HOMO. MAMMALIA. 39 



4. The American variety, comprising all the Americans except the 

 Esquimaux, are mostly tan or reddish copper-coloured, with prominent 

 cheek-bones, short forehead, flattish nose, straight coarse hair, and 

 thin beard. 



5. The Malayan variety includes the inhabitants of the islands in 

 the Indian Ocean and Polynesia. They are of a brown colour, from 

 a clear mahogany to the darkest clove or chesnut brown, with 

 thick black bushy hair, a broad nose, and wide mouth. 



To one or other of these strongly marked families all the other va- 

 rieties of the human race may be traced ; and these in their turn 

 may be referred to certain hereditary conformations, modified by 

 food, soil, and climate, which have separated the members of one 

 family, long prior to the era of written records. 



Some French naturalists have endeavoured to raise the varieties 

 now observable among the human race into different species ; but, 

 as Cuvier justly remarks, the indiscriminate sexual intercourse and 

 consequent production of an offspring capable of propagation prove 

 mankind to be but a single species. And it is remarked by Blumen- 

 bach, that all national differences in the form and colour of the hu- 

 man body are not more remarkable, nor more inconceivable, than 

 those by which varieties of so many other organized bodies, and 

 particularly of domestic animals, arise as it were under our eyes. 



In considering the peculiarities which distinguish man from the 

 brute creation, his capability of inhabiting every climate and sus- 

 taining every degree of heat and cold, deserves to be noticed. 

 While the geographical range of most animals is extremely limited, 

 the physical and intellectual powers of man enable him to create a 

 climate of his own in every degree of latitude ; and while the In- 

 dian of Canada may sleep upon the snow with impunity with the 

 thermometer at 40 below zero, the natives of Sierra Leone suffer 

 unhurt the heat of a vertical sun with the thermometer above 100. 

 And as the physical powers and intellectual resources of Man ena- 

 ble him to occupy the whole surface of the globe, his capacity of 

 living on every species of food renders him in the widest sense of the 

 word omnivorous. The continued use of animal food is as natural 

 and wholesome to the inhabitants of the Arctic regions, where it is 

 impossible to raise vegetables, as a mixed diet is to the Englishman ; 

 and vegetable food within the tropics is necessary from the exube- 

 rance of this part of the creation, and the comparative scarcity of 

 those gregarious animals on which man subsists in other latitudes. 



ORDER II. QUADRUMANA. 



THREE kinds of teeth, incisors, canines, and molars ; four ex- 

 tremities terminated by hands, with the thumb separate from 

 the other fingers, and more or less opposable to them ; fingers 

 long and flexible ; two or four pectoral mammae ; clavicles 



