Morton’s Crania Americana. 347 
ment, inasmuch as they show, beyond all question, that the Cau- 
casian and Negro races were as perfectly distinct in that country, 
upwards of three thousand years ago, as they are now ; whence 
it is evident, that if the Caucasian was derived from the Negro, 
or the Negro from the Caucasian, by the action of external causes, 
the change must have been effected in at most one thousand 
years ; a theory which the subsequent evidence of thirty centu- 
ries proves to be a physical impossibility ; and we have already 
ventured to insist that. such a commutation could be effected by 
Babies short of a miracle.” p. 88. 
t. Morton describes the general characteristics of the Ameri- 
can, nee the head of the “ Varieties of the Human Species,” 
aid then enters on a special description of the “ crania” of up- 
wards of seventy nations or tribes belonging to that family, illus- 
trating the text by admirable plates of the crania, drawn from 
skulls, mostly in his own possession, and of the full size of a- 
ture 
He regards the American race as possessing certain physical 
traits that serve to identify them in localities the most remote 
from each other. ‘There are, also, in their multitndivons lan- 
guages, the traces of a common origin._, He divides the race into 
the “ Toltecan family,” which bears evidence of centuries of 
demi-civilization, and into the “ American family,” which embra- 
ces all the barbarous nations of the new world, excepting the Po- 
lar tribes, or Mongol Americans. The Eskimaux, and especially 
the Greenlanders, are regarded as a partially mixed race, amoung 
whom the physical character of the Mongolian predominates, 
while their language presents obvious analogies to that of the 
Chippewyans, who border on them to the south. 
In the American family itself, there are several subordinate 
groups. st. The Appalachian branch includes all the nations 
of North America, excepting the Mexicans, together with the 
tribes north of the river of Amazon and east of the Andes. 
2d. Thé Brazilian branch is spread over a great part of South 
America east of the Andes, viz. between the Rivers Amazou and’ 
La Plata, and between the Andes and the Atlantic, thus inclu- 
ding the whole of Brazil and Paraguay north of the 35th degree of 
south latitude. In character, these nations are warlike, cruel, aud 
unforgiving. They turn with aversion from the restraints of 
civilized is and have made but trifling progress in mental cul- 
