ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Terceron and the European, the Quadroon ; the 

 Quadroon and the European, the Quinteron, who 

 in slave countries used to rank as a white man. 

 It is the favourite dogma of the modern school of 

 French anthropologists that mixed races are not 

 permanent. Opposed to this, we have the facts 

 that our Anglo-Saxon race owes its strong vitality 

 to its being a mixed race, whereas the purest race 

 in Europe the Danes are on the decline. In 

 Red River Settlement, a country peopled by a 

 mixed or hybrid race of whites and red Indians, 

 population has been increasing. The Mesti- 

 zoes of Granada and Paraguay (mongrels of 

 Spaniards and native Indians) shew no signs of 

 decay or diminished vitality. The nearer the 

 parent races are allied to each other, the less will 

 be the diminution of vitality produced by mis- 

 cegenation. In such cases, it is probable that 

 miscegenation may produce a better race than 

 in-breeding. The greater the difference between 

 the parent races, the less persistent and per- 

 manent will be the mixed race they beget. It 

 seems as though the European and the higher 

 races of American Indians can produce not only 

 a permanent but lusty and powerful mixed race, 

 but that, when the European and the Negro inter- 

 marry, the divergence of the parent races is too 

 great to admit of a stable race of hybrids being 

 produced. The coloured population of the slave 

 states increased so long as slavery was an institu- 

 tion, by constant intermixture of the original 

 parent races, and not by the reproductive power 

 of the hybrid races, which the ' peculiar domestic 

 institution ' of these states encouraged. Since the 

 abolition of slavery, the Negroes and hybrid races 

 have not been cultivated and bred as valuable 

 chattels, but have been left to the mercy of the 

 natural 'struggle for existence,' and it would 

 appear that they are gradually dying out. 



Acclimatisation. 



Natives of temperate, who emigrate to tropical, 

 climates, die soon. Even when they manage to 

 live, their children die before reaching maturity. 

 When a white man goes to a tropical climate, he 

 and his descendants, if he have any, become 

 darker in colour. The Negro and his descend- 

 ants when transplanted to a cold climate become 

 paler. It is doubtful whether the European has 

 yet been thoroughly acclimatised even in the tem- 

 perate regions of America. Recent statistical 

 investigations go to shew that the native white 

 population of the United States is not on the 

 increase, and that any apparent increase is due 

 to reinforcements from European emigration. 

 There are some anthropologists who hold "that 

 the European races in America are being modified 

 in physique in the direction of the Indian type. 

 The general law seems to be, that the capacity 

 of a race for acclimatisation is proportionate to 

 its intellectuality. 



ORIGIN AND DESCENT OF MAN. 



Two hypotheses are advanced as to the origin 

 and descent of man, neither of which admits of 

 scientific demonstration namely, (i) the hypoth- 

 esis of special creation ; (2) the derivative hy- 

 pothesis of Mr Darwin. Scientifically speaking, 

 the chief objections to the former are : that it is 

 an assertion wanting the solid proofs on which 

 scientific theories are usually based; that it ex- 



plains very few of the facts capable of demon- 

 strative proof; and that it is little more than a 

 formulated assertion, that of the origin of man 

 nothing is known save that nothing will ever be 

 known apart from traditions and the revelations 

 of religion. The derivative hypothesis asserts that 

 the origin of man is in harmony with that of 

 all organised and living things, a process of evolu- 

 tion of the higher and very highest from the 

 lower and very lowest forms of life. (See ZO- 

 OLOGY.) It rests mainly on (i) the existence in 

 animals of useless rudimentary structures, which 

 are found in man developed into usefulness, and 

 of useless structures in man representing the 

 survival of organs found well developed in lower 

 forms, and of use there ; (2) the resemblances 

 between man and animals in embryonic develop- 

 ment and homological structure ; (3) the absence 

 of any differences, bodily or mental, between the 

 highest apes and the lowest savages, wide enough 

 to make it impossible they should have had a 

 common progenitor. 



The derivative hypothesis is one which has the 

 advantage, at present, of accounting for more other- 

 wise inexplicable facts than any other ; its advo- 

 cates very plausibly shew that it is not incon- 

 sistent with the facts it does not account for, and 

 that it is no more contrary to revealed religion 

 than the now accepted doctrines regarding the 

 antiquity of man and the geological development of 

 the earth were once held to be. We may therefore 

 expect that it will daily gain adherents, till a more 

 adequate and perfect hypothesis is started. At 

 present, it is adopted by scientific men as a con- 

 venient provisional theory, preferable to, because 

 less inadequate than the alternative, special 

 creation hypothesis, which seems a mere con- 

 fession of ignorance of the subject The great 

 objection to the derivative hypothesis used to 

 be the assumption it compelled us to make of 

 longer periods of time having elapsed since the 

 first appearance of man on the earth than recorded 

 history, could cover ; periods during which it was 

 possible for the Stone-age savage to develop into 

 the nineteenth-century Christian. However, the 



Antiquity of Man 



is now, on all hands, admitted to be immensely 

 greater than we were wont to consider it accord- 

 ing to Archbishop Usher's chronology. Ages 

 before history and even tradition began, it can be 

 shewn man lived on the earth, and human re- 

 mains are found associated with the fossil relics 

 of animals now extinct, and belonging to a period 

 of probably from 50,000 to 100,000 years back. 

 Sir John Lubbock, our greatest authority on this 

 subject, thinks man may have existed during the 

 Miocene period ; and the other day it was reported 

 that bones taken from undisturbed caves in Mio- 

 cene rocks on the Mediterranean coast, had carved 

 on them figures of prehistoric animals. 



Unity or Plurality of Human Species. 



Those who hold the doctrine of polygeny, or 

 that mankind do not form one, but many distinct 

 species, sprung from stocks specifically distinct, 

 and those who believe in monogeny, or the essen- 

 tial specific unity of the human species, have 

 long warred with each other without satisfactory 

 results. 



The influence of the derivative hypothesis of 



15 



