1864. | Introduction. 15 
without referring to the interesting experiment which has been so 
successfully carried out by our neighbours across the Channel. 
The “Jardin d’Acclimatation” may be considered an ornamental 
and an educational, as well as a practical undertaking; and the 
admirable combination of art and nature, displaying as it does, in 
the highest degree, the characteristic taste of the French people, is 
eminently deserving of commendation. We trust that the time is not 
far distant when the inhabitants and visitors in the metropolis will 
have an opportunity of participating in as great a pleasure as that 
which may now be enjoyed by visitors to the French capital. 
All questions regarding man’s origin, or his relations to the lower 
animals, and concerning the connection or differences between the 
various races of mankind, will receive the earliest consideration of the 
writers in this Journal. They are par excellence topics of the day, 
and will probably long remain so; and should any of our readers 
regard them as mere matters of speculation, interesting only to 
naturalists, or doubt their practical bearing upon society, we recommend 
them to read the report of the discussion which took place concerning 
the Negro, at the Newcastle Meeting of the British Association. 
At the close of a paper on “'The Physical and Mental Character 
of the Negro,” its author, Dr. Hunt, the President of the Anthropo- 
logical Society, summed up his views as follows :— 
“Ist. That there is as good reason for classifying the Negro as a 
distinct species from the European, as there is for making the ass a 
distinct species from the zebra. 2nd. That the Negro is inferior, 
intellectually, to the European. 3rd. That ‘the analogies are far more 
numerous between the Negro and apes, than between the European 
and apes.” 
“No man,” he continued, “who thoroughly investigates with an 
unbiassed mind, can doubt that the Negro belongs to a distinct type of 
Man to the European. This word species, in the present state of 
science, is not satisfactory ; but we may safely say that there is in the 
Negro that assemblage of evidence which would ipso facto induce an 
unbiassed observer to make the European and Negro two distinct types 
of man. My second and third proposition must be equally patent to 
all who have examined the facts.” 
And there appears to have been great unanimity in the opinions 
held by the officers of this nascent society, for, in the subsequent 
discussion, its secretary declared, in confirmation of the views of his 
chief, that wherever intellectual superiority exists in a man of colour, 
he is always found to have an admixture of white blood in his veins. 
In the section in which these statements were made (the Geogra- 
phical and Ethnological), there were unfortunately but few physiolo- 
