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to the modeiti evolutionists, that races are, as he expresses it, 

 merely an optical illusion. In respect of all these, he declines to 

 say more than that, from the point of view of natural history, 

 human races are parts of a whole, or groups offering a particular type. 



"Dr. Topinard considers the introduction of the notion of 

 species into Anthropology to have been mischievous ; and that 

 ethnologists, in using the term ' races ' as equivalent merely to 

 'peoples,' had placed it on the only footing in which it can be 

 practically useful. Those who believe in fixity of race, fonn a very 

 different idea of what a race is, according to the plan upon which 

 they pursue their inquiry ; and he divides such into four classes : — 

 the historic, linguistic, prehistoric, and primordial. The fact is, that 

 a pure homogeneous human group exists nowhere ; and to anive at 

 races, you must study peoples. He establishes this conclusion even 

 from the evidence afforded by the skulls discovered in caverns, 

 dolmens, &c., of Central France. Thus the mean cephalic index 

 (i.e., the breadth of the skull divided by its length) of 24 crania 

 from the cavern of Beaumes Ohaudes is 72-6 ; that of 18 from the 

 neighbouring grotto of L'Homme Mort is 73-2 ; that of 24 from 

 dolmens in the same district, believed to have been foimed by a 

 conquering people from the East, 75*8 ; while that of 172 modern 

 Auvergnat skulls is as high as 84. 



•'These figures show a gradual modification of type from 

 dolichocephalic to brachycephalic — from about f ths to about |-th3 : — 

 but when the details are looked into a little more closely, one sees 

 that it was not by a jump that these changes were made, but that the 

 successive populations overlapped one another. Thus 10 of the 

 Beaumes Ohaudes skulls exceeded 73 ; 3 of the Homme Mort 

 exceeded 75 ; 6 of the Dolmen skulls exceeded 79 ; while more than 

 half of the modern skulls were below 84, — which yet is the average 

 of the whole of them. I am, of com-se, boihng down into a very 

 brief space, at gi-eat risk to its clearness and force, an argument 

 which Dr. Topinard elaborates over 72 pages, but the general result 

 will not be difiicult to express, viz. : — that the peoples which come 

 under our observation now-a-days are the result of a variety of 

 influences acting during long ages of the past, and that no race is to 

 be detennined by physical character only, but in connection with its 



