362 COSMOS. 



tions* in the colour of the skin and in the form of the skull, 

 which have been made known to us in recent times by the 

 rapid progress of geographical knowledge the analogies pre- 

 sented by the varieties in the species of many wild and 

 domesticated animals and the more correct observations col- 

 lected regarding the limits of fecundity in hybrids.f The 

 greater number of the contrasts which were formerly supposed 

 to exist, have disappeared before the laborious researches of 

 Tiedemann, on the brain of negroes and of Europeans, and the 

 anatomical investigations of Vrolik and Weber, on the form 

 of the pelvis. On comparing the dark-coloured African 

 nations, on whose physical history the admirable work of 

 Prichard has thrown so much light, with the races inhabiting 

 the islands of the South- Indian and West- Australian archi- 

 pelago, and with the Papuas and Alfourous (Haroforas, Enda- 

 menes), we see that a black skin, woolly hair, and a negro-like 

 cast of countenance are not necessarily connected together. } 

 So long as only a small portion of the earth was known to 

 the Western nations, partial views necessarily predominated, 

 and tropical heat and a black skin consequently appeared in- 

 separable. " The Ethiopians," said the ancient tragic poet, 

 Theodectes of Phaselis, " arc coloured by the near Sun-god 

 in his course, with a sooty lustre, and their hair is dried and 

 crisped with the heat of his rays." The campaigns of Alex- 

 ander, which gave rise to so many new ideas regarding 

 physical geography, likewise first excited a discussion on the 



* On the American races generally, see the magnificent work of 

 Samuel George Morton, entitled Crania americana, 1839, pp. 62, 86 ; 

 and on the skulls brought by Pentland from the highlands of Titicaca, 

 gee the Dublin Journal of Medical and Chemical Science, vol. v., 1834, 

 p. 475 ; also Alcide d'Orbigny, L'homme Americain consider e sous ses 

 rapports physiol. et mor., 1839, p. 221; and the work by Prince Maxi- 

 milian of Wied, which is well worthy of notice for the admirable ethno- 

 graphical remarks in which it abounds, entitled Reise in das Innere 

 von Nordamerika (1839). 



t Rudolph Wagner, Ueber Blendlinge und Bastarderzeugung, in 

 his notes to the German translation of Prichard's Physical History oj 

 Mankind, vol. i. pp. 138-150. 



J Prichard, op. cit., vol. ii. p. 324. 



Onesicritus, in Strabo, xv. pp. 690, 695, Casaub. Welcker, Grie- 

 chische TragGdien, abth. iii. s. 1078, conjectures that the verses of 

 Theodectes, cited by Strabo, are taken from a lost tragedy, which prt- 

 bably bore the title of " Meinnon." 



