168 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



bearing in mind what our own remote progenitors 

 were, we must allow that all men, and all races, bear 

 within them the elements of a measured perfectibility, 

 probably as high as the Caucasian; and it would be 

 revolting to believe, that the less gifted tribes were 

 predestined to perish beneath the conquering and all- 

 absorbing covetousness of European civilization, with- 

 out an enormous load of responsibility resting on the 

 perpetrators. Yet their fate appears to be sealed in 

 many quarters, and seems, by a pre-ordained law, to 

 be an effect of more mysterious import than human 

 reason can grasp. * 



As therefore we cannot attain, in our state of know- 

 ledge, satisfactory conclusions on this head, it becomes 

 the duty of all to assert, at least, the rights of humanity, 

 in their indisputable plenitude ; although to us, in 

 particular, as mere naturalists, it is a bounden duty 

 to confine ourselves to known historical and scientific 

 facts. 



* There is, however, a great distinction to be drawn 

 between conquest that brings amelioration with it to the 

 masses of the vanquished, and extermination, which leaves 

 no remnant of a broken people. It seems, the first condition 

 is only awardable to the great typical stocks, effecting 

 incorporations among themselves ; the second almost inva- 

 riably the lot of the intermediate, which, in the most 

 favourable cases only, are absorbed. 



