86 INTRODUCTION. 



regulated in the same way by the position of the 

 different kingdoms and provinces. There is, in 

 short, a national physiognomy superadded to those 

 features of our race, which are common to all, by 

 which even ordinary observers are generally able to 

 detect a Frenchman from an Italian, or a Scotch- 

 man from an Englishman. This nice discrimina- 

 tion, however, is the result of observation. To us, 

 the negroes of Africa appear destitute of these na- 

 tional or provincial marks, and to be all alike ; but 

 this is a great mistake. These sable nations ex- 

 hibit, to the practised eye, as much diversity, not 

 merely in the colour of their skin, but in their cast 

 of features, as any of the European nations. And a 

 Gold-coast negro is as different from a Bushman 

 Hottentot, as the modern Greek from the dwarfish 

 Laplander. 



We should scarcely have adverted to facts so 

 generally known as these, but for the purpose of 

 showing, that the laws by which the great Creator 

 of all things has regulated the earth and its inha- 

 bitants, extends to all who live and move and have 

 their being upon it; and that the endless variety 

 which we meet with in the animal world, is nearly 

 as much subjected to this law of GEOGRAPHIC DIS- 

 TRIBUTION, as are the different races and families 

 of mankind. It is by this term that the study of 

 geographic natural history is now designated. It is 

 a branch of science altogether new ; for although its 

 elements seemed to have attracted the attention of 

 Linnaeus, and some insulated theories have been 



