11 



THE LIVING RACES OF MANKIND 



the celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of the Empress-Queen, have awakened Englishmen 

 and Englishwomen to the fact that their island-home is but a small piece of the world, 

 or even of the British Empire. We have begun to realise that the most promising fields 

 of enterprise for our ever-increasing community, the most profitable markets for our wares, 

 may some day be found in places which are now the darkesb corners of the earth; and 

 that the half-clothed savage, just emerging from the brute condition, is a human being 

 capable of being educated, in the near future, into a customer for British trade and a 

 contributor to the world's wealth. The confidence of the British merchant, nursed in 

 a period of prolonged peace, has been rudely shaken by the successful rivalry of other 



nations, which attach more im- 

 portance to commercial educa- 

 tion. It is now perceived that, 

 if we are to maintain a great 

 Imperial Policy and a lasting 

 supremacy in trade, it must be 

 through a better understanding 

 of the needs and characteristics 

 of the various peoples with 

 whom we are brought in contact. 

 It is of the highest im- 

 portance that the British public, 

 and especially those who are 

 responsible for moulding its 

 opinions and directing its affairs, 

 should possess the widest possible 

 knowledge of the peoples and 

 races included in its great and 

 worldwide empire. Sad mistakes 

 have resulted from our ignorance, 

 mistakes for which we have 

 suffered severely. Everything 

 should be done to popularise 

 the study of Ethnology; but, 

 unfortunately, we are in this 

 respect as yet far behind some 

 other nations. 



A work like the present 

 is, therefore, urgently called for 

 at the present moment. What 

 is required is not a scientific 



Pltoto btj \V. & 1}. Downey. 



KRAO. 



'Krao, 1 ' whose photograph \ve here reproduce, was a very hairy female child, from the 

 forest of Laos, Burma, about six or seven years of age, and was exhibited in 1888 and 

 in 1887 at the Koyal Aquarium, London. The opinion was widely entertained at the 

 time that Krao possessed ape-like peculiarities inherited from wild parents, and 

 therefore might be regarded as a " Missing Link." The newspapers helped to spread 

 this mistaken view. The report by Dr. J. G. Gflrson, published in the British 

 Medical Journal, January 6, 1883, slio\yed conclusively that extreme hairiness was 

 almost the only peculiarity exhibited in Krao. Her parents did not possess this 

 feature. Fourteen or more cases of extreme hairiness are on record ; they may 

 possibly be cases of " Atavism, 11 or reversion to a low ape-like ancestor of the tinman 

 race, but this view cannot yet be demonstrated. In some cases, as in that of "Julia 

 Pastrana " (p. v), the arrangement of the teeih is abnormal. 



