Ixii INTRODUCTION. 



Egyptians, are to be found the delineation of features which 

 may still be traced in the degraded Fellahs of the country. 

 The Jews, after the lapse of many centuries, retain, in in- 

 numerable cases, the lineaments of their race, and although 

 influenced, in the colour of the skin, by effects of temperature, 

 may yet be discriminated, in countries where they have been 

 naturalized, as a distinct people. The wandering tribes of 

 Gipsies, which are spread over a great part of Europe, retain, 

 after many centuries, the essential characters of their race, 

 the swarthy visage, the keen dark eye, the lank black hair. 

 In India, there exist whole tribes as much distinct in aspect, 

 as in speech and customs, from all around them, although 

 every trace of their ancestry has been lost ; and in the same 

 country the Parsees, driven beyond the Indus by the Moham- 

 medans, seem to be nearly the same people as when expelled 

 from their Persian homes. The Laplanders, amid the snows 

 of the Arctic regions, have preserved the colour and features 

 indicative of their Asiatic descent ; and the Negroes, reduced 

 to bondage in a distant land, have preserved from age to age 

 all the essential lineaments and characters distinctive of the 

 African family. 



In the case of the domesticated quadrupeds, we find simi- 

 lar evidences of the wonderful permanence of characters once 

 acquired and imprinted on the animals. In certain breeds of 

 oxen and sheep, the animals retain from generation to gene- 

 ration their distinctive marks, the presence or absence of 

 horns, the length and peculiar bending of these appendages, 

 and even the minutest variations of colour, as spots of white 

 or black on certain parts of the body. We are made ac- 

 quainted with the peculiar colour of the horses of some of the 

 barbarous hordes that entered Italy when the empire fell, 

 as piebald and clouded ; and the colour is yet preserved in 

 some of the races of modern Italy. 



The degree of permanence of the acquired properties of 

 races may be supposed to bear some ratio to the time during 

 which an intermixture of blood has been continued amongst 



