Biographical Sketch of Dr Prichard. 207 



race could not be doubted, that they must not be received as 

 evidences against the unity of our species. He successfully 

 combated the old opinion that the influence of the sun, con- 

 tinued through several generations, has produced the black- 

 ness of the Negro, and adduced instances in proof of the con- 

 tinuance of black or bi-own and the white complexion through 

 numerous generations, in almost every latitude and climate. 

 He inquired into the production and permanency of varieties 

 in man and in inferior animals ; examined some of the causes 

 which may tend to produce them ; and following up an idea 

 adopted by John Hunter, that cultivation is a powerful cause 

 of producing variety, and of lowering the intensity of colour 

 in animals and plants, he makes the suggestion, that civiliza- 

 tion has been the operative cause which has produced the 

 white varieties of the human species, of which he supposed 

 that the first pair were black. He related many curious facts 

 collected from several parts of the globe in support of this 

 bold and ingenious theory, the announcement of which excited 

 both surpi'ise and interest. Though the Doctor ventured to 

 offer this conjecture, the work was throughout an appeal to 

 fact and evidence: and not satisfied with merely inferring that 

 resemblance in forfn, colour, language, and habits, are proofs 

 of a community of origin amongst the inhabitants of distant 

 islands, he adduced the instances of canoes with their crews 

 having lost their way, and being conveyed by winds or cur- 

 rents to a distance of hundreds of miles across the ocean. 

 The work contains a description of the known varieties of 

 man, in which the author adopted the division proposed by 

 Blumenbach, and exhibited a great amount of research in the 

 number of authors from whom his descriptions were collected. 

 Even at this early period of the author's researches, a large 

 amount of labour and erudition were devoted to the ancient 

 Egyptians and Hindoos. 



About thirteen years intervened between the publication 

 of the first and second editions of the Doctor's work ; and as 

 his growing celebrity as a physician had in the mean time 

 raised him to eminence in his profession, it may not be amiss 

 here to make a digression from his history as an ethnologist, 

 in order to speak of him as a medical man, in which charac- 

 ter he would have been distinguished had he written nothing 



