72 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOR 



ETHNOLOGY. II. 



CLASSIFICATION OF THE SUBJECT. 



ETHNOLOGY must always have excited a certain measure of 

 attention. How carefully, for instance, are the features of men 

 belonging to different nationalities discriminated on the old 

 Egyptian monuments ! It was not, however, till modern times 

 that the subject was prosecuted in a thoroughly scientific method. 

 One of the first to connect his name honourably with it was 

 u. Dutchman called Peter Camper, a sketch of whose life may 

 be found in the eleventh volume of Jardine's "Naturalist's 

 Library." He was born at Leyden in 1722, and died in 1789. 

 He was the author of many scientific treatises and papers ; but 

 the special publication which has enrolled his name in the 

 list of ethnological worthies was one designed to show the 

 connection between the science of anatomy and the arts of 

 drawing, painting, and sculpture. It was composed by him as 

 early as 1768, and added to in 1772 and 1786, but was not 

 given to the world till after his death, when it appeared under 

 the editorship of his son in 1791. Camper proposed to trace 

 an imaginary line, which he called the facial one, down the 

 forehead to the most prominent portion of the upper jaw 

 this, again, was to be met by a second one, from the externa 

 opening of the ear. The two, of course, 

 between them would form an angle, which 

 Camper called the facial o,ngle, and which 

 is sometimes named aftnr himself Cam- 

 per's angle. According as it varied in 

 size in different people measured, did 

 he find the expression of the counte- 

 nance alter ; while it also afforded him 

 an index of the intellect, which was held 

 to increase as the facial angle advanced 

 in size. He says, " The two extremities 

 of the facial angle are 70 or 100, from 

 the negro to the Grecian antique (Fig. 

 1). Make it under 70, and you describe 

 an ourang-outang or an ape ; lessen it 

 more, and you have the head of a 

 dog ; increase the minimum, and you 

 form a fowl a snipe, for example, the 

 facial angle of which is nearly parallel 

 to the horizon." There was a good deal 

 of truth in what Camper said, though 

 still, as we shall afterwards see, not at 

 all so much as he thought. 



We come next to the great name of 

 Blumenbach. He was born at Gotha 

 in 1752, and died in 1840. In 1775 

 he published his celebrated work, " De 

 Generis Humani Varietate Nativa," 



concerning the natural variety of the human race ; in the third 

 edition of which, given to the world in 1795, he subdivides man- 

 kind into five varieties, which still hold a place though not all 

 of them the one he assigned them in books of ethnology. 

 Ihey are these : the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Ethiopian, 

 the American, and the Malay varieties. In the translation of 

 his work made for the Anthropological Society by one of its 

 vice-presidents, Mr. Thomas Bendy side, they are thus given : 



1. The Caucasian Variety. " Colour white; cheeks rosy; hair 

 brown or chestnut- coloured; head sub-globular (almost globular) ; 

 face oval, straight, its parts moderately defined; forehead 

 smooth ; nose narrow, slightly hooked ; mouth small ; the 

 primary teeth placed perpendicularly to each jaw ; the lips 

 (especially the lower one) moderately open ; the chin full and 

 rounded : in general, that kind of appearance which, according 

 to our opinion of symmetry, we consider most handsome and 

 becoming." To this first variety, Blumenbach assigns most of 

 the inhabitants of Europe, excepting the Finns, Laplanders, 

 tc. ; also the inhabitants of western Asia as far as the river 

 Obi, the Caspian Sea, and the Ganges. To these, finally, he adds 

 the inhabitants of northern Africa. 



2. The Mongolian Variety. " Colour yellow ; hair black, stiff, 

 straight, and scanty ; head almost square ; face broad, at the 

 same time flat and depressed, the parts therefore less distinct, 

 and, as it were, running into one another ; glabella (meaning the 

 space between the eyebrows) flat and very broad ; nose small, 

 apish; cheeks usually globular, prominent outwardly j the 



Fig. 1. HEAD OF AN ENGLISHMAN 



FACIAL ANGLE, 80. 



opening of the eyelids narrow, linear ; chin slightly prominent." 

 To this variety Blumenbach assigns the Finns, Laplanders, etc., 

 in Europe ; all the Asiatics, except those already mentioned, and 

 the Malays ; and, finally, the Esquimaux in America. (Fig. 2.) 



3. The Ethiopian Variety. " Colour black ; hair dark and 

 curly ; head narrow, compressed at the sides ; forehead knotty, 

 uneven ; malar (cheek) bones protruding outwards ; eyes very 

 prominent ; nose thick, mixed up, as it were, with the wide 

 jaws ; alveolar ridge (meaning the ridge in which are the 

 sockets of the teeth) narrow, elongated (lengthened) in front, 

 the upper primaries (among the teeth) obliquely prominent ; the 

 lips, especially the upper, very puffy ; chin retreating. Many 

 are bandy-legged." Under this variety he ranks the inhabitants 

 of Africa, except those of its northern part. 



4. The American Variety. "Copper-coloured; hair black, stiff, 

 straight, and scanty ; forehead short ; eyes set very deep ; nose 

 somewhat apish, but prominent ; the face invariably broad, with 

 cheeks prominent, but not flat or depressed ; its parts, if seen in 

 profile, very distinct and, as it were, deeply chiselled ; the shape 

 of the forehead and head in many artificially distorted." Under 

 this variety Blumenbach includes all the North American 

 Indians, with the exception of the Esquimaux. 



5. The Malay Variety. "Tawny-coloured; hair black, long, 



shining, thick, and plentiful ; head mode- 

 rately narrowed ; forehead slightly swell- 

 ing ; nose full, rather wide, as it were 

 diffuse, and thick ; mouth large ; upper 

 jaw somewhat prominent, with the parts 

 of the face, when seen in profile, suffi- 

 ciently prominent and distinct from each 

 other." To this last variety belong the 

 inhabitants of the Malay peninsula, 

 as also many of the islanders of the. 

 Pacific Ocean. 



The great naturalist, Baron Cuvier, 

 reduced Blumenbach' s five varieties to 

 three, believing the red men of America 

 and the Malays of the Eastern Archipe- 

 lago to have sprung originally from the 

 Asiatic Mongolians. 



It will be convenient here to depart 

 from the strict chronological order of 

 events, and pass at once to Dr. Prichard, 

 a former president of the Ethnological 

 Society of London, whose name is re- 

 garded with high consideration on the- 

 Continent as well as here. In the third 

 edition of his " Researches into the 

 Physical History of Mankind" (London, 

 1836), he thus divides the human 

 race: (1) Iranians, and (2) Turanians 



(these being the two families designated by Blumenbach Cauca- 

 sians and Mongolians) ; (3) Native Americans, excluding the Esqui- 

 maux; (4) the Hottentots and Bushmans; (5) the Negroes; (6) 

 the Papuas, or woolly-haired nations of Polynesia ; and (7) the- 

 Alforous and Australians. By Alforous he meant the aborigines 

 of the Malayan Archipelago. In his " Natural History of 

 Man," of which the first edition was published in 1842, and the 

 second in 1845, he modified this arrangement, among other 

 changes dividing the Iranian race into two, for reasons which 

 we shall subsequently explain at length. His successor in ethno- 

 logical reputation, Dr. Latham, in his elaborate publication, 

 " The Natural History of the Varieties of Man," given to the 

 world in 1850, introduced new terms, and made his primary 

 divisions Mongolidce, Atlantidse, and lapetidse. Like Cuvier, he 

 placed the Malays and the Native Americans under the Mongo- 

 lidae. The Atlantidse comprised the Negroes and (inaccu- 

 rately, we think) the Arabs, Jews, etc., who are physically 

 akin to Europeans, and very remote from African negroes. The 

 lapetidsB included Europeans and those nations of Asia to 

 which they are most akin. 



We shall now go back chronologically, and direct attention 

 to a great discovery in quite another branch of inquiry, which 

 affected the later classification of Prichard, and that of Latham. 

 It commenced in the East, where Halhed, in 1776, and Sir 

 William Jones, somewhat later in the century, were struck by 

 the remarkable fact that Sanscrit, the language of the Brahman 

 sacred books, and which, though nominally dead, still, in a 



