as was suggested in the case of the Australians, a 

 consideration which gives more weight to the view of treating them 

 as a distinct primary division. 



