38 Remarks on M. Bory de St- Vincent's 



it can be shown, from his own characters, that what he calls 

 species are only what have been termed varieties by other na- 

 turalists, M. le Colonel Bory de St- Vincent may please himself 

 with having discovered, in the five thousand eight hundred and 

 thirty-third year of the world, fourteen new species of men, 

 but will certainly not increase his fame among the philoso- 

 phers of Europe by the discovery. A species, as defined by 

 the best writers on natural history, is an individual family, 

 different from every other family — capable of continuing 

 in propagation or succession its determinate specific peculiari- 

 ties, but incapable of continued reproduction or amalgama- 

 tion with other individuals whose permanent characters are 

 different. And though in systems collective species are, for the 

 sake of arrangement, grouped into genera, and genera into or- 

 ders, yet these last are merely conventional terms, the isolat- 

 ed individuals which form the species, remaining alone and 

 distinct in the arrangement of nature. 



The distinctions on which M. Bory relies for his specific cha- 

 racters are, in one or two cases, the facial angle — colour — 

 height — and lank or crisp hair. The first of these, though at 

 first sight imposing, is not constant, for it fades entirely on a 

 change of circumstances, in two or three generations : colour 

 is not more constant, and alone affords no room for a specific 

 distinction ; height or magnitude is no less deficient for this 

 purpose; and lank or woolly hair, in the animal kingdom, is 

 merely the continuation of a variety, perhaps at first acciden- 

 tal, as is seen in many species of domestic animals. In point 

 of fact, M. Bory has not given one characteristic to his species, 

 that has not been applied by other naturalists merely to de- 

 signate accidental varieties, — not one boundary-line that could 

 for ever prevent the natives of central Africa or China, tran- 

 sported to France, and intermarrying with the subjects of the 

 most Ch ristian King, from becoming, in afe w generations, as much 

 Frenchmen as M. de Bory himself. How much of the variety 

 in the appearance of the human species is to be attributed to cli- 

 mate and food, geographical situation and mode of life, and how 

 much even of man's physical configuration may be owing to mo- 

 ral causes, in fixing family or national distinctions, would require 

 tobeknown, before a line could be drawn between the European 



