THM RACES OF MAN. 100 



iis two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five 

 (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agas= 

 siz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), sixteen 

 (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), of 

 as sixty-three, according to Burke.* This diversity of 

 judgment does not prove that the races ought not to be 

 ranked as species, but it shows that they graduate into each 

 other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear 

 distinctive characters between them. 



Every naturalist who has had the misfortune to under- 

 take the description of a group of highly varying organ- 

 isms, has encountered cases (I speak after experience) 

 precisely like that of man; and if of a cautious disposition, 

 he will end by uniting all the forms which graduate into 

 each other, under a single species; for he will say to him- 

 self that he has no right to give names to objects which he 

 cannot define. Cases of this kind occur in the order which 

 includes man, namely in certain genera of monkeys; while 

 in other genera, as in Cercopithecus, most of the species 

 can be determined with certainty. In the American genus 

 Cebus, the various forms are ranked by some naturalists as 

 species, by others as mere geographical races. Xow if 

 numerous specimens of Cebus Avere collected from all parts 

 of South America, and those forms which at present appeal- 

 to be specifically distinct, were found to graduate into each 

 other by close steps, they would usually be ranked as mere 

 varieties or races; and this course has been followed by 

 most naturalists with respect to the races of man. Never- 

 theless, it must be confessed that there are forms, at least 

 in the vegetable kingdom,! which we cannot avoid naming 

 as species, but which are connected together by numberless 

 gradations, independently of intercrossing. 



Some naturalists have lately employed the term " sub- 

 species " to designate forms which possess many of the char- 

 acteristics of true species, but which hardly deserve so high 



*See a good discussion on this subject in Waitz, " Introduct, to 

 Anthropology," Eng. translat.. 1863, pp. 198-208, 227. I have taken 

 some of the above statements from H. Tuttle's * ' Origin and Antiquity 

 of Physical Man," Boston, 1866, p. 35. 



f Prof. Nageli has carefully described several striking cases in his 

 "Botanische Mittheilumgen," B. ii, 1866, ss. 294-369. Prof. Asa 

 Gray has made analogous remarks on some intermediate forms in the 

 Compositae of North America. 



