VARIETIES OF MANKIND. 



1315 



seqtiently, only when restricted by artificial 

 interference, that a male and a female of 

 different species are disposed to copulation 

 with each other. The hybrid offspring of 

 this act partake of the characters of both 

 the parent stocks, but are deficient in genera- 

 tive power ; so that, although a mule may be 

 fertile when paired with an individual of either 

 of the parent races, it is seldom or never 

 fertile with one of its own kind. Thus the 

 peculiarities introduced by hybridity are 

 speedily merged into those of the parent 

 stocks ; and no new race has ever been known 

 to originate from this kind of union.* 



14. Among all those races which are en- 

 titled to rank as varieties only, the physiological 

 conformity is often closer than the structural ; 

 thus, as Dr. Prichard has pointed out " the 

 great laws of the animal economy, all the 

 principal facts which relate to the natural 

 and vital functions, the periods and duration 

 of life, the economy of the sexes, the pheno- 

 mena of parturition and reproduction, are, 

 with slight deviations resulting from external 

 agencies, constant and uniform in each par- 

 ticular species." 



15. So, again, among the varieties of the 



Fig. 803. 



same species, there is, with subordinate dif- 

 ferences, such as can be traced to external 

 agencies, and particularly to human influence, 

 a very close psychical conformity ; the capa- 

 cities of the several races being fundamentally 

 the same, although varying in their degree of 

 relative development. 



III. GENERAL SURVEY OF THE DIVERSITIES, 

 IN PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL CHARAC- 



TERS, PRESENTED BY 



RACES OF MANKIND. 



THE DIFFERENT 



If it were possible to bring together under 

 one view, characteristic examples of every 

 type of Human conformation which the pro- 

 gress of Ethnological research has hitherto 

 made known, it would be found that they 

 all accord in the peculiarities by which 

 Man has been shown (Sect. 1.) to be dis- 

 tinguished from even the highest of the 

 Quadrumanous order ; and that, notwith- 

 standing a certain amount of approximation 

 which is presented to that order in the aspect 

 of certain human countenances (figs. 803, 804, 

 80.5.), and even in the habits of life of cer- 

 tain tribes, yet the essential and fundamental 



Fig. 804. 



Negro of Bournou. (From a portrait taken under the direction of Prof. Milne-Edwards.) 



points of difference are never obliterated. 

 But among these types we should find so 

 wide a diversity, that we should naturally be 

 led to question their relationship to each 

 other and to ourselves ; and should seek to 

 determine whether these differences are in- 

 herent and unalterable in each race, so as to 



* It is not quite certain whether mule or hybrid 

 Animals have ever produced fertile offspring when 

 matched with each other ; but it is quite certain 

 that if a second generation of hybrids has thus been 

 engendered, a third has never been, the race having 

 no capacity for perpetuation. Among Plants, the 

 limits are wider, a third and even a fourth genera- 

 tion having been thus sometimes produced; but 

 there is obviously a want of fertility, and a conse- 

 quent tendency to extinction, in all hybrid races 

 whose parents are specifically different. 



forbid the idea of any essential modification, 

 either in the past or the future, from the in- 

 fluence of external circumstances ; or whe- 

 ther there is any probable evidence that they 

 may have been produced by those external 

 agencies, which we have seen to possess such 

 a remarkable power of altering the conforma- 

 tion, and even the instinctive propensities, of 

 domesticated animals. Such is the first ques- 

 tion which we should have to answer ; and 

 in a practical point of view, as influencing our 

 conduct towards the races which differ more 

 or less widely from our own, it is undoubtedly 

 the most important. But the physiologist 

 and the zoologist seek to attain a more 

 positive scientific determination of this rela- 

 tionship j and since, if such a determination 



4P 2 



