THE RACES OF MAN. 219 



tribes of India, says that hundreds of imperceptible grada- 

 tions may be traced " from the black, squat tribes of the 

 mountains to the tall olive-colored Brahman, with his intel- 

 lectual brow, calm eyes, and high but narrow head;" so 

 that it is necessary in courts of justice to ask the wit- 

 nesses whether they are Santalis or Hindoos.* Whether 

 a heterogeneous people, such as the inhabitants of some 

 of the Polynesian islands, formed by the crossing of two 

 distinct races, with few or no pure members left, would, 

 ever become homogeneous, is not known from direct evi- 

 dence. But as with our domesticated animals, a cross- 

 breed can certainly be fixed and made uniform by careful 

 selection f in the course of a few generations, we may infer 

 that the free intercrossing of a heterogeneous mixture 

 during a long descent would supply the place of selection 

 and overcome any tendency to reversion ; so that the 

 crossed race would ultimately become homogeneous, 

 though it might not partake in an equal degree of the 

 characters of the two parent-races. 



Of all the differences between the races of man, the color 

 of the skin is the most conspicuous and one of the best 

 marked. It was formerly thought that differences of this 

 kind could be accounted for by long exposure to 

 different climates ; but Pallas first showed that this 

 is not tenable and he has since been followed 

 by almost all anthropologists.]: This view has been 

 rejected chiefly because the distribution of the variously 

 colored races, most of whom must have long inhabited their 

 present homes, does not coincide with corresponding dif- 

 ferences of climate. Some little weight may be given to 

 such cases as that of the Dutch families, who, as we hear on 

 excellent authority, have not undergone the least change 

 of color after residing for three centuries in S. Africa. 

 An argument on the same side may likewise be drawn 



* " The Annals of Rural Bengal," 1868, p. 134. 

 f- "The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," 

 vol. ii, p. 95. 



\ Pallas, " Act. Acad. St. Petersburg," 1780, part ii, p. 69. He 

 was followed by Rudolphi, in his " Beytrage zur Anthropologie, " 

 1812. An excellent summary of the evidence is given by Qodron, 

 " De 1'Espece," 1859, vol. ii, p. 246, etc. 



Sir Andrew Smith, as quoted by Knox, " Races of Man," 1850, 

 p. 473. 



