Dec. 28, 1876] 



NATURE 



175 



versally adopted as fatal to all calculations founded on 

 these careful borings. It seems to be thought that 

 although we must have facts to establish a theory, we 

 need only have suppositions to overthrow them. 



The next chapter — on the Physical Characters of the 

 Races of Mankind— treats pretty fully of the brain and 

 cranium, and also of the hair, but far less satisfactorily 

 (owing to absence of material) of other physical charac- 

 ters ; and the conclusion arrived at is " that neither the 

 shape of the skull nor any other portion of the skeleton 

 has afforded distinguishing marks of the human races ; 

 that the colour of the skin likewise displays only various 

 gradations of darkness, and that the hair alone comes 

 to the aid of our systematic attempts, and even this not 

 always, and never with sufficient decisiveness." 



The next chapter treats of Linguistic Characters. While 

 speaking favourably of the imitative and interjectional 

 theory of language, its powers are unnecessarily " limited 

 to events connected with the production of sounds, for 

 no such representation is possible of that which is per- 

 ceived by sight or the sense of touch." It has, however, 

 been often shown that roots derived from sounds or emo- 

 tions may soon be applied by metaphor, analogy, or con- 

 trast, to a wide variety of meanings ; and it may perhaps 

 be something more than a coincidence, that the languages 

 which possess the smallest number of primitive sounds — 

 the Polynesian — belong to an area where from the total 

 absence of mammalia and paucity of birds and insects 

 the variety of natural sounds is extremely small. The 

 chapter which treats of Social and Religious Develop- 

 ment is very voluminous, occupying considerably more 

 than one-third of the whole work, while more than seventy 

 pages are occupied with an account of the various reli- 

 gions, a large part of which is modern history and has the 

 smallest possible connection with ethnology. This chapter 

 is full of facts intermingled with a good deal of more or 

 less doubtful philosophy. We may call attention, how- 

 ever, to the view that cannibalism is not a character of the 

 lowest state of savagery, but is " more frequently encoun- 

 tered exactly among those nations and groups of nations 

 which are distinguished from their neighbours by their 

 abilities and more mature social condition." The ancient 

 Mexicans, the Fijians, the Battas of Sumatra, as well as 

 the Fans, Niamniams, and Monbuttos of Central Africa 

 are adduced as examples, and as likewise proving that it 

 is not the absence of animal food that has led to the 

 formation of the habit. On the question of the first 

 discovery of fire there is much wasted argument, founded 

 on the erroneous assumption that to obtain fire^by friction 



a most laborious operation and always requires the 

 combined labour of two persons (p. 143). On the con- 

 trary, either by the hand- drill or by rubbing it is effected 

 with great rapidity by one individual, and there is really 

 no reason why it might not have been independently dis- 

 covered in different parts of the world. 



One of the best passages in this part of the work is 

 that which treats of the influence of commerce on the 

 migrations of nations (pp. 210-214). Humboldt has 

 remarked that had not Columbus altered his course a few 

 days before sighting America he would have landed in 

 Florida, and the Spaniards would have peopled the United 

 States instead of Central America, and the New World 

 would now have had quite ^different ethnographical fea- 



tures. This was a very crude and unphilosophical remark 

 of Humboldt's, for, as our author shows, the portion of 

 America to be colonised by Spaniards was almost wholly 

 determined by the presence of the precious metals. 

 Wherever these were not found they marked on their 

 charts as " worthless territories," and had they first dis- 

 covered the present United States they would certainly 

 have at once abandoned them. Agricultural colonies 

 were not possible at that early period, and the first settle- 

 ments of the French and English literally perished ot 

 starvation. Tobacco as a valuable article of commerce 

 first made Virginia flourish. The demand for codfish in 

 France caused Canada to become a French colony. The 

 Russians have settled wherever furs were obtainable. 

 Spices caused the Portuguese and Dutch to settle in the 

 far East, while in modern times the attraction of gold has 

 led to the peopling of California with Anglo-Americans. 

 This interesting discussion is summed up with the re- 

 mark : — 



" We thus see how much we owe to the rare and 

 precious products of the animal, vegetable, and mineral 

 kingdoms, as the means by which human culture was 

 spread, and as the baits which attracted national migra- 

 tions, and we perceive that the regions which were for- 

 tunate enough to possess such treasures were the first 

 to be drawn into the sphere of a higher culture ; the 

 direction in which civilisation has moved has frequently 

 been prescribed by this influence." 



In the last part of the work, devoted to a detailed ex- 

 position of the races of mankind, v/e have a somewhat 

 peculiar primary division into seven groups. The first 

 includes the inhabitants of Tasmania and Australia ; the 

 second, the Papuans of New Guinea and the adjacent 

 islands ; the third, the Mongoloid nations, including the 

 Malayo-Polynesians and native Americans ; the fourth, 

 the Dravida of Western India ; the fifth, the Hottentots 

 and Bushmen ; the sixth, the Negroes ; and the last, the 

 Mediterranean nations, answering to the Caucasians or 

 Indo-Europeans of other ethnologists. The Tasmanians 

 are said to have "exactly resembled the Australians in all 

 points, except that the growth of the hair was more 

 Papuan in character." The supposed resemblance of 

 Australians to the aboriginal inhabitants of Central India 

 is set aside as entirely without foundation, while they are 

 said to be decidedly nearest of kin to the Papuans. These 

 latter are associated with the Negritos and the Andaman 

 Islanders. Notwithstanding that a wide-spread relation- 

 ship between Papuan and Polynesian languages is affirmed 

 (p. 342), yet the Polynesians are associated with the 

 Malays as a Mongoloid sub-race, the Malayo-Polynesians, 

 an association which the present writer holds to be radi- 

 cally erroneous. The American tribes are treated as 

 a single homogeneous group which entered the conti- 

 nent from the north-west, and little weight is given to 

 the great differences of mental and physical character 

 which exist and which are certainly greater than can be 

 explained by a comparatively modern origin from a single 

 stock. Very much yet remains to be done in determining 

 the successive v/aves of migration which have flowed into 

 the American continent, and we hardly think our author 

 is justified in ranking the American aborigines as faf 

 higher than the negroes, on the ground that the former 

 have, quite independently, reached a much higher civilisa- 

 tion. Throughout all this portion of the book a vast 



