352 MAN. 



Australasian Islands, and with the Papuas and Alfourous (Ha- 

 rafores, Endamenes), we see that a black tint of skin, woolly 

 hair, and negro features, are by no means invariably asso- 

 ciated. ( 436 ) So long as the western nations were acquainted 

 with only a small part of the earth's surface, partial views 

 almost necessarily prevailed ; tropical heat and a black colour 

 of the skin appeared inseparable. " The Ethiopians," said 

 the ancient tragic poet Theodectes of Phaselis, ( 43 ?) " by the 

 near approach of the Sun-god in his course, have their bodies 

 coloured with a dark sooty lustre, and their hair curled and 

 crisped by his parching rays." The campaigns of Alexander, 

 in which so many subjects connected with physical geography 

 were originally brought into notice, occasioned the first dis- 

 cussion on the problematical influence of climate on nations 

 and races. " Families of plants and animals," says one of 

 the greatest anatomists of our age, Johannes Miiller, in his 

 comprehensive work entitled Physiologic des Menschen, " in 

 the course of their distribution over the surface of the earth, 

 undergo modifications within limits prescribed to genera and 

 species, which modifications are afterwards perpetuated orga- 

 nically in their descendants, forming types of varieties of 

 the same species : the present races of animals have been 

 produced by a concurrence of causes and conditions, in- 

 ternal as well as external, which it is impossible to follow 

 in detail; but the most striking varieties are found in 

 those families which are susceptible of the widest geo- 

 graphical extension. The different races of mankind are 

 forms or varieties of a single species: their unions are 

 fruitful, and the descendants from them are so likewise; 

 whereas if the races were distinct species of a genus, the 



